I'm in retail for IT for a large Fortune 100 company. Big data allows for correlations not previously possible. Google position data, credit card usage data, and publicly available data can be time coordinated very easily now.EastTexasRancher wrote:In the last month I ate lunch at 3 new places. I opened my Gmail this morning to find emails from 2 of those places, and I most assuredly did not sign up for any program while I was there. My credit card company had to have sold them or in some way conveyed my email address to them.
My guess is the credit card companies are far more savvy than we think they are, and most definitely in bed with retailers as they are in are intertwined.
All of it is legal, but may not be an understood capability by consumers.