Verizon's Offer: Let Us Track You, Get Free Stuff 75
mpicpp points out a new program from Verizon that is perfect if you don't mind being tracked. Are you comfortable having your location and Web browsing tracked for marketing purposes? If so, Verizon's got a deal for you. The wireless giant announced a new program this week called 'Smart Rewards' that offers customers credit card-style perks like discounts for shopping, travel and dining. You accrue points through the program by doing things like signing onto the Verizon website, paying your bill online and participating in the company's trade-in program. Verizon emphasizes that the data it collects is anonymized before it's shared with third parties. The program is novel in that offers Verizon users some compensation for the collection of their data, which has become big business for telecom and tech companies. Some privacy advocates have pushed data-collecting companies to reward customers for their personal information in the interest of transparency.
So, like all other rewards programmes? (Score:4, Interesting)
In New Zealand we've got Flybuys.
For a retailer to be part of the programme, their POS system needs to send every item on your receipt to Flybuys. They don't just get "customer A spent $X at retailer Y". They get each product you bought, how much you paid for it, if it was on sale and what the payment method was.
It lets them do things like see the last time you bought a pregnancy test and a few months later, start putting specials for baby products in the next email you get sent by them on behalf of your local supermarket. Or if you buy a particular brand of razor, they might tell you about specials for blade refills.
In exchange for all that information, you get to spend reward points on selected products.
Re:So It's Come to This (Score:5, Interesting)
Except it isn't Google's business plan. Google sells advertising targeting to ad companies. Verizon is selling your data to data mining companies. Google would never sell your data because it's their core business to be the keepers of that data so they can sell targeted ads. Not that Google is altruistic, just that they are themselves the data miners so they are not going to share.
Google offers free services to compensate. Services people tend to find pretty valuable such as Android, Gmail and Search.
Verizon is going to offer "discounts for shopping, travel and dining" read: coupons (ie more advertising).
Verizon is going to "anonymize" your data and sell it to anyone and everyone willing to pay.
I see the exchange of value in one business plan, and not the other.
Charging extra if you don't drink the Kool-Aide (Score:4, Interesting)
Just saying...