James Salmon reports that a new tool for small businesses from Barclays Bank is raising privacy hackles.
The online service will enable small companies – from corner shops to florists and local butchers – to track the performance of similar businesses in their area.
Salmon reports that even though the data will supposedly be anonymous – no individuals or individual firms are supposedly identifiable – privacy advocates such as Privacy International find the service unacceptable:
Banks not only hold our money but also vast quantities of our personal data. This gives them extraordinary insight, and therefore power, into what we value and how we behave individually and as compared to our peers.
‘Services such as SmartBusiness demonstrate a growing trend of companies exploiting the vast amount of data they collect on their customers. Such exploitation is done without customers’ informed consent, and is unacceptable. The notion that any data, in particular financial data, is anonymous is deceitful.
Read more on Daily Mail.