Supermarkets know everything from your gender to licence plate number. Do you care?
The Spinoff Daily, Monday March 25
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“Most people probably have at least a few loyalty cards loitering in their wallets, filled with bookshop stamps or outdoor store discounts or fuel savings codes. By sheer virtue of frequency of visit and variety of products available, the supermarket card will probably have more information about you than a coffee shop or fuel station – but is it really anything to worry about?
The discounts on a loyalty card are just a sweetener, says Gehan Gunasekara, co-founder of independent group the Privacy Foundation and a law professor who has worked with students researching loyalty schemes. What makes that scuffed bit of plastic really valuable, fake name or no, is your data. ‘They know everything you buy, every item, which store it’s bought from, how often you go to the supermarket, which brands you like,’ Gunasekara says. ‘That’s really fine-grained data – it can tell the story of your diet, your preferences, your whole life.’”
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