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iTunes is Malware?
Moby writes "On the heels of the big Apple love-in that is Macworld comes some interesting but alarming news. Recently a few blogs have started to indicate that iTunes is tracking your music preferences and using that data to recommend other songs from iTMS. The article provides a good overview, with some recommendations of its own. Basically, iTunes is tracking your music and sending the data back to Apple servers. This info is then used to advertise songs that may be to your tastes. A convenient feature, perhaps, but it raises concerns over privacy."
I want them to track my music listening habits. Maybe if they notice the bands I listen to, they will make deals to distribute music from Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords artists. . . 'cause currently iTunes have almost nothing I want to listen to.
I once signed my real name and number on one of those, and I got zilch that I could tell was from filling it out. No mail, no phonecalls ... nothing.
But as I've read more about the grocery store industry I'm thinking more and more that those 'club' cards aren't much about tracking consumers as in identifying the gross number of unique shoppers that use the club card.
The reason being, is that the way grocery stores work is a little counter-intuitive. You would think that some shopper for safeway goes out, finds some variety of products , then places them on the shelves in such a way that the more profitable are chest level.
The actual mechanics are much more complex. Food suppliers will actually pay money to have their products on the ends of the isles, in the best position on the space. I'm pretty sure there's a little buying and selling on the part of Safeway, but I suspect the real situation is more like the suppliers are renting the space out to put their products on.
The store brand then is the way the store makes money on the actual product not on just the shelf space.
Therefore, the club cards are something that safeway charges for. Products become club specials, not when safeway finds a crate going bad, or found a good deal, but when the supplier pays safeway to put them on the club. So, Safeway really doesn't care about the information behind the card, (My last couple of club cards I got, they just handed me a new card, I didn't have to fill out anything). All safeway cares about is how often the card is used, so they can tell their suppliers how great it would be if they put their products on the club card.