Tim Hortons is using his mobile app to collect “huge amounts of location data” from users, including tracking when they visit competing cafes, says the Canadian Privacy Authority. Yesterday, the Office of the Commissioner for Privacy of Canada published the results of a 2020 investigation into the coffee and donut chain, asking it to delete all other location data and limit future collection. Tim Hortons, the commission said, agreed to enforce the regulations.
The full report outlines a large-scale, invasive attempt to bring out Tim Hortons’ customer behavior to target advertising – although the company apparently never used the data for this purpose. He notes that in May 2019, Tim Hortons updated his mobile app to collect detailed, frequent location updates from users’ phones. The US geo-zoning platform Radar analyzes data models to determine where consumers live, when they work and when they travel. Its near-constant collection has come across statements that it collects location information only when the app is open and updates its findings only when the Financial Post publishes an article disclosing the collection of details, prompting a commission inquiry.
The app guesses users’ home locations and marks when they go to sporting events
According to records reviewed by the commission, Tim Hortons sought data to support reports of trends in customers moving to its competitors – and with the growing pandemic of COVID-19 to track shifts from central and closer locations. to home suburbs. . His radar-enabled analysis generates an “event” every time users visit one of Tim Hortons’ nine competitors, including McDonald’s, Starbucks and Second Cup Café. He also checked when people visited major sports venues and noted when people left and returned to work. The Commission found that Radar generates an average of about 10 events per day for each user.
Tim Horton apparently considered using the data to launch personalized promotional offers based on where the users are, but ultimately redirected his efforts and used them only for broad analysis based on trends. The Commission notes that even if the data has not been used, it is still stored by default for one year – and although it should have been anonymous, numerous studies have shown that it is not difficult to identify individuals on the basis of allegedly anonymous data. . Tim Hortons terminated the program in 2020, days after the announcement of the investigation.
Many smartphone apps track user movements, including some that give third parties wide access to that data. Some restaurants even openly advertise their tracking programs. In 2018, Burger King encouraged people to download the app and order Whoppers at a discount when they are near McDonald’s. A Skift Table report from the same year found that the applications of many restaurants tracked consumers without clearly revealing the practice. But Tim Hortons is clearly no longer one of them. It says its app now only uses location data to identify nearby locations for mobile orders, and the commission “found no evidence to the contrary.”
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