Google Under Fire for Planned Tracking of Users' Shopping Behavior; Group Demands Federal Investigation

By Jessica Ferrera, Christian Post Contributor Friday, August 04, 2017

A privacy rights group is demanding for a federal investigation of Google's algorithm that allegedly tracks consumers and their behavior in shopping offline.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission on July 31 and asked them to investigate Google's recently introduced scheme of analyzing the consumers' shopping patterns even when the purchases were made in-store or offline.

One of the specific requests in EPIC's July 31 complaint asked the FTC to: "Initiate an investigation into Google's in-store sales tracking algorithm to determine whether it adequately protects the privacy of millions of American consumers."

In a statement on the recently filed complaint, EPIC said: "Google claims that it protects online privacy but refuses to reveal details of the algorithm that 'deidentifies' consumers while tracking their purchases."

With that, the privacy rights watchdog demanded that the FTC should step in to investigate and "require Google to protect the privacy of its users."

Back in May, Google introduced a new marketing-focused machine learning algorithm. In a statement, it described the innovation as "critical to helping marketers analyze countless signals in real time and reach consumers with more useful ads."

Google added that the said machine learning system measures "the consumer journeys that now span multiple devices and channels across both the digital and physical worlds."

According to an earlier report of the Washington Post, this algorithm works with the help of several Google-owned platforms such as simple web browsing through Chrome or Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, and Play Store. People can recall that nowadays, all these platforms advise users to link their profiles by signing in with the same email accounts.

The Washington Post added that these help Google quickly analyze a user's shopping behavior through learning what they often search for on the internet and based on their geographic location.

However, Google reportedly refused to specify how the algorithm can actually advise marketers what a consumer wants to purchase even in the "physical world," which is another red flag for EPIC executive director Marc Rotenberg.