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Cafe in Providence, Rhode Island Serves Free Coffee To Students Who Provide Personal Data; Participants May Receive Info From Cafe's Corporate Sponsors (npr.org)
An anonymous reader shares an NPR report: Shiru Cafe looks like a regular coffee shop. Inside, machines whir, baristas dispense caffeine and customers hammer away on laptops. But all of the customers are students, and there's a reason for that. At Shiru Cafe, no college ID means no caffeine. "We definitely have some people that walk in off the street that are a little confused and a little taken aback when we can't sell them any coffee," said Sarah Ferris, assistant manager at the Shiru Cafe branch in Providence, R.I., located near Brown University. Ferris will turn away customers if they're not college students or faculty members. The cafe allows professors to pay, but students have something else the shop wants: their personal information.
To get the free coffee, university students must give away their names, phone numbers, email addresses and majors, or in Brown's lingo, concentrations. Students also provide dates of birth and professional interests, entering all of the information in an online form. By doing so, the students also open themselves up to receiving information from corporate sponsors who pay the cafe to reach its clientele through logos, apps, digital advertisements on screens in stores and on mobile devices, signs, surveys and even baristas. According to Shiru's website: "We have specially trained staff members who give students additional information about our sponsors while they enjoy their coffee." The source article additionally explores privacy aspects of the business. The cafe, which is owned by Japanese company Enrission, says it shares general, aggregate data such as student majors and expected graduation years.
To get the free coffee, university students must give away their names, phone numbers, email addresses and majors, or in Brown's lingo, concentrations. Students also provide dates of birth and professional interests, entering all of the information in an online form. By doing so, the students also open themselves up to receiving information from corporate sponsors who pay the cafe to reach its clientele through logos, apps, digital advertisements on screens in stores and on mobile devices, signs, surveys and even baristas. According to Shiru's website: "We have specially trained staff members who give students additional information about our sponsors while they enjoy their coffee." The source article additionally explores privacy aspects of the business. The cafe, which is owned by Japanese company Enrission, says it shares general, aggregate data such as student majors and expected graduation years.
As long as everyone understands that there is another price being paid (other than cash), I don't have a problem with this.
I stopped reading at "free coffee". How can I get in on this?
The website for the Japanese-owned cafe also explains Shiru's mission and philosophy:
The western world is sort of appalled at only serving one set of people. Not as true in Japan. My guess is this place will fail not because of the free coffee for college students, but because those students can't bring their non-college student friends to this place.
Just send me all your personal data, social security number and dog's name and I will up moderate your next slashdot comment for free!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It works fine for bookface and Alphabet. The coffee shop can probably re-sell the data repeatedly.
I would go with using the socially available information for someone else. I mean free coffee is worth that much effort on my part.
... dumb/desperate enough to voluntarily do this.
Ivy League college students.
We're doomed.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
We make that trade everywhere else. Might as well get some tangible goods for it.
it might fail as an ongoing advertising distribution project but once they seed their personal info database, why even bother continuing to give away coffee? they ought to just open up for a couple weeks at the beginning of each semester
I would gladly exchange some slightly poisoned personal info for some free coffee. :)
(Profit!)
I can't help but imagine that there is some kind of "advertising bubble" like a stock bubble, that is going on here. Is advertising *really* that valuable? I see ads, and they influence my purchases, and that is money to be made. (Well, shifted, since no new good was created.) So if they know my birth date and favorite color, they can target ads to me better. But how much better does that influence my purchases compared to the original ad they showed me? How much more money is there to be made from the more targeted ad? Is it worth a cent? A dollar? Ten dollars? Do advertisers really pay real dollars for that? Will companies really pay more for those targeted ads? Do they really really turn into profits somewhere?
I wonder if advertisers are using the concept of "targeted" ads to jack up advertising prices to the point where the ROI is not sustainable. I am hoping that it will turn out that targeted ads are not much better than regular ads, and there is a market "crash" that happens, and suddenly personal data becomes worthless.
"Weep for the future Na'Toth. Weep for us all."
that is all.
Name (fine)
Phone number (work)
Email (throwaway I use for orders)
Major (sure)
DOB (sure, year is correct, but month and day are made up)
You ask me for data, I'll give it to you. It may not be accurate, is all. Because you have given me no incentive to provide accurate data, and I don't trust you. After all, this is about coffee, not something important. You get what you could have looked up anyway.
figures.
they're the ones stupid enough to fall for this bullshit.
Why do people give away their PII data (name/DOB/address/etc...) for nothing. And a 50 cernt cup of coffee is, practically, nothing.
