Slashdot Mirror
Safeway Club Card Leads to Bogus Arson Arrest
Richard M. Smith writes "Tukwila, Washington firefighter, Philip Scott Lyons found out the hard way
that supermarket loyalty cards come with a huge price. Lyons was arrested
last August and charged with attempted arson. Police alleged at the time
that Lyons tried to set fire to his own house while his wife and children
were inside. According to KOMO-TV and the Seattle Times, a major piece of evidence used against Lyons in his arrest was the record of his supermarket purchases that he made with his Safeway Club Card. Police
investigators had discovered that his Club Card was used to buy fire starters of the same type used in the arson attempt. For Lyons, the story did have a happy ending. All charges were dropped against him in January 2005 because another person stepped forward saying he or she
set the fire and not Lyons."
A magistrate who found a £3,250 Rolex watch in a supermarket and gave it to his wife as a 60th birthday present was fined £600 after being found guilty of theft.
Rowlett, a building surveyor, was caught almost two years later after taking the watch for repair at a jewellers near his home in Poole.
It was identified from its serial number as having been lost or stolen.
Inquiries with Tesco, through its Club Card loyalty scheme records, and receipts of purchases showed Rowlett had been in the shop within two hours of Mrs ScottHeh, hit the nail on the head with that one ;) It seems a lot of people here don't realise this - you only need to charge a credit card against it once and the link is made.
Sorry, just being charged can ruin your reputation.
The only way to make bogus data work, name address, etc. is to use cash 100% of the time.
The moment you tie a member card to a transaction paid by cheque, debit card or whatever, there is now a link between you and the card. From that moment on, that card, bogus data or not, will be linked to you.
That's why many stores don't care if you fill out the application using the name Micky Mouse then you turn around and pay by debit card or cheque. Or a store manager upon asking will give you a card without filling out an application and then you turn around and pay by cheque. The minute the transaction is processed, your profile, the cards data, is updated with the new information.
There's not just one name linked to a card either. Swap with friends and all that does is link another name to the card. They still have records of this person bought this and this other person bought that.
My local store, if all you tell them is you forgot your card, they say no problem and the cashier scans a store card kept at the register. So what? As long as you pay by anything other than cash, a new transaction is created that can be cross referenced back to you. You don't think for a minute that debit card numbers, bank account numbers etc. are *not* part of the member card transaction record?
Member cards were a solution to group transactions by cross reference. One household may have 6-7 methods of paying. One couple has seperate checking accounts, their own credit/debit cards, that's four methods right there. Add different credit cards and now a household may have 7 ways to pay. Member cards were introduced only to help group these transactions into a larger household picture. Household demographics is what they're after, "household" is the holy grail of demographics.
They lost this household demographic when they started to accepted plastic as payment. Ever notice member cards were not introduced until stores started taking CC/Debit cards for payments? They've been tracking purchases for 30 years. Back then, joint checking accounts were common and paying by cheque was the only method other than cash. Back then household demographics was a simplier excerise. It's worth a few cents off an inflated price to incurage you to help them group these new plastic transactions by household.
So, except that the government has caught on that this can be a wealth of information, this is nothing new. Unless you use cash 100% of the time you're not beating the system the way you think you are by filling out the application with false data.
"If they can get all the info they need from your credit card and check then why do they need the member card to idnetify you anyhow?"
Well, for one thing, the member card provides a link between credit card purchases (which have your personal info) and cash purchases (which would normally be anonymous). If you even once use a credit/debit card with your member card all of your previous and future purchases with that member card are then related to your name & address.
"All I can think of is that somehow the act of getting a member card is an authorization for them to collect that information."
Yes, among other things. Not that anybody ever reads these agreements, but it also gives them the right to sell your name and address, usually.
-dwd-