Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) has sent a letter to Euclid Analytics seeking information on the firm’s “troubling” consumer tracking technology, The Hill reports. The technology can track consumers’ offline movements in and around stores by receiving a signal from an individual’s smartphone. With recent reports stating the company has tracked 50 million unique smartphones to date, Franken wrote, “It’s one thing to track someone’s shopping habits through a loyalty card or credit card purchase…It’s another thing entirely to track consumers’ movements without their permission as they shop,” even without making a purchase. In the letter, Franken included a set of 16 questions for the company to answer. Euclid Analytics says it has engineered privacy protections in its technology and hashes the collected unique identifiers.
Full Story