Examining brick-and-mortar establishments’ behavioural targeting processes—including tracking customers via their smartphones—in the context of past surveys and present comments from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC), The Toronto Star reports that most Canadians do not want to be tracked. Reports from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre in 2009 and the OPC in 2010 indicated 75 percent of respondents “weren’t comfortable with advertising based on tracking” and 90 percent “are concerned about the impact of new technology,” the report states. The OPC’s Valerie Lawton notes, “Technologies involving location data are evolving rapidly and … can be extremely useful, but some could raise privacy concerns.”
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