President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign team has apparently reversed course after a report surfaced about a feature that could have privacy implications.
The Trump campaign on Tuesday launched a new site dedicated to disseminating information about the President and helping his efforts in 2020, when he’s slated to run again for President of the United States. Soon after the site’s release, CBS News found a clause in the site’s Privacy Policy that would have allowed it to track users with a technology called beacons.
CBS News says that it contacted the Trump Campaign about the feature. While the campaign did not acknowledge its inclusion, the clause was quickly removed from the site after the inquiries were made.
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Beacons are used predominantly in retail and some other industries as ways to approximate a person’s location around a given area. The beacons connect to Bluetooth-enabled devices like smartphones, and without informing device owners, can track where they go. Beacons are often used to send advertisements to those they’re tracking.
While it’s not immediately clear what the Trump campaign hoped to do with the beacon clause, if anything, like most website Privacy Policies, Trump site users tacitly agree to the terms just by visiting and “using” the page. So even without actively opting in to the tracking, Trump campaign website owners could have given their approval to be tracked by beacons.
It’s possible, though unconfirmed, that the beacon inclusion wasn’t meant to be on the site. CBS News said that the Privacy Policy is nearly identical to those on other Trump-owned sites, including Trump International Realty and Mar-a-Lago. The sites were also designed by the same company, Parscale. It’s possible the Privacy Policy was ported from another Trump site and the clause removed for its irrelevance to the campaign.
It’s also possible, however, that the Trump campaign intended to use the feature but ultimately decided against it after receiving privacy inquiries.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a Coins2Day request for comment on the CBS News report. But as of this writing, there are no traces of beacons in the site’s Privacy Policy.
