Shifting to a simpler type of fraud, we have a report that high theft rates were a major factor in Walmart’s decision to end its test of cashierless checkout. Customers frequently placed items in their shopping carts without scanning them. Unlike Walmart, Amazon’s cashierless Go stores don’t rely on customer scans to determine what they pay for.
In quick succession, we learn the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is considering a multi-billion (with a B) fine for privacy violations; the federal Government Accountability Office is recommending tighter privacy regulation, and a British Parliament report has called them “digital gangsters”. That’s gotta hurt. Maybe they won’t take over the world after all.
Finally, relationship intelligence vendor Affinity has raised a $26.5 million Series B. Affinity scans data such as emails, contact lists, and calendar events to measure relationships and identify opportunities. Yes, there’s tons of artificial intelligence under the hood.
GrowthLoop will use TransUnion identity data to improve U.S. consumer match rates on client files sent to advertising media such as Facebook and Google Ads. The data should also help clients to find matches among records within their files, building more accurate customer profiles. GrowthLoop calls itself a “composable CDP”, meaning it works with data assembled in external data warehouses.