Are you a privacy advocate? I have found a $2.00 way to turn the tables on those who would track your cash spending habits.
It's in my shopping cart (Yeah, there's a buck in it for me ... just about exactly ONE buck.) under the category "Subversion".
You can do this without paying me. But I earn the buck by making it easier than talking your neighbor into the exchange and out of having you committed.
Bill
habits?? I have ONE of those discount card things and it is so beat up it is unreadable. When I do use it the store clerk has to use the generic one at the counter or borrow one from another customer, so no tracking of me at any rate. If they want to track my purchase habits they can use my credit cards any way. I have nothing to hide and if I did I would use untraceable cash to buy those items. You need to spend more time turning and less time worrying about subversion.
One of the local supermarket chains has recently introduced online ordering. They say if you give them your card number it will pull up a list of items you have purchased from that store.
I've doing almost all my grocery shopping there since the store opened about 10 years ago. It came up with 3 items.
Speaking of which, you cannot get in and out of most stores with out being counted.
And while way OT, LOL. I found a new way to get the survey takers off of my back in a hurry. When they approach or call, ask them how much they are going to pay you for the information. The answer is almost always NOTHING. Then ask them if they are being paid to gather this information. The answer is almost always YES. Then ask them why they should be paid and you are not going to be paid. That's then I hear a CLICK on the telephone.
That's the problem with most of the systems that monitor any type of activity on a large scale, not enough man-hours to really to a good tracking job. I've stopped worring about the government listening to my phone calls or reading my e-mails, by the time they have gone through todays back log of average citizens my grandkids will have grand kids. I am only talking about the ones that have "key words" in them not the bulk of garbage the average citizen puts out. Even with computers the amount of data that must be done by "hand" is staggering. Each "Hit" has to be checked out and monitered so only the ones that are really of interest get any real attention.
Geezus John - you need to broaden your dietary habits.
I suspect that it is not man hours theat is the problem rather a reset of the system changing all the counts back to "Zero". Keeping up with what a person buys is not a problem at all. Computers have been keeping up with multiple inventories sold to hundreds of customers automatically for many many years.
I've stopped worring about the government listening to my phone calls
No kidding, why would the government want to single me out of 350,000,000 people and spend any time looking at me. We are being monitored by many different entities ant any given point in time. Do you use a telephone, satellite TV, cable TV, Tivo, the internet, credit card, membership card, appear in public, buy tickets, ;~)
If they are like the ones in Houston that tried that several years back, the company that provided that service for the grocery store was often dropped and changed for another and the history was lost with each vendor change.
Ah, "Key Cards" I have one for Spec's Liquor, Kroger, Randall's, CVS Pharmacy, Borders Book Store, Sam's Club, Radio Shack, Block Buster, Hollywood Video, and yes, Craftsman, The Tool Club, PetSmart, and that's it. LOL. I almost need a wallet for all these cards alone. Well worth carrying and using as immediate discounts ring up on the register when they are used at the local grocery stores. I really don't care if they remember how good of a customer that I am, it saves me lots of money every time I pull out the card.
Three items: pizza, beer, potato chips -- sounds like a winner to me.
I have an even faster, easier approach: I just hang up.
I like that!!!!! Mind if I copy???
The Kroger card is worth carrying for the $0.03/gallon discount it gives on gasoline - making it about $0.02/gallon cheaper than the RaceTrac a half-mile (the opposite direction of most of my trips) down the road.
retirement = fixed income = any way to find tool money
John
You need to care.
As was pointed out in an earlier posting, the data collected isn't owned by the store collecting it. To them, it's just another income stream. They are paid for your data. So your shopping habits go into one big pot called "Leon's Personal Profile" which tracks all of your purchases at:
Spec's Liquor (doesn't own the data) Kroger (doesn't own the data) Randall's (doesn't own the data) CVS Pharmacy (doesn't own the data) Borders Book Store (doesn't own the data) Sam's Club (doesn't own the data) Radio Shack (doesn't own the data) Block Buster (doesn't own the data) Hollywood Video (doesn't own the data) Craftsman (doesn't own the data) The Tool Club (doesn't own the data) PetSmart (doesn't own the data)
So, if these stores don't own the data, who does?
In effect, the stores are running a continuous sale to you, which is subsidized by another company willing to pay for your data. The store gets your immediate loyalty while keeping their data processing costs down. But, nobody would be willing to pay to collect that data unless they could sell it for a profit. Nobody would buy that data unless they also knew how to turn a buck off it.
That information can be used to manipulate you. That's why the people in marketing can afford nice cars ... their mumbo-jumbo works. So the final value comes from - tada! - your wallet.
In the end, you pay other people to use your information against you.
What I have suggested is a way to continue getting the 'discount' without painting a target on your own chest. Even swapping out only the national chain customer coding tags (since you'd never hold still for having a bar code tattooed to your wrist or an RFID implanted, they just get you to carry the bar code around in your pocket for them) is enough to throw sand in the gears.
Lots of folks on this list fought in at least one war to maintain their freedom. Do you think the war is over?
Bill
I do after getting the manager and explaining that they just spent $500 of the companies money by calling me.
Mark (sixoneeight) = 618
Three cents? Here in Indianapolis, the card gets you *ten* cents a gallon.
After the purchase of a $100 in groceries right? Same here in Southern Illinois, but 3 cent per gallon discount generally.
Mark
I know how it works, I have carried some of those cards for 10 + years. For me, I have seen nothing br discounts come from them. I am not quite so paranoid about these cards as perhaps you should be since you are be photographed every time you go into almost any store.
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