Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by JohnFen » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 10:09 PM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #62

tarotuser wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his 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.) Like hell it is. This is an article about Target back in 2012, that identified a pregnant underage girl purely from her purchasing record. 11 years ago. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/20…

This one got a lot of coverage for how accurate it was, but we just ignore when it gets it wrong. For example, I've recently gotten a few mailings about signing up for Medicare once I retire in a few months - except I'm like 30 years away from it.

But the point of it is that it shows they're targeting individuals, not just collecting aggregate numbers. How good they are at the targeting isn't important.

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

#192

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 10:10 PM UTC

the_jeremy wrote: post #46

tppiotrowski wrote: post #32

> Location: Your precise physical location in the store (with your consent), including when you enter and leave a store (Kroger app, GPS, and Bluetooth beacons inside stores) Can someone comment on how a store can identify my Bluetooth address if I never pair with anything in the store? Do apps have access to the Bluetooth MAC? If the app is not running, can the store still identify you using Bluetooth? Is there some…

If you have bluetooth on, beacons can try to connect and track your movement throughout the store. With Apple and Google both instituting rolling bluetooth mac addresses, this doesn't persist across the whole visit to the store, but will still let them see how long people stand in front of the cookies or how quickly they pass by the eggs.

It's also probably not that hard to recognize a freshly rolled over mac address as belonging to the same device as the previous address.

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

#193

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 10:11 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #126

JohnFen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Don't hassle the poor clerks. They aren't in charge of any of this stuff and certainly don't have the power to change it. Just say "no" and move on.

Better yet: find somewhere to shop that they don't do that.

Name a place.

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

#194

Post by BeFlatXIII » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #179

autoexec wrote: post #166

Stores are happy to sell all your data to advertisers for now, but what they really want is to use it themselves. Their wet dream is to get us to accept Personalized Dynamic Pricing ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338776528_A_special... ) which means that once the store knows who you are (either by your photo, or by detecting the phone in your pocket, or by your loyalty card) they will customize the prices…

> Personalized Dynamic Pricing The very idea is just revolting.

It needs to be legislated out of existence.

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

#195

Post by teeray » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 10:14 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #179

autoexec wrote: post #166

Stores are happy to sell all your data to advertisers for now, but what they really want is to use it themselves. Their wet dream is to get us to accept Personalized Dynamic Pricing ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338776528_A_special... ) which means that once the store knows who you are (either by your photo, or by detecting the phone in your pocket, or by your loyalty card) they will customize the prices…

> Personalized Dynamic Pricing The very idea is just revolting.

and probably very illegal

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

#196

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 10:15 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #106

TeMPOraL wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there any foreseeable bad outcome for customers? Mostly: better advertising means you're most likely to be duped into wasting money on things you don't want, or making suboptimal purchasing decisions, making your life worse over time. But also: insurance companies and banks could use your grocery purchase habits to adjust your premiums or loan rates based on e.g. whether or not your purchases indicate a healthy…

There is also a flip side. While the point of advertising is to take your money, better advertising can also help you discover products you really need. For example, if they can guess when you car scheduled maintenance is, they can send you an ad related to it, and remind you that you need to do it, which is better than forgetting about it. I also have been notified of events I ended up attending and enjoyed, or rece…

Which is why ads have been getting clearly better, correlated with more and more tracking. Wait what? That's not the case and companies make way more money selling you heavily advertised, white-labeled goods that are stupidly cheaply made and not even by the brand selling them to you, than they could ever make by actually advertising to you with exactly what you need?

People don't "need" or even "want" that much. That's why every advertising campaign basically forever is always about making you feel inadequate as you are.

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

#197

Post by BeFlatXIII » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 10:15 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #103

AlexandrB wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe - insurance companies could start using your shopping habits to inform your risk group and therefore premiums. I could see other nefarious uses like tracking when female customers get pregnant for purposes of enforcing abortion bans or targeting of individuals by anti-abortion groups. I think it's a mistake to underestimate the imagination of insurance adjusters and bureaucrats when it comes to how personal dat…

In the US, Affordable Care Act limits health insurance pricing to be based on just a few parameters: https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your-premiums/ It is a political exercise though, seeing as how it was politically acceptable for tobacco users to not be subsidized by non tobacco users, but it is okay for alcohol users to be subsidized by non alcohol users. Similarly, it is okay for excessive sugar and carbo…

> It is a political exercise though, seeing as how it was politically acceptable for tobacco users to not be subsidized by non tobacco users, but it is okay for alcohol users to be subsidized by non alcohol users.

Smokers stink up the area with secondhand smoke while boozers don't have an inherent stinkiness to their activity.

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

#198

Post by JohnFen » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 10:21 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #106

TeMPOraL wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there any foreseeable bad outcome for customers? Mostly: better advertising means you're most likely to be duped into wasting money on things you don't want, or making suboptimal purchasing decisions, making your life worse over time. But also: insurance companies and banks could use your grocery purchase habits to adjust your premiums or loan rates based on e.g. whether or not your purchases indicate a healthy…

There is also a flip side. While the point of advertising is to take your money, better advertising can also help you discover products you really need. For example, if they can guess when you car scheduled maintenance is, they can send you an ad related to it, and remind you that you need to do it, which is better than forgetting about it. I also have been notified of events I ended up attending and enjoyed, or rece…

> better advertising can also help you discover products you really need.

They can do this without spying on me.

> A bit of advertising is a good thing

I have no real beef with advertising as such (although the vast majority of it is unhelpful). My problem is just with the spying.

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

#199

Post by JohnFen » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 10:28 PM UTC

bobsoap wrote: post #109

Eumenes wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anyone have any suggestions for a Faraday bag?

Two bags of chips. With or without the chips. https://usa.kaspersky.com/blog/terminator-dark-fate-chips/18...

Wrapping it in aluminum foil works, too.

Anything that completely surrounds the phone with conductive material will do the job.

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

#200

Post by Zetice » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 10:41 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #186

Zetice wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You haven't justified the claim that "always being under surveillance" is categorically a bad thing. If you refuse to do that, you're kind of breaking the social contract around communication. Why share this belief if you can't defend it?

And what you sacrifice is a lot of convenience, and a wholesale rejection by the very society you rely heavily on to survive. It's not tenable to live in this society and wear a ski mask while shopping in a grocery store.