


"This is something we are flagging as something that should be looked at by organizations.

So we were dealing with a situation where we had one complainant who was affected by this, but we know that this was occurring on multiple occasions," he said. "It is a widespread reality of being asked for a paper or online receipt. It doesn't belong to anyone other than the data subject who consents to a particular use of the information."ĭufresne said his office isn't sure how many Canadians had their information shared with Meta while the program was in place. "Personally identifiable data in the wrong hands can be used for a variety of purposes that would never be contemplated, that can come back to bite you," she said. And so that's why it is something that absolutely has to be taken seriously by organizations," he said.įormer Ontario privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian said any type of personal data can be exploited in ways that aren't always obvious. "The more information you have about an individual, the more you can create an image of that person. "While the details of a person's in-store purchases may not have been sensitive in the context of Home Depot, they could be highly sensitive in other retail contexts, where they reveal, for example, information about an individual's health or sexuality," said the commissioner's report.Ī spokesperson for Home Depot said only non-sensitive information - such as the department in which a purchase was made - was used as part of the Meta program.ĭuring a news conference Thursday, Dufresne said that even knowing when and how often a person buys an item can expose personal details. The program's contract terms also allowed Meta to use the customer information for its own business purposes, including user profiling and targeted advertising unrelated to Home Depot. If they did, Meta compared the person's in-store purchases to Home Depot's ads to gauge their effectiveness. Cabinet documents should be reviewed to ensure government isn't hiding things from the public, watchdog saysĪccording to the privacy report, information sent to Meta was used to determine whether a customer had a Facebook account.Home Depot faces dozens of lawsuits after massive security breach.
