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RFID Coming 'Whether You Like It Or Not'
VTBassMatt writes "According to an interview with Scott McGregor of Philips Semiconductor in BusinessWeek, RFID tags are coming whether we like it or not but of course won't affect our privacy. Choice quotes from the article include such gems as, '[P]rivacy concerns around RFID tags are a little like concerns about supermarket scanners years ago. When the laser scanners were coming out, everybody was saying, retailers are going to collect information about what you buy. And none of that happened.' Is that why I have two loyalty cards on my keyring and three more in my wallet?"
RFID may be coming, but its not exactly bursting out at least in the UK.
I investigated RFID for implementation within my company, but came up with
next to no suppliers, apart from one company who after several phone calls
'forgot' about the samples and paperwork they were meant to send. And I simply don't have the
time to implement from electronics up.
IMHO if someone wants to make some money on this, set up a company now, as no-one
else seems to have their act together with customer relations or advertising (yet).
I actually *wanted* to implement this, so imagine the chance someone who's indifferent,
or uninterested in this technology has of being persuaded to implement it in industry.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
in the supermarkets around here, supermarkets require you to have the 'loytalty' card in order to write a check, for their own protection.
... i've also approved it with the managers.
friends of mine work there, and they track *everything* you buy, with the card.
My own solution? 'could you use the store card? i'm not writing a check, but i want the things on sale'
it's too bad i can't play that on screen slot machine game to win the magic token though.
Runnin' On Empty
Walmart demanded barcodes from the manufacturers and now they are demanding rfid tags. Walmar now controls almost half the US retail sales. Can't really blame them. The ultimate in real-time inventory and the manhours saved will practically pay for the program. We'll all have to start wearing RFID blockers.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
At my grocery store they spit out coupons based on what you buy and hand that to you in addition to your receipt. I know they track because the coupons from one trip correspond to previous trips. For example if I buy baby formula I get diaper coupons. On another trip for milk and eggs I get another round of diaper coupons while the little old lady gets coupons for Depends.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Loyalty cards are your choice, and you can still buy stuff without them. I don't see how that relates to RFID.
Most wil activate them without any paperwork.
If not then...
Fill them out like this:
123 Main St
Anytown, AK
12345
(800)-555-3825
RFID tags are a little different.
I refuse to participate. For the most part, I buy food from our local small business, but if I absolutely have to go to one of the megachains that practically require their "loyalty cards" to avoid being ripped off, I take the following precautions:
1. I pay in cash only.
2. I fill out a form for a new card (even if I don't need it) and then throw the card away as I'm leaving. I don't fill out any of the information.
3. If a clerk gives me a hassle, I just look at them, smile, and say: "This is a conversation between me and your employer. I am trying to leave you out of it. If you would like to involve yourself in the conversation, that's fine, but I think you would rather not."
Step three usually gets the occasional nag to shut up very quickly and let me do my thing.
I figure eventually this has to end up costing them something - if everybody did that, instead of doing the sheeple thing and sticking with one card, I think that the stores would eventually give up on those damn cards.
InThane
It's simple... just switch out loyalty cards with someone you know (the farther away they live the better) every three to six months or so. This should render all of the personalized collected data pretty useless: "He moved twelve times in the past two year and went from a vegan diet and vitamins to red meat and beer"
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
I've always said I don't mind RFID tags as long as there are no laws mandating them.
I would probably choose to buy the product without a tag. And when I buy products that have them, I remove them.
But what concerns me is a law (and I could see this happening) that forbids anyone to remove RFID tags. That would scare the crap out of me. But up until that point, I'll handle the tags myself.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
As many things in life, we (the public) could easily stop this if there was a public outcry against it. However most people either don't know the risks or don't care. People won't boycott stores that use RFID tags, they'll just complan here on slashdot.
The real question is whether we'll actually see a benefit to the introduction of RFID-- ie, actually keeping things stocked that I *want*, particularly sale items. I could certainly see some potential disadvantages, like if sale items start selling faster than they expect. Maybe an alert will be flagged and they'll mysteriously pull the remaining stock off the shelves...
All in all, I guess I can't really see any huge problem with the technology, though, as far as privacy is concerned-- that is, as long as it stays on the products themselves. If they suddenly start requiring RFIDs in the shopper cards so they know when I enter or leave the store, then I might have a concern.
KappaStone
Yep, you sure can.... you don't need the card at all. It's just rather nice, imo.
And you know what, I don't care at all if they track my purchases. This is because:
- I get coupons for items I frequently buy
- I didn't have to give out my name or address to get the card, so it's anonymous data
- The data from my purchases helps them run their store better, so everyone's happy
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
As a small retailer who owns two stores (Music related and Aggressive Sports related), I am very open about being anti-RFID within the products I carry. Should a supplier offer RFID within the POP/POS merchandising structure, I'll refuse it.
As such, I've cut back as much as I can from the Targets and Wal*Marts and other large chains, instead attempting to find smaller "Ma and Pa" shops that offer similiar merchandise. In today's market, you'd think these stores are hard to find, but I've actually found the opposite.
I've been able to buy vacuum cleaners cheaper than at the mass goods stores, TVs and DVD players as well. Found razor blades and shampoo and other items at stores that won't desire RFID or other tracking mechanisms, and I found them cheaper than I would have purchased them from the large chain stores or grocery stores.
