Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You

themarkup.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 243 posts

Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You

#181

Post by JohnFen »

landemva wrote: post #167
pixl97 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's less valuable than one would expect for the average person. For example if you rode the bus to the store and paid in cash then you'd have a low correlation coefficient. The issue is most people (at least in the US) drive a car with a publicly registered license plate and use the same credit cards each time. And with things like facial recognition becoming more common it may be near impossible to hide w…

> drive a car with a publicly registered license plate Where is that info publicly available? Most people are too lazy to get a PO Box and trust paperwork to hold their assets. LLCs work for this, also.

> Where is that info publicly available?

In my state, you just ask the DMV for it. For a yearly subscription fee, you can ask their servers.

Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You

#182

Post by JohnFen »

Infernal wrote: post #36
kornhole wrote: post #29

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.

Recently I’ve noticed multiple grocery store chains posting notices about how they no longer accept cash. A couple as of the new year.

There will have to be at least one store that takes cash, though, or the people who don't have cards or phones will starve.

Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You

#183

Post by mrguyorama »

jrockway wrote: post #117
jnxx wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I pay cash. Can we, today, be sure that ATMs do not record serial numbers of the bank notes they dispense?

If they don't, that's the best startup idea I've heard on HN in a long time. I mean, it's evil and everything, but you could make a lot of money probably. Government contracts would probably pay out too.

The problem is convincing big store chains to put a new dollar barcode scanner machine in their checkout lines at every location, to do something that they have no trouble doing right now with credit card details, rewards cards, and bluetooth tracking.

Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You

#184

Post by JohnFen »

nanidin wrote: post #137
kornhole wrote: post #29

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.

What is your threat model? Are you buying incriminating goods at the grocery store? What do you gain by putting yourself through all that? Or what are you preventing / protecting yourself from?

> what are you preventing / protecting yourself from?

I am protecting myself from having more data about me entered into databases.

Why is that important to me? For exactly the same reason that I have curtains on my windows.

Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You

#185

Post by mrguyorama »

nanidin wrote: post #144
pixl97 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you buying incriminating goods at the grocery store You mean hummus, right? Or do you mean the store selling of your eating habits pretty much every entity out there. Pretty sure eating isn't HIPAA related, but correlated to potential health.

So the threat model is to prevent insurers from gaining knowledge that you buy 5L of sugary soda per week? I agree there is some privacy concern, but I am having a hard time articulating how or why that data might actually impact a person in a net negative way.

I literally don't care if places don't do anything with this info, I'm saying they have no right to it. If they want it they can negotiate with me and I'll give them an insane price. Right now they just do it whether I consent or not.

Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You

#186

Post by JohnFen »

Zetice wrote: post #123
blue039 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like you will never understand why someone would go to these lengths I struggle to understand how someone _wouldn't_. I can't understand people whose threat model begins with "these places I'm okay with someone knowing things about me". If I read your email and then selected "metadata" I found important, walked into a very busy public square, and started shouting your secrets you'd be right to be uncomfortable.…

Consequences; when you have meaningful consequences around someone knowing what you purchased at the grocery store, you'll be justified in this behavior. Until then, it's paranoia. For my part, my "public" life has not once caused me negative consequences, and I've lived it this way for 34 years. Why would I live in fear of something that hasn't happened to me, anyone I know personally, is not recommended by any indu…

> You need to prove that all of that extra effort is worth the degraded quality of life.

No, nobody has to prove any such thing. This isn't an important issue to you -- that's fair. It is to others -- that's fair too.

You say "worth the degraded quality of life", but in my view, the degraded quality of life is always being under surveillance. Taking these measures improves my quality of life.

What I sacrifice is just a little bit of convenience. That's not a big hit.

Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You

#187

Post by mrguyorama »

cfeduke wrote: post #7
rationalist wrote: post #3

And that's why I pay cash and use Jenny's Number with the local area code for the store discount program. I know Target also tracks your cellphone through the store too, I haven't bothered putting in airplane mode when I shop, so hopefully they aren't correlating that with the purchases.

This is fine, but it's not really about tracking you , it's about tracking the habits of shoppers in aggregate, of which you are a participant. (Yes, having your real address to mail flyers is a bonus but not the end goal.) The only viable solution that comes to mind is to shop at places that don't perform this sort of tracking/loyalty card/etc. and continue to pay in cash. The only stores around me that fit this bil…

The stores would not need to do any of the stuff they do to track shoppers in aggregate. They have been doing aggregate tracking and collection since like the 80s. This is about pushing up the numbers EVEN MORE by doing specific targeting. My local supermarket has machines that push arbitrary "coupons" based on what you buy and your history, and I assume based on whatever rules the buyers of those advertisements/"coupons" want to implement.

Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You

#188

Post by JohnFen »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #69
kornhole wrote: post #29

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.

They have your fingerprints!1!! Or are you wearing gloves? They have your genes. Or are you wearing clothing which limits the spread of particles from your skin and hair? Well. At least they could have. If they really wanted to. Or anybody else.

I'll start worrying about that stuff when they start using that stuff. But they aren't right now, and the odds are they never will. The cost/benefit of doing so doesn't work out.

Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You

#189

Post by mrguyorama »

EGreg wrote: post #151
gnz11 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are oodles of data brokers out there: axciom, neustar, etc. Facebook ads would be the quickest way for a small time daycare to target to local shoppers.

We tried it. Just got a lot of spammers calling to offer their own services. Specifically want to target people who bought baby stuff, or went to a pediatrician etc. Considered approaching local paediatricians to cross-promote. The ideal would be if there are public records of births in the local hospitals, do those exist? Then one could look who was born 2 years ago and send a mailer to the address listed (by name)…

The reality is, if you have to ask for this info, they won't sell to you. These companies gatekeep the data because making it hard to see just how fucked up things are helps keep calls for regulation down.

We are a single small company that delivered our product through emails. Even with just that data set, the amount I can find out about hundreds of thousands of individuals and connect them and essentially analyze the metadata for lots of fun things is absurd. I'm not even looking at google analytics for this kind of stuff.

Re: Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You

#190

Post by mrguyorama »

boring_twenties wrote: post #80
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hope Home Depot made a pretty penny off of selling my email address, which is homedepot@mydomain and not associated with any other accounts.

Nobody has perfect opsec, and if you screw something up ONE TIME, like leave your phone's bluetooth on ONE TIME, now that super simple email address is added to the profile that these groups have on you.
Post reply on HN