Best Buy

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Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational chain of stores that specializes in retailing consumer electronics.

Best Buy

Basic information
Founded	1966
Type	Public
Industry	Electronics
Official website	https://bestbuy.com/

Consumer impact summary

Overview of concerns that arise from the company's conduct regarding (if applicable):

• User Freedom
• User Privacy
• Business Model
• Market Control

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Incidents

Discontinuation of Insignia Connect app

On November 6, 2019, Best Buy discontinued support for their Insignia Connect app, resulting in major functionality losses for affected Insignia products that used the service. Best Buy did provide compensation to affected customers, however, this was only in the form of a partial refund, issued in the form of a virtual gift card that was determined by the product type. Customers were also only able to redeem up to a maximum of 10 serial numbers for product refunds, even if they owned more than 10 affected products. Refunds for affected products has since ceased, as the window to apply for compensation only lasted for 56 days from the discontinuation date.

Anti-consumer practices

Data privacy concerns

According to Best Buy's privacy policy, the company may collect, sell, and share information that users willingly provide, as well as information gathered through various tracking technologies.

In general, users may be asked to provide the company with their name, various forms of contact information, and payment information.

In "certain situations," users may also be asked to provide:

• Driver's license number
• Social Security number
• Demographic and lifestyle information
• Health information
• Fingerprints
• Facial/wrist geometry (although the policy states this occurs in real time and the data is not retained)

The company may also collect data that users do not knowingly or explicitly provide:

• Camera and sensor data (from physical store locations)
• User IP address
• User browser information, browsing history, and referring URL
• The unique IMEI/UDID or MAC address of users mobile device
• The IDFA (Apple ID) or AAID (Google ID) of users mobile device
• Location information

This data collection can occur directly through users browser/device, or through third party web tracking technologies such as cookies, pixels and tags.

All of the above information can be sold or shared with third parties, including Best Buy's "subsidiaries" and "affiliates."

The policy exhibits some additional traits that privacy-conscious individuals would likely find concerning:

• Users are opted in to data collection/sharing by default.
• The company does not honor the "do not track" request some browsers are able to set.
• It is not easy to quickly read the policy and understand exactly what is collected and how it is shared.
• Opting out may require users to provide some information that the user doesn't want collected.
• Opting out must be done per browser/device, and is stored with a simple browser cookie. If the cookie is erased, the user must opt out again.