Look around your community and find retailers who have no reason to jump on the RFID bandwagon. Do you use your "Preferred Shopper" card? You're already giving up your privacy. Do you buy online? You're already giving up your privacy. Do you give your phone number to a store when they ask for it when closing a sale? Bye bye privacy.
If you want more privacy, shop where stores provide it. Don't use your credit cards or write a check (the information can get deposited into a database), pay cash. Don't get "zero percent financing for 2 years" because you'll end up having those purchases tracked by who knows how many marketing firms.
Your choice for privacy is up to you. If you care about it, the power to keep your information away from prying eyes is readily available in even the smallest towns.
You going to eat that last can of Progresso Minestrone, or not?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Hmmm... maybe I'm missing some point... Am I?
At most Kroger stores, you can hit the top center grey button on the CC input box. The screen will show a K+ on the display. Type in the phone number associated with your Kroger Plus card, and it will process the discounts.
Just an FYI.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
.. and using it against you. There's been tons of examples. The one that made the most press was about the guy who slipped and fell on some broken glass & liquit, and broke his hip. He sued the supermarket.
... Besides, why a discount card with a unique ID? What was so wrong with coupons? Why do they have to have a unique ID and log everything that you shop? You can't have the discount unless you tell us your name, address, phone, SS# or drivers license? Bullshit.
The supermarket pulled up the guys shopping records over the last year or so. It turned out that he bought only alcohol 90% of the time while in the story. They defense team implied that he was an alcoholic and was drunk at the time, and that was why he fell, not because of the glass & liquid on the floor.
That's just one example. There are many, many more.
What is your privacy worth to you? $0.30 off a 2 liter bottle of coke? Good for you. My privacy is much more valuable to me, which is why I avoid the discount cards.
WHY CAN'T I HAVE MY DISCOUNT WITHOUT YOU KNOWING WHO I AM?
When the laser scanners were coming out, everybody was saying, retailers are going to collect information about what you buy.
I am an Networking contractor. Some of my customers do this very thing.
A large chain of video rental stores in Sydney Australia spring to mind...
They DO collect data on what customers buy and retain the link between that data and that customer. The customer then receives promotional material via whatever channels they know how to get to you.
The store owner who told me this, assured me that all was okay because, they "don't sell that data".
That made me feel so much better.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
When the laser scanners were coming out, everybody was saying, retailers are going to collect information about what you buy. And none of that happened.'
Excuse me? What do you think "Club cards" are, and why do you think there is a discount associated with it? All the info about what you buy is aggregated to create shopping profiles in order to suck more $$$ out of you in the form of targeted advertising and "sharing your info with our business partners."
RFID is everything that the barcode scanners are in terms of information collection, and A WHOLE LOT MORE! Consider: you go to your local supermarket and buy a six pack or two and walk out the front door, RFIDs and all. If an hour later you leave the parking lot but the six pack with the RFID doesn't, what's the logical conclusion, and how long will it be before all of the bored busy-body housewives of the world DEMAND that law enforcement be notified of such a scenario just in case someone might be drinking and then driving???
After all, it's for the safety of the children...
Is that why I have two loyalty cards on my keyring and three more in my wallet?
Yeah, don't get me started on "rewards cards" -- I'm carrying two on my keyring as well. There's no reward to those cards. Basically, the supermarkets have decided that unless you become one of the sheep, and carry around their silly cards so they can track your purchases, they won't let you purchase anything on sale.
Which would be fine with me. I'd be happy to take my business elsewhere. Except there is no elsewhere when it comes to supermarkets. They all have "rewards cards" now. So it's either let them track all your purchases, or pay a steep penalty by being excluded from sale items. The same thing's gonna happen with RFID. There will be no place you can go to avoid them.
Except, that is, your local co-op, and similar small-scale businesses. I happen to buy most of my groceries at the co-op just because the prices are comparable, the food is grown closer to me, the politics are better, and I know I'm not getting tracked. Unfortunately, I doubt that enough people care about their privacy for an anti-RFID movement to emerge.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Yeah, I admit it - I'm the bitch of almost every local supermarket and retail store that requires a barcode for discounts.
It sucks, but I try not go down without a fight. You know, it amazes me how many people simply do not care about the wealth of information garnered about them. I've brought this up in lunchroom conversations with my fellow employees and they're like, "Oh well, what can ya do..."
Get this: Recently, I went to a bank to cash a check. This was not my bank, but the check belonged to them and as I was in a hurry for the money, I thought I'd simply cash it there.
I showed them my ID, but you can guess my reaction when they asked me for a FINGERPRINT! "Oh, it's just a formality..."
Bullshit! Look, I don't mind that the gov't has this info on me (I was in the Army once), but it REALLY bothers me when a financial institution can ask for this. Needless to say, I deposited my check at my bank, but I was a bit shaken by the incident.
Is this the beginnings of our Brave New World? If so, I hope they use oral thermometers. No way I'm getting that up my ass for 5% off!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity"
I for one, have faith that our new RFID overlords are too stupid and disorganized to make real capital out of the data. Or as a friend, who worked for the U.S. Census once said, quoting the X Files "If the truth is out there, they lost it"
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
RFID still has a potential to be used for tracking, and I think that's what will continue to make a lot of people nervous/paranoid.
