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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

#141

Post by pessimizer »

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…

> 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.)

What gives you the confidence to announce this? Do you have inside information?

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

#142

Post by jrs235 »

gnicholas wrote: post #64
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.

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?

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

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

#143

Post by pixl97 »

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?

> 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.

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

#144

Post by nanidin »

pixl97 wrote: post #143
nanidin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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.

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

#145

Post by gnicholas »

jrs235 wrote: post #142
gnicholas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Yeah I thought about this, and other ways of anonymizing. But now it seems that Safeway puts its best deals in their app, which requires login. Not sure that would be feasible to rotate with friends.

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

#146

Post by ahoya »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #135
theironhammer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edward Snowden revealed that u need to remove the battery on ur phone to make it "safe", turning it off doesn't do the trick. [Which u can't do anymore]. As another commenter says: leave the phone at home.

Airplane mode has to be able to make it zero-emissions due to FAA regulations, right?

[dead]

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

#147

Post by pixl97 »

cptskippy wrote: post #100
gnicholas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Club card application information isn't usually validated, you can sign up for one with bogus information.

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 who you are in the future.

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

#148

Post by pixl97 »

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…

"I've seen this weapon used against other people, but I have nothing to worry about, they'll never turn the gun on me"

Also can be stated as "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist."

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

#149

Post by pixl97 »

jnxx wrote: post #113
_trampeltier wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"With facial recognition being a nearly solved problem, .." Meanwhile in Switzerland https://www.iamexpat.ch/expat-info/swiss-expat-news/facial-r... It’s never a nice feeling to think you are being watched, even if it is in a public place like the centre of a city or train station. Now, Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), the main public transport provider in Switzerland, has announced that it will be installing facial rec…

That is not necessary any more now. Now, when there are riots, it is well known that police has human "super-recognizers", which can scan thousands of photos and identify suspect individuals on a whim.

Yet at the same time that one of these persons has this ability and ends up working for the police is a low probability event, the police only tend to use said profiler if the event warrants the expense. When a service moves from human ran to technology ran it generally goes from "I need to do this special thing" to "We should just leave it on and do it all the time, the IT budget takes care of that".

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

#150

Post by wintermutestwin »

gnicholas wrote: post #64
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.

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?

enter (local area code) 777-1234.

I have used this across the country in random grocery stores and it has never failed me. I think I got this from some BBS text file...

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