Back in early January 2007, the retail world was abuzz with the news that there had been a major data breach at TJX. As these things go, it was a big one, with over 45 million credit and debit car numbers compromised. Speculation at the time was that consumers would be alarmed at the burgeoning threat posed by their data being captured, much less stolen, and respond en masse to demand that companies that were doing the capturing disclose what they were doing with it and why, and what they were going to do to protect it going forward.

That was to be “the spring of our discontent “, but there’s not much evidence to suggest that consumers cared all that much about it. Sure, it’s an inconvenience (I mentioned in my July 30, 2013 Retail Paradox Weekly article that, “The average time a consumer spends straightening out the mess that results from ID theft is about 30 hours per occurrence, according to whitecanyon.com. “). But as relates to the TJX breach, there’s nothing to suggest that consumers got all that worked up. As a matter of fact, if top line is any indication, consumers shrugged the whole thing off; for the fiscal year ending January 2008, the TJX company reported over 4% top line growth. And the stock certainly didn’t suffer – here’s the price history during the affected timeframe (from Yahoo; Jolly Roger added for dramatic effect):

Of course, two other things happened that could have taken consumers’ eyes off the issue. The first was the Great Recession. The second was the mass consumer adoption of smart mobile technologies. And it’s that second one that opened Pandora’s box when it comes to consumer privacy – because that in turn kicked off a huge acceleration of usage of social sites and digital shopping. Now consumers are leaving “digital bread crumbs “, or signals, wherever they go, and there are astounding technologies available to collect and analyze all of those signals to discern consumer behaviors and preferences. And now, as my partner Nikki Baird commented on last week in her Retail Paradox Weekly column, “Privacy and Stores: The Coming Storm “, there are some pretty amazing technologies available to precisely track what consumers are doing while they are in the store – and the beacon often is the mobile phone.

Facebook, et al

All the anecdotal evidence around us seems to indicate that consumers haven’t been too concerned about leaving a digital trail, or what businesses do with it. For example, Facebook continues to play rope-a-dope with privacy activists by upping the ante (most recently, with Facebook Graph Search) even while acknowledging privacy concerns. Just last week (September 5th), the company announced yet another round of changes to its already-convoluted privacy settings, and they changed their privacy policy. And two weeks ago, a U.S. District judge ordered Facebook to pay 614,000 users $15 each for using their information in “sponsored ads “, a particularly obnoxious “feature ” of the social site where if you click-on that you “like ” an featured ad, all your FB friends will get a message that you “like ” such-and-such.

Another “warning ” went viral not too many weeks ago, having to do with smartphone photos and geotagging. A video dating back to 2010 was recently redistributed on Facebook, and got the attention of various news websites. As of this writing, Youtube reports almost 21 million viewers. It turns out that both Facebook and Twitter automatically strip geotags from mobile photos that are shared, but Google+ doesn’t, and if you’re a blogger, you’re on your own (FYI, there’s any easy fix – turn off your phone’s GPs when you’re not using it).

All of this notwithstanding, the message still seems pretty clear: the perceived value outweighs any concern consumers might have. Using Facebook adoption as evidence of that, while the daily adoption rate today doesn’t reach the same level as in 2011 (when it was estimated that almost 800,000 new users signed up every day), the estimated daily growth rate now is about half a million or so.

Your Government at Work

Meanwhile, vectoring into the issue from deep space (or in this case, Ft. Meade, Maryland), the recent and continuing revelations about snooping by the U.S. National Security Administration seem to have really caught the public’s attention. But that news lands us into the land of cable news, politics, and U.S. Constitutional rights – a place where we at RSR don’t go (at least publicly). Nonetheless, it’s all part of the same thing – everyday people are leaving a wide digital trail, and others – those that want to serve them, spy on them, or steal from them – have technologies available to make that very easy to do.

Who Has the Responsibility? You Do.

All of these points aren’t intended to scare people or to cast doubt on what retailers in particular might be doing with the digital trails that consumers leave in their wake. After all, retailers are only trying to help consumers get what they are looking for (people don’t buy what they don’t want or need). Technology companies are hard at work trying to help retailers understand consumers’ complex and digitally enabled paths to purchase by making solutions available that can consume big data (all those “breads crumbs “) in something approaching real time – to help retailers serve their `customers better.

But whether it can be measured or not, there’s tension in the air when it comes to consumer privacy. And so I was glad to see a piece in Adage.com, that covered a speech by Julie Bernard, senior VP-customer Strategy, Marketing and advertising of Macy’s. The article, “Marketers Should Defend Data Use But Show Restraint “, quoted Ms. Bernard: “The media has spun this story so negative, and it’s really a shame that people in our positions have not taken a more dominant position on speaking on the macro and micro economic benefits of delivering relevancy by responsibly using customer data. ” While the marketing professional went on to point out that “relevance ” trumps consumer concerns about privacy, she also pointedly stated that although Macy’s could “track every phone that came into Macy’s without announcing to people “, they choose not to.

It’s refreshing to hear that the retailer is standing up for consumers. It’s a tacit recognition that consumers as a group cannot represent themselves on this issue – and it’s a fair assumption that government will not. So that leaves it to – the retailer. It’s a good thing to see a major retailer recognize the challenge and the opportunity, and I hope others follow suit.