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Don Y[_3_]

On 9/18/2015 9:33 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:37:21 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

Your photo exists in *lots* of places -- credit cards, passports,
DL's, "membership clubs", etc.

Casinos take ~80 photos per minute on the Las Vegas Strip. Street
cameras, red light cameras and such, too.

But those don't bind a unique identifier to the photo. My fingerprints
exist on thousands of "public" (i.e., freely accessible without a warrant)
items every day. But, even if someone wanted to "lift" them, they still
have to be tied to my name, address, etc.

Casinos have had sophisticated facial recognition software and they
may know a lot more about you than you think.

They don't know who "you" are unless and until you provide some
form of identification -- rent a room, use a credit card, etc.
Until then, you're just pixels on a display!

My sister was a power player at the Sands in AC and they would meet
her in the lobby with a gift box of personalized stuff, a few minutes
after she walked in and before she had actually checked in or swiped
her betting card anywhere.
They knew what brand of scotch my BIL drank, what cigarettes they
smoked and what kind of bath oil she liked.
This all came from a hit on the lobby camera.

This is relatively common, nowadays. Note, of course, the teenager
Target notified of her pregnancy before her folks knew -- based solely
on her *Target* purchasing habits.

In the ~70's, 60 minutes (or one of those shows) had a show which
illustrated how much information "leaks" from your transactions.

[Note this predates what we think of nowadays as "Big Data"]

The show starts with an interview of a "young couple" who *voluntarily*
hand over their canceled checks for the past year to the TV crew.
The crew flies those checks to a PI on the other coast. He is told
to find out everything he can about the couple *legally* without
contacting them, surveilling them, etc. They give him 30 days to
do this.

[Remember, there's no "Intellius", "Google", etc. to consult! The
only real "public databases" are phonebooks!]

Meanwhile, we return to watching the young couple go about their
lives. See the car they drive, the way they dress, the jobs
they hold, the two large dogs, the fact that the wife is pregnant,
etc.

A month later (i.e., 30 minutes into the show), the TV crew returns
to the PI and asks him what he's discovered. He suggests they
drive an older vehicle, the woman is pregnant, they have some large pets
(probably dogs, not cats), etc.

When asked how he came to these conclusions, the PI mentions the
amount of money they spend on pet food -- and, roughly, what that
would translate into (pet food being a commodity). The fact
that the wife gets her hair done every week or two. The number and
cost of repairs to the vehicle, etc.

Imagine how much easier it is to do this when all of your "guest's"
actions are directly observable! E.g., casinos are designed so
you never leave -- shop, eat, entertainment, gambling, etc. all
under one roof. So, *all* of those transactions are passing through
the casino's billing system.

Vendors, nowadays, can profile each of their customers to determine
how "susceptible" they are to specific "enticements". Will you
limit your purchases to *just* the loss leaders? Or, will those
coax you into the store so you can be tempted by some other more
profitable offerings?

Why is the milk located at the back of the store? Why all the
(high profit margin) impulse items located near the checkout??