With a UPC, there's a limited number (10^12) of possibilities, you can tell what information it contains and compare between things--even if the numbers aren't there, it's not too difficult to figure them out from the bar code pattern--and you can tell when it is being scanned.
With RFID, there's a potential for transmitting much more information, the information can't be read/compared without a scanner, and it's easy to scan without anyone knowing.
I think that if legislation was passed saying what uses of RFID should be legal and what should not, a lot less people would be worried about it.
Karma: Negative (Mostly affected by dorm trolling)
According to my experience with loyalty (of the buy 3 for $10 with the card, or else one is $5) cards in the US (I'm originally from Europe), a good rule of thumb to know if a grocery supermarket chain is any good is to see if it has a loyalty card program. All those that have one are not good, and most of those that don't are a good place to shop for food (whether they're cheaper like Winco, or they taste better like Whole Foods).
Is that by refusing to purchase items with RFID tags, that you would be forced into "second class" citizenry. Rather than have the items that you would like to, you would have to buy more expensive downgraded products. Perhaps reasonably, stores will say that adding the RFID tag lowers store costs and product costs, and therefor by not buying RFID implanted objects, you will be choosing to pay more, lest the majority subsidize you. I'm not sure I buy that, as the added savings, or revenue, the stores see will most likely end up in the pockets of executives, not shareholders, employees, or customers.
Store loyalty cards are used to track the purchases of the cardholder, but most stores only use the addresses on file to send snail-mail spam. The solution? Use a fake name and address. You get the discounts, and no one knows who you really are.
RFID can be implemented by retailers without affecting the customer's privacy.
The simple solution is not to embed the tag within the garment but for the tag takes the form of a label that is removed at the point of sale
The retailer gets full advantage of the tags within their stock chain.
The purchaser has no privacy issues.
Additionally the retailer also has the advantage that the tag can be reused.
slashnik
I've lost the URL unfortunately but one site had a project of sorts where someone had signed up for a card and then scanned the numbers/barcode in. People then printed the barcode out, taped it over their clubcard and made purchases all over the UK on one card, making it quite a puzzle for Tesco. Alas, that wouldn't work with RFID, but I'd imagine actually posting RFID tags from one end of the country to the other could provide some amusment/ store confusion.
the cards don't cost jack compared to the revenue generated by the information.
If the vast majority of consumers stopped using them- the loss in revenue might kill the program but not the cost of the cards. That's like thinking you can drive them out of business by grabbing and extra plastic bag with each visist.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
They are indeed coming and it really is just a matter of price..
WalMart, etc. cannot wait for these. And actually I think the military might be a prime driver of wide scale adoption. The real trick is to get the cost down to pennies.
The huge cost savings will be in inventory. Imagine either enough readers in your warehouse to scan every location, OR a robot that drives around at night pinging RFID tags. Imagine being able to just push your cart through a metal detector & have everything scanned in seconds.
Also some RFID will have non-volatile memory and be able to record events or travels or born-on dates. For an extra $5 you can have a tamper-proof record of a packages travel. Or for $20 maybe a gps chip on board to record the shipment so audit it when it gets to where it is going.
I think the first place we'll see them will be as a new shopper card. You'll get a keychain (like the gas pump thingy) that will identify you at upscale stores or maybe even print out a shopping list for you when you enter the grocery store. Stores will want this because they can secretly track who looks at what items and for how long. Then they sell that information back to producers and marketing folks.
Here's one solution.
You probably shouldn't click this.
Me: "I fancy a fish finger sandwich"
Fridge: "Your fish fingers are 3 days out of date."
Me: "Why won't the microwave open?"
Microwave: "Those fish fingers are 3 days out of date. I'm not having them in here"
Me: "Open the microwave door, HAL..."
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
This may not work everywhere, you'll need to do your own experimenting but I find that my Kroger Card works at Food Lion and vice versa (ie it makes a nice beep and I get the discount on my receipt.) You obviously have to do this at the self-checkout lines. I imagine my purchases are being recorded as some other customers records... that or the loyalty card software doesn't do any sanity checking... Hmmmm buffer overflow, anyone?
2^5
What is needed for the RFID to flourish, and to be accepted for widespread adoption (which would cheapen it through economy of scale) is ironclad legislation that covers these three simple points:
RFID shall only be used against white lists of your own property. Any other reading must be discarded.
RFID shall be prominently labeled, and be removable without destruction, devaluation or vandalism to the item that is attached to. For example, someone here asked, why not just cot off the tag? Answer is that some clothing is now coming tagless.
Warranties shall not require RFID tags in order to be upheld.
RFID is good technology, let's not let it's overwhelming potential for abuse become an issue.
You just met THE Average American---too bad you let him get away. If we'd just locked him in a box in your basement, then that would've solved many of the world's problems...
Yeah, right.
The supermarket card is the perfect example of what can happen with RFID gone bad. Obviously, supermarket cards collect individual buying habits of customers. This really isn't in dispute or something to hide. The scary part is what can be done with that data that goes well beyond just marketing information.
There have already been two cases (that I'm aware of) in which data collected by supermarket cards has been used in court. The first was a case where the info was used to show that a man had a habit of buying very expensive wines, and was successfully used to argue that he could therefore afford more in allimony than he was initially supposed to pay. The second case involves a man suing the grocery store for slipping while shopping. The store attempted to use the man's buying history to show that he was likely an alcoholic.
