Retail News CRM

Tag: user data

  • Serious Safari bug reveals iPhone, iPad, and Mac users’ personal data

    Serious Safari bug reveals iPhone, iPad, and Mac users’ personal data

    Security firm FingerprintJS published a report on Friday about a bug found in the iOS 15 version of the Safari mobile browser. The report states that this bug “lets any website track your internet activity and even reveal your identity.” A bug found in an Application Programming Interface (API) used and supported by most browsers could be used by attackers to find out many things about you.
    An API is used by programmers to connect parts of the software to other software making it easier to develop programs. One such API, called IndexedDB, is supported by most major browsers and holds what the report calls “a significant amount of data.”

    The bug in the iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS allows random websites to know what other sites a user is visiting on other windows and tabs. That is possible because sites like YouTube, Google Calendar, and Google Keep use “unique user-specific identifiers” in their database names. As a result, authenticated users can be identified as the aforementioned sites create databases that include the  Google User ID belonging to the user, and databases are opened for all the accounts being used.

    The Google User ID leads an attacker to a wealth of personal data. Each one can be used to identify a specific Google account and in combination with Google APIs, it can, at the least, reveal your profile picture to a hacker. It also could help the attacker grab much more personal information and unravel “multiple separate accounts” owned by the same user.

    Unfortunately, learning your personal information doesn’t require you to perform any specific action as the report states “A tab or window that runs in the background and continually queries the IndexedDB API for available databases, can learn what other websites a user visits in real-time. Alternatively, websites can open any website in an iframe or popup window in order to trigger an IndexedDB-based leak for that specific site.”

    FingerprintJS checked with Alexa’s top 1,000 visited sites and found that 30 interact with indexed databases right on their homepage, without any interaction or authentication required by the user. Even if a person is using the private mode in Safari, if he visits multiple websites using the same tab, all databases interacted with are leaked to the sites the user subsequently visits.

    There isn’t much that a Safari user can do if he is running iOS 15 or iPadOS 15. One suggestion is to block all JavaScript by default and only allow it on sites that are 100% trusted. Mac users can switch browsers to escape this bug, but this is not a solution on iOS 15 or iPadOS 15. We should point out that the bug was submitted by FingerprintJS to the WebKit Bug Tracker on November 28, 2021, as bug 233548.

    If you want to check this out on your iPhone or iPad, open Safari and point it at safarileaks.com and follow the simple directions. Quickly (too quickly), the name of the last site you visited appears (if it was one of the sites listed on the Demo page) and your unique Google User ID can be accessed.

    Frankly, the only solution that you have is to wait for Apple to update the iOS and iPadOS software and make sure to install it as soon as it is released. Again, if you’re using a Mac, changing browsers is a valid option although that is not the case with iOS and iPadOS. And keep in mind that users don’t need to perform any specific action in order to set off the bug.

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  • Google now allows users to auto-delete user data

    Google now allows users to auto-delete user data

    Google is making it possible for Android and iOS users to auto-delete location history and activity data starting today. Although the search giant already provided the ability to turn on or off the Location History and Web & App Activity directly from the Google Account, including the option to manually delete the data recorded, there was one feature that makes it so much easier to get rid of this data.

    Starting today, a new set of auto-delete controls are available in the Google app, which will allow users to manage their data easier than before. Simply choose a time limit for how long you want your activity data to be saved, and any data that’s older than that will be automatically deleted from your account.

    Google mentions that you’ll be able to set a time limit for how long your activity data to be saved from anywhere between 3 and 18 months, so there’s that.

    According to Google, users should start seeing the new auto-delete controls soon, and that they will come first to Location History and Web & App Activity. A broader rollout should happen in the coming weeks, so if you don’t see the new feature right away, you’ll have to wait.

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  • Use Data To Show Customers They’re More Than Just A Number

    Use Data To Show Customers They’re More Than Just A Number

    Companies claim that customers aren’t “just a number to us,” but that’s more than a catchphrase for number-crunching analytics firm 84.51°.

    The company is the recent spinoff of former Kroger-Tesco analytics joint venture dunnhumby, now wholly owned by US supermarket giant The Kroger Co. Renamed for the longitude of its Cincinnati headquarters and rebuilt from the ground up in 2015, 84.51° now focuses much of its activities on Kroger customers and partners, such as global consumer packaged goods companies. It believes that its core competitive differentiator is not technology, but rather its focus on helping customers build long-term relationships with their consumers and other customers.  (The company says its new name also represents the “longitudinal view” it takes on understanding customer behavior.)

    Most retailers rely on segmentation analysis to determine which promotions to send consumers, creating blocks of homogenous groups of people (such as single-parent households in middle-class neighborhoods). But 84.51° uses analytics differently, eschewing what CIO Yael Cosset calls an “archaic” approach in favor of a much more relevant, personalized one.

    “We think of it as a snowflake, because we believe no two individuals are the same, and hence we should not engage them the same way, send them the same promotions,” he says.

    So, for example, you might send a promotion for a particular kind of bottled water to consumers who have already demonstrated an affinity for that kind of product, but you wouldn’t send them a promotion for a cola drink just because the supplier is offering one. This is the kind of commitment necessary to develop long-term relationships with consumers, Cosset says.

    The company goes beyond knowing which consumers like to buy bottled water or condiments; it tries to identify which ones prefer sparkling water to flat, or Dijon mustard to steak sauce. “You can’t do that with segmentation,” Cosset says.

    That approach requires investing in the development of sophisticated algorithms that enables 84.51° to analyze millions of data points about each individual consumer, including their reactions to previous promotions.

    Using Oracle Exadata and Oracle Big Data Appliance, teams of analysts and data scientists at 84.51° leverage a combination of conventional statistical packages and more advanced machine learning algorithms to generate the analytics foundation required to deliver personalization at scale.

    A single campaign uses dozens of targeting models in combination with complex optimization algorithms to send the right offers to the right people. Often, offers are based on contextual cues gathered in real time and are specifically targeted for each customer.

    “We spend a huge amount of time, money, and resources to really get solid sustainable data assets,” Cosset says. “Our data asset is a competitive advantage.”

    Retailers cannot expect to build long-term, sustainable relationships with customers if they base the terms of those relationships on financial incentives alone, Cosset says. “They’re transactional, not relationship-based,” he says. “The real differentiator is what you do with the data—how do you provide real and relevant value to every single customer, how do you engage them the way that matters most to them, how do you create this personal relationship.”

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