See how they like it. :)
[($)]
Since these Ivy Leaguers may be involved in writing some kind of privacy policies or legislation that gets imposed upon the rest of us.
One day the students will show up with a hankering for coffee and find the coffee house stripped bared. Everything is gone. No warning. Just disappeared into the night with a boatload of personal data without a trace. The city will claim they never had a permit and never had health inspections. They never existed.
...to see just how little society values its data.
This seems like the first actual case where users are getting something tangible for their data, as opposed to just having it wrenched out of them for nothing other than the benefit of stealing some of their paid for bandwidth to do so. I'm having a hard time seeing this as a terrible thing. It's a choice, and they know what the exchange is up front. Seems alright to me.
Ferris will turn away customers if they're not college students or faculty members.
Lawsuit claiming discrimination in a public accommodation in 3... 2... 1. Sure, those who are college students or faculty members aren't a protected class, but you can still sue, even if you'll lose.
The western world is sort of appalled at only serving one set of people.
Isn't this discrimination?
"To get the free coffee, university students must give away their names, phone numbers, email addresses and majors, or in Brown's lingo, concentrations. "
Concentrations? Well, instead of Café, they should have named it 'Camp' and perhaps offer a free id tattoo?
But now since we have Godwin out of the way, does that mean they have their data for life and the students get coffee for life?
Name: Amedeo Avogadro
D.O.B 23/06/1996
Concentration: Chemistry
Phone Number: 602-(221-0023) - (6.022 x 10^23)
Email Address: themole@molecule.com
Student Id's are not exactly hard to make.
People pay 1000s of dollars for:
"Free" Email
"Free" Applications
"Free" Youtube
They pay for the phone, pay for the bandwidth, pay for the storage, and even give a real credit card number for the cheap 4.99 applications.
People value their privacy so little, that they PAY people to take it from them.
I don't know if it's anymore discriminatory than Costco selling only to Costco members.
When anyone can become a college student for $35 a year, we'll talk. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Is cost what determines if something is discriminatory?
Can I rent a dorm room at a public college campus without being a student?
So they say they release aggregate data...but they are collecting phone numbers.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
. . . are stupid
....please don't ever, ever bitch about your personal information being used commercially.
-Styopa
No, but it is one fairly straightforward way to prove discrimination. Minorities statistically make less money on average than people in the majority (whatever that might mean in a given region of the world). Therefore, anything that costs a lot of money will probably be rarer among minorities, statistically. Therefore, one might reasonably argue that tying an otherwise unrelated service to such an expensive thing (in this case, being in college) is prima facie discriminatory until proven otherwise by some other plausible explanation for why such tying is necessary.
That "otherwise unrelated" part is critically important, of course. No one in his or her right mind would claim that Apple is discriminating against minorities for not making iOS available on low-end Android hardware, because iOS depends on the hardware, and there's a sizable cost involved in making it work on other hardware. But clearly it isn't harder or more expensive to serve coffee to non-students, nor is there any other obvious reason for the tying other than that the sponsor is only willing to pay for the personal information of college students. And I doubt that would be considered sufficient grounds for tying the two together (no pun intended).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Last I checked personal information is not legal tender. Capitalism running wild; this shit needs to be put into check real quick.
... since America is sharing the Dream with Japan.
So, fuck you very much mr president.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
" Beware of Greeks bearing gifts "
Wow. Based on this: Name: Amedeo Avogadro D.O.B 23/06/1996 Concentration: Chemistry Phone Number: 602-(221-0023) - (6.022 x 10^23) Email Address: themole@molecule.com They are giving away PII information. All they need is a social security number and they have enough PII to open bank accounts in the students name. What a scam! It will be interesting to see How many of these students eventually fall victim to identity theft.
There are way too many people out there who would sell their soul (or freedom) for a freebie.
Listen, loud and clear - nothing is free . . . . except salvation, and too few are interested in that.
I'd like to let everyone know there is gold in them beans.
A certain debit transaction company is offering a dollar off all purchases at coffee shops.
Go to said coffee shop, purchase free coffee with card, get $1 back. Profit, bitches.
You're welcome.
Read the sentence until the end, it's not free coffee.
"Free Coffee To Students Who Provide Personal Data"
That's not free.
aaaaaaa
By doing so, the students also open themselves up to receiving information from corporate sponsors who pay the cafe to reach its clientele through logos, apps, digital advertisements on screens in stores and on mobile devices, signs, surveys and even baristas.
I'd like to imagine someone trying to go in there and telling them their interests are only "porn" and "prostitutes."
Then find out all the info you talked about... they went and sold. :)
[($)]