Big Retail Is Watching You: Exposing Walmart's Massive Data Collection Schemes

[unhappycamper]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/11/27-6



Retail giant's mass data collection is disproportionately affecting people of color, say authors

Big Retail Is Watching You: Exposing Walmart's Massive Data Collection Schemes
- Lauren McCauley, staff writer
Published on Wednesday, November 27, 2013 by Common Dreams

Outside of its growing reputation for poverty wages, worker intimidation and an overall culture of employee repression, a new report released Wednesday reveals that retail giant Walmart is also throwing its weight behind a massive consumer tracking effort with particular implications for people of color.

Authored by a coalition of consumer rights and social justice groups, the report, Consumers, Big Data and Online Tracking in the Retail Industry: A Case Study of Walmart (pdf), examines many of the ways in which large retailers—with a particular focus on Walmart—collect consumer data through mobile devices and online activity and use that information to "tease out meaningful patterns,” as noted by a November 2011 Walmart blog post.

The report notes that people of color and other marginalized and low-income communities are being disproportionately affected by such data collection since studies have shown they are less likely than wealthier consumers to protect their data or avoid the marketing ploys which target them.

“Walmart is collecting information on millions of Americans who are disproportionately low-income Black folks and other communities of color," said Rashad Robinson, Executive Director of ColorOfChange who, along with Sum of Us and the Center for Media Justice, authored the report.

[cantbeserious]

1. The Oligarchs And Corporations Own And Control The Politicians That Own And Control Us

That enable the laws for collecting data on the disenfranchised.