it's black friday in the u.s. and that means full store's crazy deals and big bargains and for retailers it marks the beginning of the most important stretch of the year the holiday gift buying season. but not everyone is happy with black friday amazon employees in europe are using the weekend to push for big changes at work will tell you what they want. i'm stephen beers in berlin thanks for joining us it's that time of year again black friday has american shoppers looking for huge bargains an estimated one hundred sixty four million of them are expected to hit the stores over the weekend the shopping frenzy signals the start of the holiday gift buying season a critical period for retailers both in traditional stores and online. it's midnight. and ticks off to the races. to many on thanksgiving off to the tacky dinner comes the shopping frenzy

in stools all across the u.s. thousands of customers ah bogen hunting the holiday shopping season has begun. this is such an exciting day for us this is where we pick up our holiday feast that you know made these early signs during the holiday and be celebrated tens of thousands of our customers and this year is no exception we pulled out all the stops offer great gifts at a great value. everything is on sale discounts a huge clothes. first come first serve. ok so it's worth waiting it's freezing cold my hair is a literary ice but i don't care this is a good up with would be you could save one. is a great place to be. but it's just to enjoy the crowds and enjoy the season good health the fun is to be out of all the people. but not everyone gets his kicks out of the stampede many professors shop online but whether it's brick and mortar so

all sales on the website for retailers black friday remains a big deal between now and christmas many of them at bringing hof the year's revenues. all right let's get a market perspective on black friday our financial correspondent yens korda standing by in new york ian's black friday may grab headlines but how closely are investors really watching it. well i mean overall it is very important especially if you consider that the united states depends on consumption and not so much on exports so it is a crucial time and we could see americans spend around seven hundred twenty billion dollars this holiday season that would be a record but even if the situation right now looks pretty bright there are some clouds on the horizon looking into twenty nine t. and that is true for the retail industry but also for the industry overall we don't know what's going to happen with the trade disputes we could see higher tariffs we

could see costs going up for wages for transport and then there's also a lot of talk that the global economy might be cooling and that's actually destroying retail stocks lower but also the overall market for the week by the way blue chips traded down this past week by more than one thousand points so a loss of more than four percent. and some of those broader economic indicators you're talking about are some those economic concerns among them that was in the news today hitting lows not seen in over a year what does this mean. well we certainly see heavy losses on the oil market just on friday the oil price was down another six percent it is the seventh consecutive week that the oil market has lost steam in this timeframe oil prices are down by about thirty per cent so this is some heavy selling pressure and some of it has to do with the weaker economic global outlook for next year but also with

heavy supply specially here in the united states we might see a cooling of demand and then there's also a lot of talk what will happen at the next opec meeting on december sixth it might not be that easy for saudi arabia to convince the other countries to cut production so all of that is resulting in heavy losses for the oil market at this point so really some broader concerns there on the horizon past black friday quarter there for us in new york thank you amazon employees in germany and spain are also marking black friday but in a much different way they're striking one of the company's busiest days they say working conditions are unfair and they're pushing for collective bargaining agreements. this was the scene outside amazon's where has near madrid that will cut its carefully planned to

coincide with one of the most important days in the retail giants calendar. trucks arriving with deliveries were left with little choice but to turn around this driver was even offered to join in the protest. yes or no but it's i mean very going to be doing this precisely today on black friday because we want to send a message to people that while it may be nice to do your shopping on the computer at home or in the office and receive the product the next day there are not of people here at this logistics center working incredibly hard under a lot of pressure from our supervisors go here made to maintain a high production process which translates into a deterioration in physical and mental health we want people to know about this. condition today the. strikes also took place in germany and the u.k. where workers united under the harsh tog we are not robots amazon for its part

denies treating workers poorly and says employees are offered competitive pay and comprehensive benefits it also stressed that black friday orders would not be affected by the action. and let's stay with this year's with black friday a look at this year's holiday wish list are bound to be more high tech oriented smarter than ever and with us to talk about some of the dangers internet privacy and security issues that are involved in this we have called. media editor carl how are shoppers supposed to judge what a smart product means in terms of security and privacy them is not easy right now when there's a tech expert but it's really more important than ever because one of the biggest trends we're seeing even this year is these in home internet. connected devices we're talking about the amazon eco smart speaker maybe a fitness tracker even a voice activated teddy bear so you know luckily there are some good resources out

there for consumers of they want more information one of them comes from the nonprofit internet foundation mozilla the maker of firefox it's released the second annual holiday shopping guide which reviews privacy and security issues when it comes to smart electronics the problem is though that the results are not so encouraging take a look at this report mozilla reviewed seventy items it looked at how much data is collected who it shared with and basic security features like encryption and it brings them from not creepy to super creepy the crazy thing is that less than half of these items admit mozilla's and minimum security standards one of the top ranked products for example that would be the nintendo switch it's a video game console it means all the basic security standards as automatic security updates good privacy protection but they're not all like that this is the lowest rating of them all it's the freddy baby monitor it's an in home camera it's things with your smartphone that all sounds very nice but here's why it was ranked

as the creepiest product it has a history of being easily hacked which means potentially someone could access your video feed and spy on you and your family it has no in krishan its default password is literally no joke one two three and the device does not seem to have any privacy policy whatsoever so that item was ranked by mozilla as super creepy really the key is here look there's lots of good deals out there on black friday and cyber monday do you have to do a little bit of research is the price really worth it in terms of privacy i'm guessing that a whole lot of parents really want to scrimp on privacy when it comes to their children but what other products are you keeping an eye on if there's one product that mozilla didn't look at that i think is worth buying it's from facebook it's called facebook portal and this is one of the newest items created by facebook at the smart display it's meant to compete with amazon. google there's a built in camera here you can make video calls with your friends and the camera automatically tracks your movements and follows you around the room so if that

isn't creepy enough the privacy policy here according to facebook the portal collects information about your chats like how long you call and how often and it uses that information then to target you with ads on facebook and instagram so again maybe something most consumers would know if i look at the product and some of the others they do seem to me to be very convenient for hands free talking to family things like that do customers really care in other words are they willing to put convenience over some the security issue and that's the question i think there is like there's a growing amount of awareness about data privacy especially after all the relevation is with facebook this year but i think you nailed it it's really a decision ok do i value convenience more or privacy more most consumers are opting for convenience thirty two million of those smart speakers were sold last year amazon is now the top speaker manufacturer in the world so you can see how much people like these things and our privacy only becoming more important right as more of our daily appliances your refrigerators your cars these are starting to be

connected to the internet so data privacy people really need to look at this going forward with the the technology and the the internet of the things of the internet basically right now it's easy to imagine as the internet of things sort of emerges of even more important as time goes by. social media editor thanks for joining us. now over to asia where the japanese carmaker nissan wants to review the shareholding structure of its alliance with france's renaud that's according to the bloomberg news agency meanwhile renault's interim c.e.o. has told employees the hill protect his company's interest investors are concerned over the survival of the unwieldy alliance following the exit of carlos go on a go and built and held together the partnership was recently arrested on charges of financial misconduct. and that's it for us you can always learn more about these stories at d w dot com slash business and check us out of course on facebook and twitter i'm stephen there's

a as always thanks for joining us. for . the.

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