Japanese railway company plans to sell data from e-ticket records

[Guest ___]

Japanese railway company plans to sell data from e-ticket records
Decision is met with anger at what some prominent commentators call a privacy concern.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/07/japanese-railway-company-plans-to-sell-data-from-e-ticket-records/

 

Last week, East Japan Railway (JR East), the largest rail company in the country, announced that it would be partnering with Hitachi to gather and anonymize data that it collected from its e-ticketing system, called Suica. In the program, travel histories of its passengers would be stripped of identifiers like names, addresses, and other information, and then sold in bulk to third party companies.

 

A June 28 Nikkei post reports that Hitachi “will profile commuter activity at each train station by parameters like gender, age, and times of use, analyzing such things as the customer-drawing power of each station and the potential for business in the area.”

 

But according to Jay Alabaster of Computerworld, many prominent bloggers have taken issue with the plan, and the news has caused concern. On Twitter, professor and prominent commentator on data privacy Hiromitsu Takagi wrote "Even if there is a proper way to use this (data), it must be done with the approval of society." Others expressed their disbelief that JR East and Hitachi would properly anonymize the data.

 

Part of the concern, Alabaster says, might come from the memory of a recent e-ticketing privacy scandal in Japan in which a Tokyo Metro employee made the personal details of a female passenger public. The employee was subsequently fired, but rumors persisted that the “Pasmo” ticketing system that the Tokyo subway uses was easy enough to crack that people could check their partners' travel history to see if they were cheating.

 

JR East counts about 42 million Suica users. It plans to “sell the information in the form of monthly reports to retailers, eating and drinking establishments, and real estate agencies that operate near the train stations,” according to Nikkei. Takashi Yamaguchi, a JR East spokesman, told Computerworld, "There is no way to determine the identity of specific individuals from the data, so we feel there is no privacy issue.”

Edited July 7, 2013 by Shashinka

[bill937ca]

Yeah, with some of these operations there is never a privacy concern as long as there is a Yen to be made.

[Ochanomizu]

Hello Mr bill937ca,

 

So long as I do not start receiving email or sms for marketing I do not have a problem with the proposal.  If I was concerned with my wife's whereabouts I would simply activate the GPS on her smartphone and use an app to check her movements.  But I cannot fathom such a situation.

 

Also.  If you used Google, Yahoo, Ebay, PayPal, or many other similar email site recently then much more information was collected from your browsing history than you would care to consider.  As I say to my friends, "If you have nothing to hide, then, you have nothing to hide."

[Kabutoni]

Ugh... I already thought they were doing this, judging by the difference in advertisements in trains on different lines. The Yamanote line has more 'corporate' business advertisements, than, let's say the Sōbu Local line, which is more blue-collar oriented.

[bikkuri bahn]

As long as its anonymous, I have no problem- but that requires someone to monitor those who handle the data.  Everytime you buy something at a convenience store- your data (sex, approx age) is logged along with the sale, and even more so if you use one of the point card systems like Ponta or T-point.  I don't hear of people protesting the use of those cards, though they can of course not use them.  I use a regular Suica, which doesn't have my name on it, so it's anonymous. Of course a season pass will have all the personal data on it.  If you're paranoid, best buy a paper ticket :)

[bikkuri bahn]

Ugh... I already thought they were doing this, judging by the difference in advertisements in trains on different lines. The Yamanote line has more 'corporate' business advertisements, than, let's say the Sōbu Local line, which is more blue-collar oriented.

My mother once mentioned that she noticed more advertisements for detective agencies on Keihin Kyuko trains- apparently riders of that line have more problems with marital infidelity(?).  Then again, she always had a bit prejudice against that line- it ran through the "dirty" blue collar parts of town, after all. 

 

*I reckon the ad rates for Yamanote Line trains are higher than for Sobu Line trains, so you get more blue chip firms on the round-and-round.

Edited July 8, 2013 by bikkuri bahn

[Kabutoni]

My mother once mentioned that she noticed more advertisements for detective agencies on Keihin Kyuko trains- apparently riders of that line have more problems with marital infidelity(?).  Then again, she always had a bit prejudice against that line- it ran through the "dirty" blue collar parts of town, after all. 

 

*I reckon the ad rates for Yamanote Line trains are higher than for Sobu Line trains, so you get more blue chip firms on the round-and-round.

 

True that. The low end of advertisement can be found on the Keisei and Keikyū lines, running on the 'low' parts of the Metropolitan area. I could now post an essay on 'river-side' dwellers, burakumin and stuff like that, but meh. It kind of speaks for itself. Same thing goes for the Kansai area with Hanshin having sort of the same status as Keisei and Keikyū. It's the small business, blue-collar customer base that make these lines so different from all other major lines. Maybe that's why I like them, since they're down-to-earth and all that. :D

 

Anyway, I don't have a problem with the data being processed as anonymous. Maybe it can even improve things here! I certainly trust companies more than the government with these kind of things here (I'm pretty sure most of the Japanese inhabitants would agree on this). ;)