Scared yet?
How about RFIDs? How can they be miss-used? Well, just look at EZPass, the toll-booth system that uses RFIDs to automatically charge motorists. That info, in the state of IL, has been supoenaed 11 times already. In one case to prove infidelity in a divorce case.
Now imagine how many places will use RFIDs. Every store. Public places. EVERYWHERE. Compile and cross-reference this data and you can assemble a complete picture of a person.
This is not "tin foil hat" material. It IS happening and it WILL continue if you don't do something.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Hello!?! This is the horse. I'm dead, so you can stop hitting me.
Accept it now and save yourself years of worry and frustration. Privacy is nothing more than a nostalgic memory.
If you want privacy, dig a hole, climb in it, and pull the dirt over yourself.
I always shop at the Albertson's by my home, which up until recently didn't have a loyalty card. I never pay cash though, I always use my ATM card.
About a month after having our second child, the coupon printer at the checkout started printing coupons for baby formula, no matter what I bought.
Their system knew who I am based off of my ATM card, and knew that I had a new baby. It kept printing the formula coupons to keep me coming there.
Do I mind it? Hell no. The coupons I was constantly getting (And still getting occasionally) are worth about $10 each, and I was getting one no matter how little I spent at the store. There were several times I ran in for something small, and ended up with a buy one get one free coupon for formula worth 2-3x the amount of my purchase.
In the last few months, I've gotten $200-$300 worth of formula coupons, so to me it is worth them tracking what I buy at the grocery store.
"The huge cost savings will be in inventory. Imagine either enough readers in your warehouse to scan every location, OR a robot that drives around at night pinging RFID tags. Imagine being able to just push your cart through a metal detector & have everything scanned in seconds. "
Imagine all the low wage "I'm here because of the economy" jobs lost. The same for those automated checkout lines. The worker is being squeezed between a rock and a hard place. Outsourcing, insourcing, technology increasing productivity reducing need for workers. Soon there will be nothing left.
Here is a culture jamming prank that has been going on in Sacramento for some time:
h opper.html
http://www.cockeyed.com/pranks/safeway/ultimate_s
Basically, it gives instructions for how to create a Safeway barcode. Hundreds of people use this same number when shopping, getting all the discounts, but completely obscuring their own tracks.
Please join!
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
The benefit of RFID will be when you push your trolley through a gate, but your credit card in the hole in the wall and pay...
I really don't see the privacy implication here. All they will know is what you've bought, which they know anyway, seeing you're paying for it. How exactly are they going to use the RFIDs to invade anyone's privacy?
I'm sure even i can come up with some ludicrous schemes, and knowing the way the world works some of them will be implemented eventually, but at the moment with the things they propose i see it as a stock-keeping and payment issue, and nothing else...
Ponxx
Imma high rolla'. I neva leave the house witout my roll o' fitties!
=]
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
>>stores only use the addresses on file to send snail-mail spam. The solution? Use a fake name and address.
t ements.htm
A good idea, but you can do better than that, give them the name of the President/CEO/CFO/CIO of the supermarket chain!! Let the company bigshots that make these stupid policies get hardcopy spammed and see how they like it.
So how do you find VIP names? Go to the corporate section of the company web page, look for investor information (if a publicly traded company) or "history" or such if a private company. Get a list of names of the officers and put that together with information about where the company is based. Jump over to the internet phone book with that information and you're all set. If you can't get a home address, just enter the corporate office address.
How 'bout a couple links to get you started? Kroger: http://www.kroger.com/financialinfo_reportsandsta
Food Lion: http://www.delhaizegroup.com/en/in_ar2002.asp
Also, privacy concerns around RFID tags are a little like concerns about supermarket scanners years ago. When the laser scanners were coming out, everybody was saying, retailers are going to collect information about what you buy. And none of that happened. I think the situation with RFID is similar.
Retailers DO collect info about what you buy, corps like WalMart and Target have huge datamining efforts to figure out what they should place near other items in the store based on buying patterns
I was in Austin last week for the second largest music festival in the US, South by Southwest (sxsw). RFID tags were embedded in the wrist bands that fesitval goers had to wear for the duration of the multi-day event. Most venues I went to scanned these (checking for counterfeit wristbands) using equipment that has the ability to store the info on the RFID tag to upload into a database. With plans to link personal information such as birthdate (for 21+ verification to purchase alcohol at events) and the ability to add money and use the wristband as a sxsw debit card, I see many privacy issues on the horizon for future sxsw goers. Approximately 7,000
I use 'em all the time, but that doesn't make analogies any more accurate.
Comparing RFID to bar codes is close in that that is what most retailers want them for.
However, that doesn't change the fact that bar codes DO NOT TRANSMIT and CAN NOT BE SEEN unless you put them in plain site.
It's like the difference in security between an ethernet cable and an open WiFi signal. Same -intended- purpose, but one is far more prone to abuse.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
When the laser scanners were coming out, everybody was saying, retailers are going to collect information about what you buy. And none of that happened.' Is that why I have two loyalty cards on my keyring and three more in my wallet?"
