New Marketing Strategy: Privacy for Sale!

The United States is clearly transforming into a surveillance society. With new surveillance advances happening frequently, its hard not to take advantage of its technology. Business's have been changing their marketing strategies to keep up with the modern day technologies in a way that arguably crosses a line in personal privacy. Companies set up video cameras in their stores to not only keep an "eye" on suspecting shoplifters but to also identify every individual that nears the shop. Many firms have invested in face recognition cameras in order to record each customer's visit. Once the person is identified, companies can easily find consumer email address' and later send consumers a message reminding them of the company. Without consumer consent, a company can gain valuable personal information (email adress, name, age, residence..) about individuals to improve their marketing success. Due to selective attention, or the idea that each individual only "pays attention to things that interest them or are consistent with their attitudes, opinions, and beliefs", businesses feel the need to back-check possible customers in order to inform each individual of products that relate to their unique wants or needs.

Online companies are even worse when it comes to back-checking their customers. Most online companies have rights to their websites and therefore have the right to monitor them. Some companies on the Internet keep track of each searchers visit and monitors what products or services they browse through. Then, like physically run companies, online business's realize each individuals interests and informs them of similar products via email. They can also collect, organize and analyze all customer records (by age, sex, region..) to better decide future marketing techniques. Especially if a customer buys something online, a business can take their credit card number and find their personal financial accounts, face-book page, email address, and even medical records. The reason it is so easy for electronic business's to attain this kind of information is due to 1) i.p addresses and the 2) Gramm-Leach-Billey bill. Most people do not know what a i.p address is: it is "a numerical label that is assigned to computer network devices that interface identification and location addressing". So even if an individual just visits a site and does not buy anything (therefore not giving their credit card number) business' can still have access to at least consumers' name and residence. Even though those two things could help companies expand their knowledge on their target consumers, they still want more! Lucky for them the Gramm-Leach-Billey bill was passed. This bill "effectively gives companies permission to sell their customer's data to anyone they choose" (bill passed especially for financial institutions). Therefore, companies all of the world can sell and share information about their consumers to each other for a likable profit. Unfortunately for personal privacy, companies have even been known to sell consumer information to the government. This dangerous transaction could lead the government to alter citizen liberties if threatened by public data. In the end, companies risk destroying personal privacy and increasing the power of the Big Brother, all one thing: profit.