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BudNet Tracks Your Suds
An anonymous reader writes "CNN is carrying a story about Budweiser's national internal sales tracking network called BudNET. It allows Anheuser-Busch to instantly track sales across the country, and 'If Anheuser-Busch loses shelf space in a store in Clarksville, Tennessee, they know it right away.' It brings up some interesting privacy issues, because according to the article 'The last time you bought a six-pack of Bud Light at the Piggly Wiggly, Anheuser servers most likely recorded what you paid, when that beer was brewed, whether you purchased it warm or chilled, and whether you could have gotten a better deal down the street.' Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."
Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands.
Just pay with cash and they'll never know it was you!
I think this is a little more paranoia than we need.
If you bought directly from budweiser, they would know what you paid for, if it was cold, etc. So pipe down.
They can't really single out a person, or name a customer, there's no privacy issues here, at all. Just a company doing inventory control, to an extreme.
Runnin' On Empty
They aren't tracking YOU, they are tracking the beer. Unless I'm missing something, they have no way of connecting any one person with any one beer.
Urine tastes like American beer.
They do that in two ways (again, according to the article): a "nightly sweep of their distributors' databases" and 2) on-site visits by sales reps who notice how the store is set up, whether it's selling room-temp or chilld beer (or both), and probably noting the class of customers.
Despite Michael's concerns, there's nothing in there about tying to individual customer purchases or even getting explicit sales data on competitors' products.
For real. And who cares the they data mine anyway, it's not like they're tracking any one individual's purchases.
"Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
You know I've bought a lot of embarrassing things at the corner market and haven't even gotten discount coupons for them during check-out at a subsequent visit (a shame). And to the point, I've never gotten any kind of marketing material from Trojans in the mail as a result of having bought ribbed at Safeway, so if someone's correlating my personal information with my condom-purchasing history, they're not being very enterprising (if they were, they'd have sold the information to my wife long ago).
What I'm saying is, there's a tacit assumption in the article that somehow your purchases are correlated with your name. That's more likely to be happening at your credit card company's clearinghouse than at the cashier's station.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Since 15th April 1895.
Oh, you are asking, since when Anheuser-Busch sold beer? I really don't know.
Privacy issues because they track their own sales?
Hey I don't think they should be able to track something some critical as water purchases.
Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
I'm a little confused as this isn't really your rights online and anyone that think that it is obviously didn't read the article. This is just and article talking about the information system that Bud uses to track sales of their products. It's a supply chain thing. They're not doing anything devious to go about this, just having people track prices and sales and actually doing something with data.
Anyone can tell you that beer distribution is complicated, this just helps them better their distribution. Take off the tinfoil hats, nothing to see here.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
Not you -- SOMEONE Yes Bud knows when someone purchased their product but they don't know who and unless they have a survey team out, they don't know why. Stuff like this happens all the time and for the most part it tends to make life better for all of us.
Where we have to worry is when a company starts mining all this data and does track it back to an individual person. When a credit card company or polititical/religious/charity organization can pick up the phone and find out what I watched for TV last night and what books I last bought or checked out at the library, that's when we need to be concerned.
And even if personal data-mining is possible it's no guarantee it will be used. For example, the EZ-TAG scanners on the toll roads you take can easilly compute your average speed between toll booths and issue you a speeding ticket if you were speeding but they don't. Why? Because the toll road comissioners would be voted out of office if they allowed that.
People.. Read the article fully. They track the BEER, not the person. Information like that is extremely important for the marketing of a product.
This information allows them to know there market, plan shipments and various other usefull things.
But instead you would prefer to assume they are tracking how many brain killing gulps of beer your drinking so they know when your drunk enough to use there super secret beer tracking brain scanner to download your life and the history of your poor sex life.
Personal Website
Why the very thought of anyone drinking such a low class beverage has CAUSED MY MONOCLE TO POP RIGHT OUT! And really, who drinks beer in this day and age anyway? Everyone should drink only expensive wine and scotch.
Why just the other day my chauffer took a wrong turn off of the freeway and pulled me past this run down little liquor store where this shabby looking man (who by the way was driving a Pontiac! A PONTIAC!!!) who hadn't shaved for a couple of days was walking out with a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. RED LABEL?! I exclaimed, exhaling a puff of cigar smoke and tipping my top hat back in a bemused manner. WHO ARE THESE CRETINS? I practically had my driver phone the police right then and there.
It's a southern thing. There were at one time Piggly-Wiggly knock-offs called Hoggly-Woggly. It's the same store as Kroger, Publix, Winn-Dixie or Meijer (but without clothes and other-non food goods). It just has a goofy name.
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
I even have a certificate to prove that I'm a certified Beer Master. You wouldn't believe how much work goes into making such a thoroughly below average beer.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"pLac e $500 IN A BrO W n PapEr b A g AnD l eAV e IT i t BeHinD tHE du mPsTe r O R w E tEl L yOur f r IeN D s y O U DRiNK bUD"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
But to make the hat, I have to buy the cans! Classic chicken/egg problem. Arrgg!
Please help metamoderate.
For real. And who cares the they data mine anyway, it's not like they're tracking any one individual's purchases.
Don't want 'em to know who you are? Pay in cash.
Last Saturday, I purchased a 6-pack of Guinness (in bottles) from the Kroger in Clarkston, GA. No, I do not live near there.
I paid approximatly $7.50.
My intent in purchasing the beer was, in addition to enjoying its smooth robust flavor, performing a demonstration to amazed friends on how to remove the magic "rocket widget" from an empty Guinness bottle (without breaking the bottle of course).
There, I said it. Now the entire world knows what beer I purchased, when, where, and why.
What is the WORST thing that can possibly happen to me by making this public?
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
The local public utility has been tracking my water usage for years -- and they make me pay them to do it!! Worse than that, the long distance phone company not only tracks my phone calls, but they even track who I call and how long I am on the phone. My grocery store tries to track my grocery buying, but nobody lives at that address. However, Walmart does not have those stupid "shopper cards", so I shop there. Heck, I even think /. even keeps a record of when I respond and what I respond to.
You can't hide!