My friend was the project manager on the project that brought the loyalty cards to Giant Foods (big in the Mid-Atlantic region of the US, not sure about elsewhere) and he told me this is _exactly_ what they do. They track all your purchases and which sale items you buy, etc. Heck, the management there was giving him crap about not shopping at their stores because they were looking up his records at work!!
We are being tracked... more and more and with greater efficency every day. Personally, it scares the crap out of me.
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
You start a new job for a manager that you know nothing about in a large company. You notice that the last two or three people who worked for your new manager left but those topics of discussion are casually dropped whenever they're brought up. You don't want to press the issue.
You notice that any day you use your debit card tied to your bank account with the companies' credit union and the last transaction indicates that you stayed out late results in your manager being extra mindful of what time you come to the office the next day and he's also extra mindful of exactly what time you leave. These days frequently become the days in which he needs you to stay later or is more likely to make a comment that you were in at 8:45 am and not 8:30 am. Official company starting time is still 9:00 am but the whole situation provides more tension.
Privacy is never an issue until someone violates it. The fact is you'll never be able to prove how they violated it because the information likely went through three or four priveleged sources who have been indoctrinated with the corporate "management knows best, keep your mouth SHUT" policy.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
And coupons for things that they want you to start buying. Do you really think they're doing you a favour? There's no way they are making a loss on "sale" prices, so the more generous-looking the offer, the more they're screwing you by default.
A good site for this stuff.
- I didn't have to give out my name or address to get the card, so it's anonymous data
- The data from my purchases helps them run their store better, so everyone's happy
Well, no. The data from your purchases helps them ditch "unprofitable" customers, so they ain't happy.
Around 1999, the supermarket industry got wise that the larger part of their profit was being made from a small minority of customers, ones that buy high profit items (like premium ice-cream). The card data lets them profile what the "profitable" shopper buys, and they send coupons and stock the shelves to please them. In the mean time, they try and discourage "unprofitable" customer by shrinking shelfspace for the lines that they buy, and the "profit" guys don't. Because of this, they don't really care what your name is (like they ever did as long as they got your money). They just want to know your profile and work out whether they still want you as a customer.
It doesn't take an Einstein to work out that the end result is to phase out the cheap, low margin, staples that the lower income bracket depend on in favour of Haagen-Daaz and Organic Cider. So after stamping out the local Ma and Pa stores with agressive pricing of these basic goods, they want to be absolved of the responsibility of providing them because they have a low margin.
In the UK, this is fairly mild at present. You get a percentage discount (as redeemable coupons) and the odd (targetted) product coupon. Some lines have extra "points" on them but the price stays the same whether you have a card or not. I hear in the US some stores pretty much enforce the uptake of these cards by using punitive prices on some basic goods - like offering the "sale price" pretty much where it was before but raising the no-card price to a silly level. Although the UK market does have a number of synergistic loyalty cards that cover several outlets (e.g. Shopping + Fuel + Electric + Others).
Curiously, the Wal-Mart (Asda) stores in the UK are one of the few that don't have profiling cards. But I wouldn't be surprised if they were tying shopping records to one-way hashes of payment card info (or if anyone else was).
In the meantime, can you imagine the opportunities afforded by RFID? No more do they have to offer the semblance of "loyalty" to get their profile data - they can just tie the purchase logs to the RFID in your shoes. Chains that collaborate can start tying clothes preferences to food preferences to any other preference, tracking your movement through stores (no purchase required!), hell, even noting how long you pause in front of the rack of iPods, with sub-floor RFID pickups. (<Marketroid>"He stopped and drooled for 10 minutes today, send him another brochure!")
Safeway definitely keeps track of everything you buy. I remember when I lived in CA, I would use safeway home delivery. I remember the first time that I logged into safeway.com, it had EVERYTHING I had bought using my safeway card listed there. Everything. So apparently they have a huge database of all of this stuff. Personally, I don't really care. But it definitely does happen. What was kind of nice about it was that I could just choose my last shopping trip and have them deliver exactly what I had gotten the last time (or use it as a template).
Regards,
-JD-
And coupons for things that they want you to start buying. Do you really think they're doing you a favour? There's no way they are making a loss on "sale" prices, so the more generous-looking the offer, the more they're screwing you by default.
If they have a similar product to something I'm already buying, I might check it out. I'm not going to buy it simply because I have a cupon for it. The only things I ever recall getting cupons for which I did not buy are gas discounts.
It doesn't take an Einstein to work out that the end result is to phase out the cheap, low margin, staples that the lower income bracket depend on in favour of Haagen-Daaz and Organic Cider.
It also doesn't take a huge database system and supermarket cards to implement what you are discussing here. And, if your theory was correct, every grocery store would have turned into a boutique, only offering quaint, premium-brand foods.
Almost everything I buy is FMV or Kroger brand (which isn't being phased out at all, at least not at the supermarket near my house), and I'm damn happy with it. C'mon, get with the program here.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
I look forward to widespread use of RFIDs in the checkout lane. As a person who had to leave an area with a lot of self-service checkouts (Minneapolis) to an area with NO self-service checkouts (Rochester NY) I am NOT happy because now I have to wait in lines again while low wage retards slowly scan groceries for soccer moms that insist on writing a check AND only start to do so after the final tally is calculated. Since my move I've not once spent more time shopping for groceries than I spend in line waiting to pay for them!
