Google and Mastercard have been up to some Hidden Ad Tracking

Google and Mastercard have been working together in a secret deal for months now, which involves Google being able to track the spending of customers online and offline using the data given by Mastercard. This process of ad tracking raises a lot of issue related to customer's privacy as most customers do not even know their information is being tracked.

Mastercard has said that it does not share information that relates to an ad's effectiveness for individual consumers. The company has that it only shares the sales volumes and average size of the purchase with the permission of the merchant, with consumer technology companies like Google. Google has also said that they do not have any information about individual consumers from partners’ credit and debit card companies and nor do they share any user data with their partner companies. Although Google does not seem to deny that it does ad tracking. It has told that users can opt out of ad tracking by going to Google’s “Web and App Activity” console. The problem is that most users do not even know they are being tracked and even if they did know the process of turning off ad tracking is not obvious.

Other consumer tech companies also seem to practicing ad tracking. Microsoft also shares customers online transactions trends with online merchants to help them understand the effectiveness of their advertisements. These activities are bound to make  customers unconformable about the amount of personal information these companies have about them.