“Air Miles card?” the sweet young thing breezily asks, as she has been trained to do.
At the Sobey’s checkout counter, you are automatically asked for your “loyalty” card, in order that your identity be associated with your purchase. Loyalty cards are known variously as “Northern Friends” (Northern Reflections stores), “iRewards” (Coles/Chapters), “HBC Rewards” (Zellers/the Bay). Sobeys recently switched from their in-house card, to the ubiquitous Air Miles.
In order to allocate a certain number of air travel points to you, it is necessary that all your purchase be tracked and grouped under a single identity. Why do you suppose the stores are so eager to give away air miles? The answer is that corporations can derive enormous advantages by correlating purchases of item ‘A’ with article ‘B’. For example, if people who buy a certain make of dog food, are also observed to also favour a certain brand of ice cream, or bottled water, then the grocery chain can offer promotions specifically targeted to customers that fit the profile.
In fact, when a customer identifies him/herself at the checkout counter (via the electronic loyalty card), the store’s computer can immediately re-program the cash register to charge an amount customized to each buyer. High roller or penny-pincher? The computer knows, and will charge accordingly.
“What’s the harm?”, you ask?
As an information technology professional, I am concerned about ways that organizations can use computers to invade and abuse people’s privacy.
Imagine how this information can be exploited. If you apply for life insurance, wouldn’t the insurance company love to know how what your diet has been? How many greasy porkchops, how much Coca-Cola you’ve ingested? Suppose you’ve consumed Sprite all your life, and years later it is discovered that it contained a carcinogen? And now you can’t get life insurance to protect your family.
To put it in very personal terms, the supermarket can track your purchases of sanitary napkins or tampons. Do you really want to share this?
For more info, check out:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/70072_loyal11.asp
There’s an organization called CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) that has an excellent web site on the subject:
Resist the tide of privacy invasion! Boycott the loyalty cards! Fight back against Big Brother. To paraphrase “Henry V”:
And consumers now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their privacy cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us against the Loyalty Card.