The loyalty cards are not really the same as RFID.
RFID can be used to track items purchased, but really don't have a direct way to tie that information back to an individual consumer (assuming you don't give them the information in another way). A lot of stores have ways of doing this anyway and have for a very long time. Keeping track of what sells help keep your prices down by reducing overhead and helps make sure things are reordered promptly. There isn't a large difference between keeping track of what is sold and keeping track of the IP addresses tha access a web page and where they came from.
Consumer loyalty cards are very different. They track by individual user. A store might know that I like to buy a certain brand of cereal and use that information to increase their revenue by either targeting me in a marketing campaign or by selling the data to another company. Every loyalty program I've ever seen are voluntary except for private bulk stores (like SAMS CLUB or COSTCO). You are getting the discount in agreement that the store can use your information. If you don't agree, you can't complain about not getting a discount because they are not makinge money from you. Lower income families are more likely to use this, but their information is also less likely to be useful because of the lower discretionary income. There are also numerous ways around these cards and several people have commented on them.
There is also the option of not shopping at RFID or loyalty cards stores. Don't be angry when you have to pay more. Businesses are designed to make money. They use any legal means to do this function. While the ethics of this may be questionable, it is not currently illegal. If a store says that they'll give you a discount in exchange for marketing information, competing businesses may be put at a disadvantage because the primary shopping habit of people is based on price, not privacy.
When a new "upscale" grocery store opened in my old neighborhood, I was pleased that they didn't have loyalty cards. Now I notice that one of the major grocery stores I shop at (Rainbow Foods in Minneapolis area) has dropped their card. The other large competing chain, Cub/Supervalu doesn't have one either. Together they probably get 80% of the grocery shoppers in the metro area.
Neither do the others: Lund's, Byerly's etc. I can't think of a single grocery chain around here that still uses loyalty cards.
Q: Is this a nationwide trend, or just specific to this area of the upper Midwest?
I suspect that the rise in numbers of people paying with credit cards makes these loyalty cards superfluous. I rarely pay for groceries in cash and I tend to get pretty well targeted register coupons when I shop. e.g., I bake a lot so the register often prints out coupons for flour, sugar, chocolate, etc...
If these RFID devices are designed to be disabled (as the current RF security tags are), then it should be an easy matter to disable thousands of tags at a pop.
The current RF security tags (RF, not magnetic or accoustic tags) work via a passive or sympathetic action. The security sensors at the store exits transmit a low power RF signal. The RF tag receives this signal, which is converted to a weak electrical charge, which in turn powers a small transmitter. If the security scanner detects a signal on the RF tag's output frequency then it sounds the alarm. To disable a tag, a signal is broadcast at the same frequency as the "input" frequency of the RF tag, except the signal strength is so strong it burns up the tag (or more specifically burns out a specific fuse-like weak link in the tag).
So my point is that RFID tags also have to be powered externally by an RF signal - they are the same as RF security tags except their output signal is modulated to include static data. If someone had equipment set up, say in their vehicle, to broadcast at a few hundred watts (or perhaps thousands of watts in a short burst), they could potentially burn out quite a few tags in the store.
I'm somewhat surprised no one is doing this currently with the RF security tags.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
My memory isn't what it was! I remmber the time when I invaded Canada all by myself ...
Q: A lot of people worry that RFID will infringe on their privacy. Is that a valid concern?
...except when the RFID tag isn't on the tag, or there is more than one RFID tag.
...At the low end, the primary differentiator is price. At the high end, it's more about features, such as security, encryption, protection from evildoers.
...except the evildoers the system trusts, who can use RFID for their activities.
A: There's a theoretical risk. But we have safeguards, and more are coming. Our tags have a kill function that will destroy the tag in case of tampering.
Destruction in case of tampering is to protect the retailer, not the customer.
There are ways to simply erase the information on the tag. There are also less high-tech ways to deal with this: When I buy a garment, one of the first things I do when I get it home is cut off the tags. You can cut off RFID tags the same way.
Also, privacy concerns around RFID tags are a little like concerns about supermarket scanners years ago. When the laser scanners were coming out, everybody was saying, retailers are going to collect information about what you buy. And none of that happened. I think the situation with RFID is similar.
Exactly that happened: retailers gather data on customers, made possible by barcodes. RFID is like a barcode which can be scanned as you walk past the scanner, even if it's in a pocket or inside the sole of a shoe:
And for a lot of makers of sports shoes, RFID provides added benefit to customers. The average life of a sports-shoe model is about three months. Say that when your shoes wear out, you want a similar pair. It's incredibly difficult today for the retailer to tell a customer which new model corresponds to the old one. But we could fix that with RFID. That's a great sales tool.
As if current shoes couldn't have their model number printed on the inside. And what was that above about removing the RFID tag? How do you do that when it's embedded in the shoe? What better place to put a unique serial number than in a person's shoes, to be read by floor-based scanners under doorways.
I frequently use my debit card to get cash out without purchasing anything. For some reason the system magically knows that I purchase baby diapers and formula without me actually buying anything on my current order and prints me out coupons for diapers and formula. I don't have a club card either.
I don't think its a bad thing to use RFID to track products for inventory. The article went deeper than that.
They were talking about putting RFID in cell phones or key chains and such. Using the tag to hold ALL of your personal data such as medical records, drivers licence, credit card and even car key.
