4 ms·

Unless this guy doesn't have any Credit Cards or specialty cards (Grocery, Gas, etc...) I think he's probably already in the position that he's scared Facebook

by SamAtt 16y ago

Unless this guy doesn't have any Credit Cards or specialty cards (Grocery, Gas, etc...) I think he's probably already in the position that he's scared Facebook will put him in. It's just not being run by Facebook. Really what he's doing is freaking out over Facebook because they've been open about what info they're collecting. While the Grocery store tricks him with a discount and then takes all his info on the back end.

warfangle 16y ago
That grocery store cannot then tie it to not only who you are but who your friends are. They have your name and address, but they don't have your entire social graph at their fingertips. Or your entire digital (or, with the rfid, real-world) historical travel data. If this goes tits up, it could be just the kind of surveillance needed for a 21st century locked-down police state.
tokenadult 16y ago
Yes. Here's the epic.org link shared in another Facebook thread here on HN yesterday by another HN participant: http://epic.org/privacy/profiling/ http://epic.org/privacy/profiling/
sliverstorm 16y ago
I still don't understand why people are so worried about grocery store discount cards. Ok, so they know my address. That's alright by me; my address exists so everyone can know it. So they know my name correlates to my address; that's alright too, they can find this info in public records. The only possibly sketchy thing is they can correlate my food purchases to me and my address. However, this doesn't bother me personally. I don't care if the world knows I buy one kind of bread instead of another, or that I buy hummus instead of butter. If there are sensitive things you are paranoid about, like personal care products, just don't use the card for those purchases. Either way, they just wind up with spending patterns on food correlated to one individual. The horror. It's not your SSN or passport or any of that jazz. Besides, if advertising became more accurately targeted, I feel that would generally be a good thing. You'd get in touch with products you were genuinely interested in, advertising costs would plummet (causing prices to drop as well), and there'd be less utterly useless cruft in the ads you receive.
- pyre 16y ago
  There was an instance of someone being arrested because he purchased rope from a Safeway around the time that his wife disappeared. The police were able to obtain the guy's details from his Safeway card and used his purchasing habits to try and make him the prime suspect in the investigation. I think that it turned out that he wasn't guilty of anything either. [ This is all IIRC, btw. My memory could be waaay off, but it paints a picture of something is not that far-fetched from possibly being the truth in a 'it could happen to you' sort of way. ]
  - codexon 16y ago
    I'll give you an upvote if you can find the source for that story. I can't find it myself.
    - pyre 16y ago
      http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/29/030223 http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/29/030223 I had a leg up b/c I remembered that my source was slashdot. The important part: a major piece of evidence used against Lyons in his arrest was the record of his supermarket purchases that he made with his Safeway Club Card. Police investigators had discovered that his Club Card was used to buy fire starters of the same type used in the arson attempt. For Lyons, the story did have a happy ending. All charges were dropped against him in January 2005 because another person stepped forward saying he or she set the fire and not Lyons. So I was wrong, and it was arson, not murder, but the point remains that the police were willing to use purchasing habits/items as circumstantial evidence to go after the wrong person.
      - sliverstorm 16y ago
        > the police were willing to use purchasing habits/items as circumstantial evidence to go after the wrong person. Hopefully it is not a great leap in logic to see that the justice system was what went wrong, not the club card thing.

by SamAtt 16y ago

warfangle 16y ago

That grocery store cannot then tie it to not only who you are but who your friends are. They have your name and address, but they don't have your entire social graph at their fingertips. Or your entire digital (or, with the rfid, real-world) historical travel data. If this goes tits up, it could be just the kind of surveillance needed for a 21st century locked-down police state.

tokenadult 16y ago

Yes. Here's the epic.org link shared in another Facebook thread here on HN yesterday by another HN participant: http://epic.org/privacy/profiling/ http://epic.org/privacy/profiling/

sliverstorm 16y ago

I still don't understand why people are so worried about grocery store discount cards. Ok, so they know my address. That's alright by me; my address exists so everyone can know it. So they know my name correlates to my address; that's alright too, they can find this info in public records. The only possibly sketchy thing is they can correlate my food purchases to me and my address. However, this doesn't bother me personally. I don't care if the world knows I buy one kind of bread instead of another, or that I buy hummus instead of butter. If there are sensitive things you are paranoid about, like personal care products, just don't use the card for those purchases. Either way, they just wind up with spending patterns on food correlated to one individual. The horror. It's not your SSN or passport or any of that jazz. Besides, if advertising became more accurately targeted, I feel that would generally be a good thing. You'd get in touch with products you were genuinely interested in, advertising costs would plummet (causing prices to drop as well), and there'd be less utterly useless cruft in the ads you receive.

pyre 16y ago
There was an instance of someone being arrested because he purchased rope from a Safeway around the time that his wife disappeared. The police were able to obtain the guy's details from his Safeway card and used his purchasing habits to try and make him the prime suspect in the investigation. I think that it turned out that he wasn't guilty of anything either. [ This is all IIRC, btw. My memory could be waaay off, but it paints a picture of something is not that far-fetched from possibly being the truth in a 'it could happen to you' sort of way. ]
- codexon 16y ago
  I'll give you an upvote if you can find the source for that story. I can't find it myself.
  - pyre 16y ago
    http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/29/030223 http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/29/030223 I had a leg up b/c I remembered that my source was slashdot. The important part: a major piece of evidence used against Lyons in his arrest was the record of his supermarket purchases that he made with his Safeway Club Card. Police investigators had discovered that his Club Card was used to buy fire starters of the same type used in the arson attempt. For Lyons, the story did have a happy ending. All charges were dropped against him in January 2005 because another person stepped forward saying he or she set the fire and not Lyons. So I was wrong, and it was arson, not murder, but the point remains that the police were willing to use purchasing habits/items as circumstantial evidence to go after the wrong person.
    - sliverstorm 16y ago
      > the police were willing to use purchasing habits/items as circumstantial evidence to go after the wrong person. Hopefully it is not a great leap in logic to see that the justice system was what went wrong, not the club card thing.