[109571] in Cypherpunks
Re: Safeway printing Club Card names on cash register receipts
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lucky Green)
Tue Mar 30 04:37:39 1999
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 11:21:18 +0200 (CEST)
From: Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to>
To: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19990329214533.00908660@idiom.com>
Reply-To: Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to>
A while back, Safeway implemented a policy to thank each customer by name.
The name is determined either by the name on the credit card, ATM card, or
discount card. Not all customers appreciated it. One clerk that sensed
this refused to follow the policy and was subsequently fired. As of about
a month ago, neither of my two local Safeway's is thanking me by name.
Guess the policy has changed...
Besides, not even I can pronounce the name on the Safeway Club Card I
traded for a card in the name of "John Q. Cypherpunk" at a recent meeting.
:-)
--Lucky
On Mon, 29 Mar 1999, Bill Stewart wrote:
>
> Safeway, Lucky, and other grocery store chains have club cards,
> which get you discounts on selected items if you use them when you check out.
> The privacy impacts of these are mixed - most of the early ones
> wanted your Real Name, and were often used as a check cashing id as well.
> More recently, they've been less concerned about your name,
> since the real benefit is the amount of marketing information they get
> on whether to put the beer next to the donuts or the disposable diapers,
> and how much correlation there is between different kinds of products,
> and what sort of coupon to print for you at the checkout line.
> So you can get your card as "John Doe", and one activity common at
> cypherpunks meetings has been to exchange grocery store club cards,
> further obfuscating any evidence.
>
> I bought stuff at Safeway the other night, and the checkout clerk gave
> me my change and said
> "thank you for shopping at safeway, Mr. ummm... Cypherpunik"
> which surprised me a bit, but sure enough the receipt said the card
> belonged to "J Random Cypherpunki". That wasn't one of mine -
> I normally go for "John Doe, General Delivery, San Francisco CA 94101".
> But they are watching.... :-)
> Thanks!
> Bill
> Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
> PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
>
>
-- Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to> PGP v5 encrypted email preferred.
