Big Banks are watching you!

April 24, 2016 by Andy Crow

Big Bank's are watching you!

I’ve mentioned before about Big Data and how important it is for helping your business. Last week Barclays Bank announced that it is launching a tool for its small and medium-sized business customers. RBS have a similar offering in place.

Companies will be able to check online how many customers their competitors have. They can also discover the customers’ age group, gender, where they are from, how many times a week they visit, how many purchases are made and the average spend.

The fee based service will be available from next month.

The data will be anonymous – so firms will not be given detailed information of individual customers or the names of the rival firms.

But the move has alarmed privacy campaigners, who have accused Barclays of selling personal information without consent.

Dissenters argue against the growing trend of companies exploiting the vast amount of data they collect on their customers. The say it is done without customers’ informed consent, and is unacceptable.

Barclays said it has safeguards in place to make it difficult for its business customers to identify individual rivals from the data. However the growth of cyber-crime means there could be more chance of sensitive data being stolen.

For more info information on this or any other issues, contact Chorus Business Advisers on 0845 8671263 or email info@chorusadvisers.co.uk

To read all of Andy's previous articles about you and your business, please click the link https://www.leigh-on-sea.com/tag/listing/blog/business