Sometimes it feels ridiculous how much OPSEC I need to employ to buy anything at the grocery store. I walk or bike to the store to not reveal a license plate. All radios and sensors on my handset are turned off. I wear a mask to thwart facial recognition cameras. I pay cash.
IME at Safeway if you don't use a "club card" you end up paying nearly double for many items. Are there ways around this?
Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You
71–80 of 243 posts
Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You
#72Sometimes it feels ridiculous how much OPSEC I need to employ to buy anything at the grocery store. I walk or bike to the store to not reveal a license plate. All radios and sensors on my handset are turned off. I wear a mask to thwart facial recognition cameras. I pay cash.
IME at Safeway if you don't use a "club card" you end up paying nearly double for many items. Are there ways around this?
Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You
#73Sometimes it feels ridiculous how much OPSEC I need to employ to buy anything at the grocery store. I walk or bike to the store to not reveal a license plate. All radios and sensors on my handset are turned off. I wear a mask to thwart facial recognition cameras. I pay cash.
IME at Safeway if you don't use a "club card" you end up paying nearly double for many items. Are there ways around this?
Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You
#74At my local store, the checkout clerks keep pushing me to get a loyalty card. I tried to engage once and start a conversation about privacy, but ended up walking away from the conversation feeling a little like a conspiracy theorist. But thanks to working in tech, I know this data is being tracked, bought, and sold behind the cute "loyalty" branding. I wish I knew of a good way to convince ordinary people to value th…
They also have no insight or say in the use of your data.
You might as well rant at a cloud about it.
Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You
#75But loyalty cards aren't the only mechanism. Beware of using credit cards at stores as well, for similar reasons.
Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You
#76Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You
#77At my local store, the checkout clerks keep pushing me to get a loyalty card. I tried to engage once and start a conversation about privacy, but ended up walking away from the conversation feeling a little like a conspiracy theorist. But thanks to working in tech, I know this data is being tracked, bought, and sold behind the cute "loyalty" branding. I wish I knew of a good way to convince ordinary people to value th…
The clerks get penalized if they dont try to sign you up. They also have no insight or say in the use of your data. You might as well rant at a cloud about it.
Just say "no" and move on.
Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You
#78Sometimes it feels ridiculous how much OPSEC I need to employ to buy anything at the grocery store. I walk or bike to the store to not reveal a license plate. All radios and sensors on my handset are turned off. I wear a mask to thwart facial recognition cameras. I pay cash.
IME at Safeway if you don't use a "club card" you end up paying nearly double for many items. Are there ways around this?
Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You
#79At my local store, the checkout clerks keep pushing me to get a loyalty card. I tried to engage once and start a conversation about privacy, but ended up walking away from the conversation feeling a little like a conspiracy theorist. But thanks to working in tech, I know this data is being tracked, bought, and sold behind the cute "loyalty" branding. I wish I knew of a good way to convince ordinary people to value th…
The other option is to sign up using a fake persona and a burner email. Typically rewards programs don't audit information or ever ask you to update it.
Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You
#80I’ve just always assumed that big stores were collecting and selling every iota of data they could. I recall reading about retailers using license plate scanning in their parking lots in the early aughts.
Anywhere that collects your phone number in exchange for coupons at the checkout (cough cough Old Navy) or your email to send you a digital receipt (looking at you Home Depot) is probably sharing or selling your data.