By Alexia Ramirez
Popular Chinese credit rating firms, Sesame Credit and China Rapid Finance, have been reported to use consumer’s online-shopping habits and social networks to calculate their credit scores. The companies reward consumers with good credit scores with perks such as express service at hotels or deposit-waivers on rental cars, which serves to incentivize consumer participation and the relinquishing of such personal data.
Uber’s newest update now asks users to always share their location with the company, even when the app is running in the background. However, Uber claims they will only collect location information from the moment you request a ride to five minutes after your ride has ended. The changes are meant to help improve pick-ups and drop-offs as well as user’s overall experience with the service. Concerned users can opt-out of location sharing and instead enter their location for pick-up manually.
Amazon recently launched Amazon Go, a grocery store that provides consumers with a checkout-free shopping experience. Through an elaborate network of sensors, Amazon is able to track shoppers and automatically detect when products are taken from the shelves and keep items in a virtual cart. After shopping, consumers merely walk out of the store and Amazon will charge their account for the products selected. The new technology and collection of granular data about how people shop in physical spaces raises a whole host of privacy concerns.
Israeli startup, Faception, utilizes deep learning to analyze faces and predict the likelihood they belong to different categories, such as terrorists, pedophiles, Mensa members, and more. Such use of facial-profiling could be dangerously inaccurate and deeply biased, reports Business Insider.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Microsoft announced their new collaboration, an industry database to help identify and limit the spread of terrorist content online.