Not once did the "reporter" (not) ask "what happens when you lose your cell phone with all your info stored in it?"
Identity theft is what makes me think twice about ever using devices like this.
When they're broke - everybody. Sure their selection sucks ass, and most of their merchandise is shoddy, but they are cheap cheap cheap!
When I can afford to shop anywhere else I do. When I got $15 to last 2 weeks, I shop at Wal-Mart.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
OK, so we know that stores are tracking your purchases. My question: So what?
On the pro side:
You get targetted coupons
Stores get superior inventory flow management. This allows them to cut costs. This may result in: lower cost product, higher wages to employees, higher bonuses to bigwigs. None of those are horrible things.
On the con side:
"They" are "watching" me.
Will someone explain to me why the hell a store cares how many bottles of preparation-H you buy, other than to make sure they stock enough to meet demand? To what nefarious purposes are they going to put this info?
I'm limiting this to barcodes/loyalty cards. I'm well aware of the Minority-Report-esque possibilities of RFID outside the store.
Psst. The men in the black helicopters don't need warrants.
:)
I wasn't actually shooting for a +insightful either. More like +tinfoil-hat.
Damn right. It must be nice to have the money to sit around and spit out idealistic crap regarding Wal*Mart (and I don't argue that much of it is true), but when you're bairly making it there's pretty much no choice.
"Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
well.
Wal-mart forces a monopoly in small towns.
Where I am currently sitting, the town is population 18,000; pre-wally world, the town had 4 grocery stores, 2 department stores.
since Supper Wally came in, we have 2 grocery stores (and 1 of those will be closing within the year) and 0 department stores.
I've seen them go into a town of 8000 and cause everything but the walmart go out of business.
So, unless you live in a fairly urbanized area, walmart does it's best to become your ONLY choice.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
It doesn't take an Einstein to work out that the end result is to phase out the cheap, low margin, staples that the lower income bracket depend on
And, this explains the utter failure of WalMart and the stunning success of Bread and Circuses.
Oh just wait. You can bet law enforcement will find all kinds of neat-o keen uses for RFID technology. For instance, every felon getting one subdermally courtesy of the US government!
They will never stop until somebody makes the
For example, in the Seattle, WA area using the Microsoft main phone number of 425-882-8080 -or- the Boeing number of 206-655-2121 at QFC or Safeway works every time. As an added bonus when they are running "Spent $500 a week and save an additional 10% on your groceries" promotions you get the additional savings almost instantly. There are other promotions they run all the time as well, "Buy 5 Starbucks coffee beverages and the next on is free" I seem to get a free latte every 2nd or 3rd trip to the store.
As long as you use cash (not your ATM/Debit or Credit Card!) you effectively remove yourself from their data-collection system... in fact you are contributing misinformation to their database, actually reducing the value of their data collection stream. To really corrupt the information, use the phone number of a business that you have no interest/affiliation in whatsoever.
If the stores ever care enough to shut down one of the number just move to the next major business number in your area... repeat, lather, rinse.
Don't but(sic) it if you can't afford it.
I have no idea which "clothing and home items" the parent-poster was referring to, but if they are underwear and laundry detergent (or items like this) "don't buy it if you can't afford it" is not a viable option. Maybe you can afford a $400,000 home and drive a BMW but for many people when faced with the choice of paying $30 a pair for boxer shorts at the mall or a pack of 5 for $10 at wal-mart, they'll take wal-mart any day of the week.
Today I didn't even have to use my AK; I got to say it was a good day -- Icecube
They're not out to spy on you
The point of loyalty cards is not to allow a secret cabal of abstemious zealots to monitor whether you buy yellow mustard or brown. The point is to be able to identify frequent shoppers, and their buying preferences, and thus tailor the inventory of the store (and its "specials") to those frequent customers. Key point: they're identifying a class of people, not keeping track of you.
Here's how it works
Let's pretend that you and I are the management team at a local supermarket. The seafood manager says that we've sold every ounce of salmon in the store today--and we sold out yesterday, too. He wants to expand the space in the display case for salmon. In the old days you and I would look at one another, shrug, and say, "go ahead, Gene, sounds like a plan." Today we'd look to see whether the salmon was purchased by our core customers or not.
The point of a loyalty card plan is to identify customers who shop in our store every week. The industry has a pretty good picture of retail shopping patterns: they know that people spend roughly $30-40 per week (per person) on groceries. If they identify someone who is spending over a hundred dollars per week in a store, they can confidently identify that person as a "core shopper." Those core shoppers constitute the vast bulk of that store's business: it will pay the grocery chain big time to tailor that store's inventory and pricing to the tastes and preferences of those core shoppers.
Think back to our conversation with Gene, the seafood manager. He's selling salmon like, well, hotcakes--and now we've identified that practically all of that salmon is being bought by core shoppers. We notice that lots of other seafood is being bought by core shoppers. And, we notice, deli sales are more or less flat. Perhaps we can increase revenue by giving a bit more case space to the seafood counter, and take a little space from the deli (pretend they're adjacent).
Once upon a time grocery stores used to "floorplan" every store to a similar pattern. And for some categories (laundry soap) they will continue to plan each store similarly. But for lots of categories store inventories within a chain will vary widely--because your local store has a customer base that buys lots of salmon, or lots of kosher food, or lots of home baking products.
