For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for. But most of the two billion Mastercard holders aren’t aware of this behind-the-scenes tracking. That’s because the companies never told the public about the arrangement. Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Mastercard Inc. brokered a business partnership during about four years of negotiations, according to four people with knowledge of the deal, three of whom worked on it directly. The alliance gave Google an unprecedented asset for measuring retail spending, part of the search giant’s strategy to fortify its primary business against onslaughts from Amazon.com Inc. and others. But the deal, which has not been previously reported, could raise broader privacy concerns about how much consumer data technology companies like Google quietly absorb. "People don’t expect what they buy physically in a store to be linked to what they are buying online,” said Christine Bannan, counsel with the advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). "There’s just far too much burden that companies place on consumers and not enough responsibility being taken by companies to inform users what they’re doing and what rights they have.” Extensive details are posted at W10NI FORUM.

Microsoft has finally announced the official title of windows 10 Redstone 5, which will be known as the Windows 10 October 2018 Update. The firm, which had previously indulged in themed updates like the Anniversary Update, Creators Update and Fall Creators Update has now stuck to a more sensible name schema since April of this year which simply identifies the months and year the update is being released. This is also in line with how Windows versions are identified, give or take a month. “I’m pleased to announce that our next feature update to Windows will be called the Windows 10 October 2018 Update”, said Microsoft’s CVP Roanne Sones, “With this update, we’ll be bringing new features and enhancements to the nearly 700 million devices running Windows 10 that help people make the most of their time. We’ll share more details about the update over the coming weeks.” Microsoft’s Windows 10 October 2018 Update is being released sometime in October with the firm expected to conclude testing via Insiderbuilds sometime in September. The update focuses mostly on bug fixes and refinement to Windows and the implementation of the Your Phone feature which syncs mobile devices to the desktop. Follow this upcoming release on OUR Forum.