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

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

#221

Post by mark_l_watson »

JohnFen wrote: post #92
mark_l_watson wrote: post #42

Well, as long as people realize their data is sold by food markets, I am personally OK with it. That said, to not get the discounts (thus not sharing your information) is leaving money on the table. Also, if you are not part of a loyalty program, and you use a credit card, it is very possible that your purchases are still tracked - all it takes is cooperation between store and credit card company.

> That said, to not get the discounts (thus not sharing your information) is leaving money on the table. Not if you shop at a reasonable store. And even if that's not an option, I don't consider it "leaving money on the table", I consider it "buying privacy".

I admit some inconsistency in this. I am careful on the Internet (I use Proton Mail, and almost always use private browsers tabs for following links), but not for purchase data.

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

#222

Post by ipaddr »

83 wrote: post #108
ipaddr wrote: post #45

We are in a new era of hacks. We have reached the point where I can get a product removed from walmart just by buying out all of the supplies for a few months, then stop buying any.

Was there an article about this? Does Walmart ditch products that have highly cyclical sales?

Something I discovered

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

#223

Post by [deleted] »

JohnFen wrote: post #210
Zetice wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You haven't justified the claim that "always being under surveillance" is categorically a bad thing. I don't have to. It's sufficient for me to say that I strongly dislike it. > Why share this belief if you can't defend it? Why do you think this is something that needs defending? Regardless, I think I have adequately defended it. It's an intrusion into my life that I don't consent to and I find highly objectionable…

[deleted]

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

#224

Post by Zetice »

JohnFen wrote: post #210
Zetice wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You haven't justified the claim that "always being under surveillance" is categorically a bad thing. I don't have to. It's sufficient for me to say that I strongly dislike it. > Why share this belief if you can't defend it? Why do you think this is something that needs defending? Regardless, I think I have adequately defended it. It's an intrusion into my life that I don't consent to and I find highly objectionable…

If it doesn't matter to you if you're understood, then you're just commenting for attention, and there's no point in reading anything else you write...

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

#225

Post by jrs235 »

landemva wrote: post #165
jrs235 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get two or three keychain cards share them among friends?

This is good because it pollutes the pool of data.

I actually stayed are a VRBO (like airBnB) where the owner left a rewards card for guests to use (so they'd get the deals at the grocery store and not have to sign up for their own for a regional grocery store).

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

#226

Post by grishka »

JohnFen wrote: post #201
grishka wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you block ads and third-party cookies, which I'm 146% you do with this mindset, that data collection is of no use either way.

I don't understand... What does blocking ads and third-party cookies have to do with it? How does doing that affect the usefulness of real-world data collection?

I may have said it wrong. I meant that, because of ad blocking, it's impossible to show you targeted ads, that data collection doesn't do anything bad to you personally. They can't use it to try to sell something to you in particular because that requires non-consensually shoving information into you, via your own devices. They can still use it for analytics, of course, but that's not nearly as worrying as creepily targeted ads that follow you around everywhere.

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

#227

Post by Infernal »

maccard wrote: post #133
jxramos wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hmmm, wonder if it's a preventing cash theft sort of thing with cashiers or something in that space.

It's a few things, most likely. It removes human error (did you give the cashier a $1 or $100 bill?), reduces risk of loss/theft of physical assets, reduces staffing costs (One person can operate one manual till, one person can operate 15? automated tills where they're basically just overriding weights and checking ID for alcohol), is probably _cheaper_ than handling cash (because you already have a visa/mastercard/p…

The interesting thing is, both of these store chains already had fully automated checkouts, they simply removed the ability for these to accept cash and make change.

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

#228

Post by autoexec »

teeray wrote: post #218
autoexec wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not illegal yet. Read the paper, stores have already been trying versions of it and it's being used in some industries already. Airlines have been playing with it for ages, which is how you can get very different prices online depending on things like which browser you are using. ( https://millionmilesecrets.com/guides/are-airlines-raising-y... ). It's not transparent to the consumer when it's happening so you may ne…

It’s not illegal until a protected class is charged a higher price and has grounds for a lawsuit, and the grocery stores cannot prove their AI isn’t racist.

It's not easy for someone to know what other people are being charged and it'd be easy to make it pretty much impossible for anyone to say exactly why.

I'm guessing it'd fall on the person who was overcharged to prove that it had anything to do with their race, and even then the company will hide behind the AI to avoid all responsibility. There are already many examples of AI found or suspected to be biased, but has anyone at any company been jailed or even meaningfully punished for using an AI that was found to be biased? It seems like the most you can expect is "We'll stop using that AI" after which they'll just fire up another one.

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

#229

Post by TeMPOraL »

dauut wrote: post #41
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…

Thank you for your answer, I appreciate it. Insurance related concerns sounds serious. I couldn’t think of that.

There's more if you start going your way. You can infer a lot of things from shopping records, particularly when you're shopping couple times a week (vs. bulk shopping once every week or two). The things you buy are informative, but so is how your purchases change over time, and so are the dates and times you make those purchases.

Some extra things that should be easy to infer: on what dates were you going to a party; on what dates you had a hangover; when did you go on a diet and how good were you at sticking to it; if you have a problem with alcohol, when did it start and how it progress; are you dating someone; are you planning to travel. I could go on and on - all those things can be identified if you have a continuous record of a regular customer's purchases. And there are many companies, organizations and individuals that would make good use of such inferences - use of the kind you wouldn't want to be subject to.

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

#230

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

You're right about the positives that could happen, and that occasionally do happen. The problem is what happens most of the time.

As you mentioned yourself, advertising is adversarial. It's a negative-sum game between competitors, and has a lot of nasty externalities. I have some more specific thoughts on this, and after posting them on HN many times, I eventually collected them in a blog article:

http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html

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