Many of the nation’s leading banks and card issuers, including Wells Fargo, Citi, USAA, Sovereign Bank and Discover, are selling information about consumers’ shopping habits — how much they spend, where they shop and what they buy — to retailers. Retailers are using the data to offer targeted discounts via text, email and online bank…
Category: Business
“Who Has Your Back?” In Depth: Fighting for User Privacy in Congress
Richard Esguerra writes: EFF has called on companies to stand with their users when the government comes looking for data. (If you haven’t done so, sign the petition urging companies to provide better transparency and privacy.) This article will provide a more detailed look at the last of the four elements required for a company to earn a…
Class Tells AOL to Toss the Cookies
Julia Filip reports: A federal class action demands that AOL stop intruding on millions of people’s privacy by tracking their Web browsing and selling the information to third-party advertisers. Co-defendants ScanScout and Brightcove also are accused of overriding privacy controls on private citizens’ computers to install temporary files, or “cookies.” The three defendants allegedly use…
Myspace’s 50 Million User Profiles Now Belong to an Ad Targeting Firm
Ben Popper reports: Myspace’s biggest asset is arguably its userbase of somewhere between 50 and 65 million people. Myspace posted a dozen data sets on the data marketplace Infochimps in March, with information on status updates, user activity, apps, photos and more, with prices ranging from $25 to $150. To be clear, the data on Infochimps does…