Mashable reports on a plastic RFID device called a “Physical Cookie,” which works just like online cookies, studying shoppers’ preferences and tailoring deals and messages accordingly. A mall in Finland recently offered targeted deals to shoppers who agreed to carry the “cookie.” Instead of logging users’ histories, though, Physical Cookies just looks at the time spent during mall shopping. Meanwhile, another tool called the Rately Merchant Platform “addresses privacy problems by not creating them in the first place,” Forbes reports. It allows consumers to opt in when visiting a website, tag items they’re interested in and, if they allow it, see promos based on those tags. But retailers don’t get data on the anonymized personas or see which in-browser notifications get clicked on.
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