What Do You Buy At The Grocery ... Punk?

fifths writes: "I'm not sure how many of you saw this story from the Scripps Howard Washington bureau -- as reported in the 'Washington Calling' column in the 10-07-2001 edition of the Knoxville(TN) News-Sentinel: 'Federal agents are tracking suspects tied to the Sept. 11 strikes through supermarket club cards that may give a hint of ethnic tastes. "Time was, this data was so disorganized nobody could make sense of it, but not anymore. They're looking for people based on their supermarket tastes," says consultant Larry Ponemon, head of the Privacy Council business consortium.' Anyone else bothered by this? Burn your supermarket cards." Better yet, trade your supermarket cards, frequently. (Perhaps with friends or relatives in the furthest city with the same chain?) Maybe Larry Ellison would like to have a few.

Comments

Re:Don't play the game

[camusflage]

It's sleazy to break your half of the bargain by deliberately contaminating their data while expecting them to keep to their side by continuing to provide discounts.

It's even sleazier to jack up the prices on items and offer "discounts" for people who use the cards when the discounted price is what the retail price should be. One rather nasty example of this that I saw recently was where a commodity item (a tube of toothpaste) was marked "Buy One Get One Free" with the card, where the price for the single unit was twice what comparable brands were selling for.