We already know that Facebook "watches" everything we do. Why do I get ads for singles in Toronto, Canada? Because my status is "single" and I have told an app that I am on my way to Canada or logged in whilst in Canada or posted about Toronto.
By using a Facebook app, reading an article, listening to a song, or watching a video, you give the information to Facebook. That info is shared with your friends and/or added to your profile and stored by Facebook. What is interesting is that info is there for life.
Now, Facebook has taken this a step forward. They are working with a Datalogix, a North Amercian-based data-mining company that collects and analyses information about consumer behaviour. Data mining uses mathematical techniques to extract meaning from data to identify relationships between things and segment or classify customers based on how well they match something you are selling or marketing.
As you can imagine Facebook has trillions of bits of data. Data mining helps them to better segment advertising to more closely target advertisements, services and products you will click like on or click links to. But what is more interesting/scarey/fascinating/threatening is that Facebook is trying to link what you buy offline with what you see online.
Datalogix has data from about 70 million US households that they have extracted from loyalty programs. Facebook is now matching the email addresses stored with Datalogix and matching it to your Facebook email address. This means they can now tell if you buy something in a store after seeing a Facebook advertisement.
Facebook is saying: "We don't sell people's personal information, and individual user data is not shared between Facebook, Datalogix or advertisers." In other words only Facebook will know that I clicked on an advertisement for a pair of jeans and then bought those same jeans three days later. They will simply tell the advertiser that 13 per cent of men in the demographic 40 to 49 who clicked on that ad bought those jeans.
At this stage, the project seems to be only centred on North America but one can see it being rolled out. Can you imagine what would happen if Tesco in the UK with their 15 million cardholder was linked into Facebook. Suddenly Tesco insurance, phones and products could be linked to consumer online behaviour. In theory, this would mean that entire Tesco stores could have a different product range based on what people in that area are doing on Facebook.
Now, Facebook has taken this a step forward. They are working with a Datalogix, a North Amercian-based data-mining company that collects and analyses information about consumer behaviour. Data mining uses mathematical techniques to extract meaning from data to identify relationships between things and segment or classify customers based on how well they match something you are selling or marketing.
As you can imagine Facebook has trillions of bits of data. Data mining helps them to better segment advertising to more closely target advertisements, services and products you will click like on or click links to. But what is more interesting/scarey/fascinating/threatening is that Facebook is trying to link what you buy offline with what you see online. Datalogix has data from about 70 million US households that they have extracted from loyalty programs. Facebook is now matching the email addresses stored with Datalogix and matching it to your Facebook email address. This means they can now tell if you buy something in a store after seeing a Facebook advertisement.
At this stage, the project seems to be only centred on North America but one can see it being rolled out. Can you imagine what would happen if Tesco in the UK with their 15 million cardholder was linked into Facebook. Suddenly Tesco insurance, phones and products could be linked to consumer online behaviour. In theory, this would mean that entire Tesco stores could have a different product range based on what people in that area are doing on Facebook.
How to react. Here are seven possible options:
- Shrug your shoulders and ignore it. After all Safeway is not going to know anything about you that they already don't
- Move to Tonga where data mining will take some time to catch up
- Shut down your Facebook account after deleting as many posts as you can
- Remove your phone number, demographic info where you can from Facebook. This will annoy your friends who are trying to find you.
- Have a separate email address and phone number for your credit cards, your loyalty cards (eg Frequent flyer cards and store loyalty cards) so Facebook cannot compare it with the data being held byDatalogix or whoever Facebook engage in other countries
- Go to the Datalogix Privacy Page and scroll down to "You may click here to opt out of Datalogix’ services." and this will opt you out of all data collection done by Datalogix
- Get the app Disconnect for Chrome or Firefox browsers, which blocks tracking cookies from Facebook, Google, Twitter, Digg, and Yahoo, and prevents all of those services from obtaining your browsing or search history from third party sites that you may visit
Pretty eye opening article! Wow!
ReplyDelete