This concept of tailoring inventory to match customer demand is crucial to the grocery store chain--because the margins in groceries are so small. The essence of the grocery store business (at least financially) is inventory management: and the essence of inventory management is to turn your inventory as many times per year as you can. Inventory turn is a simple calculation: sales divided by inventory. If you have $5 million in sales, and you have $800,000 in inventory, your inventory turn is a respectable 6.25. If you have a 2% profit margin on sales, you're earning $100,000 in profit on those sales, which amounts to a 12.5% return on your investment in inventory. (This is a crude example [e.g. it doesn't include capital expenses] but you get the general idea.) A 12.5% return on investment (ROI) is terrific these days--but using those loyalty cards you can break down your sales figures by department, and determine your ROI, literally, aisle by aisle through your store. And you can determine how much of your sales are to core customers, aisle by aisle through your store. And thus you can tailor your inventory--dropping slow movers, expanding shelf space for hot products, and using your knowledge to better guess what new products to shelve.
In short, improving profitability by focusing on your core customers and serving them better is a pretty cool use of technology.
So what's the end result?
You shop at a grocery store that has more of what you want, and less of what you don't. Yes--the truly paranoid are correct in saying that the grocery store company could deduce a lot about you by examining what you buy (lots
RFID is not as bad as you think. I used to work for a provider of data warehoouse solutions, granted not in the consulting division. I went to a presentation one of the guys in supermarket consulting gave, and he talked about the complete failure of the supermarkets to do anyting useful with the data they were collecting with loyalty cards. I worked at a grocery store when the cards were first introduced. They had all these great ideas about sending you personalized coupons, and % off rewards by tracking savings and giving reward points. They don't do this anymore. The supermarkets failed miserably at targeted marketing and 'spying'. They are in the business of selling food, they are not in the business of collecting data about their customers. Sure it would be of huge benefit to them to do this, but short of WAL-MART having the resources and brains to make something like this work nobody knows how. The supermarkets are too dumb. Look at self check out and how much they missed the boat on this. I go to the store and all the person in front of me does is complain about what a piece of crap this self checkout is, just last week the lady in front of me said "I could have gone through faster through the regular check out." You do not need ot worry about the ability of retailers to capitalize on this information. RFID will be driven by supply chain management people. Any efforts to aggregate data on your purchases will come from marketing. Any actual solution for these will come from the IT department. So to get this data collection to work you need IT, Marketing and SCM. My corporate experience has shown that getting 2 people to work together on something is hard enough try getting hundreds from 3 different departments and a CEO who is so caught up in squeezing the last dollar out of each department without spending even $0.50 and there is no way this will happen. (this is the one time you can thank CEO's for being so cost driven) Especially 5 years from now when every IT job in America has been outsourced to india and the IT guys are 5,000,000 miles away from the marketing dept. Relax a little and take that foil hat off your head. There is no conspiracy to take away your privacy. Nobody who has the power to do it has the brains to pull it off. Or to reailze that it could actually be done.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
"The stores forced them on you? They refuse to take your money unless you have one? It is impossible for you to take your business elsewhere?"
They jack the price up, then discount it to regular rates only if you play your part in the game. It's not really a privacy problem, but I prefer positive rewards for being a market research subject, not negative reinforcement for NOT being a research volunteer, get it?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Your faith is YOUR faith. Keep it to yourself and people won't get pissed. Your faith has no place in other people's lives. Stop trying to inject it into the conversation. Stop trying to inject it into the law. No one likes having someone else's beliefs pushed on them.
Faith is like sexuality. It makes great art. Let others discover it for themselves. And please keep it behind closed doors. For non-theists, this applies to the absence of faith as well. It's not for public display or debate. No matter how hard you try, you can't prove that you're right. It all comes down to faith.
Walmart DOES abuse their powers. They require their suppliers to decrease cost each year or be cut out regardless of contract. They have locked in employees at night with no way to get out (managers have keys, but are not there). They have forced employees on salary to clock in and out, and then dock them pay for being gone and not pay overtime when they are there in excess of 40 hours...often at night. While they may not purposefully price things to force competition out, by being as large as they are and their actions with suppliers (remember they force lower prices from the suppliers), they are in effect the MicroSoft of retail. This is just a small list of their actions.
RSA developed an RFID Blocker Tag which annoys RFID readers by responding grumpily to all RFID read requests. It's a passive device like RFIDs, and doesn't burn out anything, just blocks requests.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Others have already pointed out that the so-called "discounts" offered by loyalty cards really aren't. You're supposed to think that you're getting a discount off the regular price if you use your loyalty card, when the reality is that you're paying a higher-than-standard price if you don't use a loyalty card.
It reminds me of mail-in rebates. Someone not long ago -- I think it was Ed Foster, in his column "The Gripe Line", but I don't remember for sure -- pointed out that when D-Link or whoever offers you a $30 "mail-in rebate" on that WiFi router, they don't actually want to give you a lower price -- if they did, they'd just mark the price down. What they're hoping is that people will be drawn into the store by the lure of the so-called "discount price", buy the router, then decide it's too much of a hassle to fill out all the forms, mail them, and wait six to eight weeks for the check. It's a rather deceptive marketing practice, just like loyalty cards are.