S-Group and Customer Data Collection

Have't written here for a while, but as luck would have it here's a privacy story from Finland.

The supermarket chain S-Group are updating their customer loyalty scheme to make it more relevant for their customers, ie: direct advertising. The basic idea is that they'll make fine grained data collection from the various shops and services in the S-Group. Such data include the specific purchases as well as, of course, time stamps, locations, identity etc.

While various consumer organisations are incensed by this obvious infringement of people's privacy, the danger is really elsewhere.

For a start we have the classic massive data collection from which we can make all kinds of inferences - ostensibly the what, where, when and intriguingly why of consumer purchases. Down this road we see the also classic direct advertising mistakes - you bought milk last week so you'll buy milk this week ... seriously if a supermarket can't work this out without "BigData" then they have problems.

There's also the issue that inferences can have other unforseen effects:

How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did
Kashmir Hill, Forbes
Feb 16, 2012

"Every time you go shopping, you share intimate details about your consumption patterns with retailers. And many of those retailers are studying those details to figure out what you like, what you need, and which coupons are most likely to make you happy. Target, for example, has figured out how to data-mine its way into your womb, to figure out whether you have a baby on the way long before you need to start buying diapers."

That's really going to go down well with the Finnish regulators...

The part that really worry me is where S-Market states that it will keep the data for future usages. As I wrote in Privacy Engineering, any time you see a future use of data this should start alarm bells ringing. It means that you have no clear use case, no clear set of users of that data and are in effect over-collecting data on a whim. Collecting and keeping data for future use is a very high risk activity.

Nothing is mentioned in their literature about security, location of data etc - though I guess the standard "industry standard" answer (Tesco anyone?) will be used. Hint: I worked on those industry standards...they set out some of the base, good practices only.

I constructed a data flow model of as much as I understand about the system at the moment. It isn't much but over each of those flows is going your personal data. The dashed lines represent return data flows, the dashed circles represent "unknown" participants. Question: does this data get sold to 3rd parties?

Inferred DFD

In defence of S-Group they have announced this to all customers of their bonus scheme - though the language is a little flowery in places (did you know that their bonus scheme has won a prize?!).
Details can be found here and here, and you can obtain your data that is held in their customer registry, though I assume not the inferences made from that data. You can see this data from your S-Kanava account; also in writing though only once per year without charge.  You can opt-out whenever you want (though the opt-out is not retroactive as far as I can see) by calling +358 (0)10 76 5858 (calls cost 0.088eur/min - why not free if you were serious about privacy?)

As this scheme is not in operation yet obviously I can't comment on what data I will be able to see and control. I might for myself let it run for a month and then see what data I can get out of the system. I assume I will get the time, location and itemised list of products from every transaction I make; hopefully also the mechanism how I paid the particular cashier (at least till number) and so on.

Another final point is that all bonus money collected by customers is paid to an account in S-Pankki, but that's another story about compliance and interpreting the law.

Internet Marketing (Humour)

People often ask privacy professionals how they lock down their PCs to prevent loss of their data, tracking etc, or whether they use Facebook, Twitter etc...well the truth is, privacy professionals tend to be quite selective on what they post, and in some cases, leave one or two browsers or PCs deliberately open for various reasons. One is to game advertisers, or maybe to examine what advertisers and marketers are actually doing.

One thing I have noticed is that certain retailers, for example Gigantti of Finland comes to mind, obviously pass my purchase details on to some marketer/advertiser. I don't ever remember being asked to opt-out of this, but, I do now get adverts for the things I've just bought. They could redirect their advertising budget and remove a few middle managers and save a pile of cash instead...

Then there's things like this:

I must admit I love these; I never click on them, but without such crap as this, the Internet would be a lot less fun...so let's start.

Top left...doctors are annoyed at a 53 yo mother because she's found a miracle cure to wrinkles. I'm actually more surprised that it isn't cosmetic companies who are annoyed - surely they're the ones who'll be put out of business. I think doctors (even cosmetic surgeons!) have much more important things to worry about. Then you have to ask, "Who is this woman?"  Surely if she's upset so many doctors and discovered a miracle cure for wrinkles why isn't she on magazines, TV or even Oprah?!

