What Everybody Knows About You: Your Church

This article is part of a continuing series about data collection today. The previous articles discussed collection by devices and then started to look at institutions, notably retailers and banks.

We’ve seen that the retailers you visit (in the store or online) want to understand you better as an individual, and do so using all available information from facial recognition to the web pages you visit. This makes many of us uncomfortable, but seems to be an inescapable aspect of modern commerce.

In many cases, churches do the same thing. Thousands of churches are marketing to their own congregants—and to anyone who visits their web sites—in the hope of offering content that will entice the visitors to like them, and a company focused on this area is growing rapidly. They know when you enter and leave the church. Online, they figure out whether you’re anxious or depressed and show you relevant web pages to draw you further into their orbit.

Like retailers, churches use both individualized and aggregate data. The aggregate data is benign and can help with planning, such as anticipating how many people will be at a given service. Church attendees may question the individualized uses, though. If a church determines that you’re depressed and sends you a message offering spiritual uplift, you might not realize that the message was based on intimate knowledge of your mental state. And while the message might be comforting, it also serves the interests of church administrators by encouraging further participation in church activities.

The next article in this series turns finally to the biggest and most powerful institution of all: government.

<< Read the previous part of this series