Top middle...so women don't want other diets, just a pill that is exceptionally powerful. I guess this is some kind of diet pill and again I'm sure dieting companies would be more than interested in this, but...On the other hand I'm not sure that most women want to go from being normal and healthy to a misproportioned anorexic.

Top right...same again, except a selfie-obsessed, European looking blonde (so it isn't just asian women who know about this) receives a malformed, badly photoshopped lower body by using some secret Asian fat burning trick...

Bottom left...SIPOO?!?! If there are millionaires in Sipoo with that kind of yacht then they're probably getting its wreckage salvaged from the islands in the archipelago after they've run aground. Monaco would have been better idea with that size of yacht and the climate better for all those trees and the swimming pool. Nice use of IP geo-location to personalise that advert to me; almost had me fooled for a moment.

Bottom middle...I have those vegetables in my fridge: broccoli and coriander...sorry, kale and cilantro. Another interesting medical claim and I'm left wondering how those vegetables target those specific areas of your body and how this hasn't been discovered before given that we humans do eat quite a variety of vegetables. I wonder what would happen if you would dilute these vegetables in a big vat of water, shake it, dilute it again, shake it and so on until only a trace of the memory of the vegetables is left?

Bottom right...this is easy for a privacy professional, the EU have already come to your rescue with the Right to be Forgotten. Though I guess if getting out of your Ferrari while posting for the waiting paparazzi is your thing, then the right to be forgotten is probably way down on your list of things to worry about. Unless of course there's that picture in Hello magazine of your looking frumpy and overweight...in which cases I can recommend a miracle pill and two vegetables to help, and if there's any left over skin after the diet, there's a 53yo mother you can talk to; assuming you can get past the rioting throngs of doctors baying for her blood...

Marketing and advertising with a touch of personalisation, the Internet wouldn't be the same without it :-)

An Academic Survey

I received this morning an email asking to me participate in a survey about "perceptions scientists have of information providers in scientific, technical and medical research fields.."

I'm always a little suspicious of such things but this does seem genuine-ish, if a little badly written; actually I was wondering if they were going to ask me to be a proxy to transfer 50 million USD from an account in the Central African Republic to somewhere on behalf of the Emporer of Botswana?

Do they really have to be so "secretive" in the wording too? I wonder what paper they are referring to, I published quite a few in 2010? What was the "careful selection criteria?"

Here's the mail:

Dear Dr. Oliver ,

We are contacting you because you are the corresponding author on a paper that was published in 2010. We are conducting a survey about the perceptions scientists have of information providers in scientific, technical and medical research fields. As only a carefully selected sample of scientists and practitioners have been chosen for the study, your feedback is very valuable to us.

The survey is being conducted by a scientific, technical and medical publisher who will be revealed at the end of the survey. Under the terms of the Market Research Society Code of Conduct, it will not lead to any sales follow up and no individual (or organization) will be identified. Your results will be kept confidential and used only for research purposes.

We would be grateful if you could spare approximately 15 minutes to complete this survey. The closing date for the survey is 23rd December 2013.

To start the survey, please click ONCE on the link below (or paste it into your browser):

[link redacted]

Please do not reply to this e-mail as the inbox is not monitored. If you are having trouble with this survey you can let us know [redacted]) and we will address any technical problems as quickly as we can.

Thank you very much for your time, we really value your input.

It mentions the "Market Research Society Code of Conduct" and ensures me that my data will only be used for the primary purposes of the survey; no marketing etc...The company sending this is Confirmit, a Norwegian based company that conducts market research - just wonder why they're quoting the MRSC code of conduct presumably given that the MRSC is a UK organisation as far as I can tell.



I'd actually like to know what their privacy policy is, and how they interact with their customers...for example, do they anonymise by hashing unique identifiers? Wwhat is the full set of data that does flow to the customer? What to Confirmit keep and for how long?

Anyway, I contacted MRSC to find out whether this is genuine or not and who is actually using this data.

A few other searches suggests that this might be a request by Elsevier to find out why authors are so upset with them. I guess it isn't a secret that I frequent the category theory lists and there might be one or two there who might not be friends with Elsevier....

So, went to Elsevier's web pages to find some contact details to find out whether they were asking and again whether this is something genuine or some evil spam...clicking on "Help & Contact" gives, well....

I'll let you know how I get on if I get any replies....