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How does a supermarket knowing my personal shopping habits negatively impact me, in concrete terms? I can only think of only one hypothetical downside: the supe

How does a supermarket knowing my personal shopping habits negatively impact me, in concrete terms? I can only think of only one hypothetical downside: the supermarket sells my shopping data to malicious third parties, which adversely affects me in other ways (e.g. my health insurance premiums rise because I bought too much bacon). This would indeed be very bad, but it is currently a mere hypothetical. As far as I can tell, supermarkets offer discounts in exchange for more fine-grained tracking of customers’ purchasing habits because it lets them better optimize their supply chains, nothing more, nothing less. I fail to see how this is a bad thing for customers.

InefficientRed 4y ago
> e.g. my health insurance premiums rise because I bought too much bacon. This would indeed be very bad, but it is currently a mere hypothetical. Regulations prevent this from happening with health federally and life in certain states. For now. Insurance companies are dinosaurs but they're catching up. Lots of new VP and up AI/ML positions that report directly to the CTO office are spinning up. Suffice it to say that after my latest job search, which included senior roles at insurance cos, I switched to cash for sin purchases.
- thdespou 4y ago
  It's one thing buying too much bacon and another actually using it for personal consumption. You might as well be cooking it for your friends or your dog. This does not make sense.
  - InefficientRed 4y ago
    > This does not make sense. You're clearly not an actuary or -- more importantly -- an insurance exec. Just because there isn't a perfect causal link doesn't mean that the correlation isn't useful for minimizing risk. I'd wager that at least a double digit percentage of young males are as careful as young females in their driving behavior. From the insurance perspective, who cares? The risk pool still pays a premium.
wzdd 4y ago
> How does a supermarket knowing my personal shopping habits negatively impact me, in concrete terms? Target notifies teen girl's father that she is pregnant: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ... Man falsely accused of arson in part because his shopping history included fire starters: https://michaelzimmer.org/2005/02/19/safeway-shopper-card-leads-to-false-arson-arrest/ https://michaelzimmer.org/2005/02/19/safeway-shopper-card-le... Man claims that supermarket threatened to use this purchase history to call him an alcoholic when he sued them for injury: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-feb-11-fi-7017-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-feb-11-fi-7017-... Man's purchases of expensive wine used to increase his alimony payments in divorce court: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1753&context=dlr https://digitalcommons.du.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=17... Some random third party rents a list of General Nutrition Centers Gold Card members and then puts their information up for sale: https://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2003/06/10/GNC-acts-to-protect-list-of-top-customers/stories/200306100021 https://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2003/06/1...
jIyajbe 4y ago
My rule of thumb is, stores would not offer loyalty programs if it lost them money.
32121386 4y ago
There are two three to consider here, when assessing potential negative impact: (1) Data is forever. Just because something is fine now, doesn't mean it will always be fine in the future. Millions of women in states with abortion ban trigger laws thought the free cycle tracking apps with permissive privacy policies were a fair trade off. Now it might not be. (2) It's not "just" your personal shopping habits. It's your personal shopping habits, combined with your cell phone location data, combined with your credit score... combined with your web search history... take a look at the Social Credit Score in China. 1.2B+ people whose data is combined and analyzed every second of every day. Think it can't happen here? (3) If this data were only useful to the supermarkets themselves, why would it be sold to so many other companies? If this data is only valuable for optimizing supply chains, why do companies hire PhD-educated data scientists to do stuff with it? Seems like overkill if your objective is make sure you have sweetcorn on the shelf at the right time.

InefficientRed 4y ago

> e.g. my health insurance premiums rise because I bought too much bacon. This would indeed be very bad, but it is currently a mere hypothetical. Regulations prevent this from happening with health federally and life in certain states. For now. Insurance companies are dinosaurs but they're catching up. Lots of new VP and up AI/ML positions that report directly to the CTO office are spinning up. Suffice it to say that after my latest job search, which included senior roles at insurance cos, I switched to cash for sin purchases.

thdespou 4y ago
It's one thing buying too much bacon and another actually using it for personal consumption. You might as well be cooking it for your friends or your dog. This does not make sense.
- InefficientRed 4y ago
  > This does not make sense. You're clearly not an actuary or -- more importantly -- an insurance exec. Just because there isn't a perfect causal link doesn't mean that the correlation isn't useful for minimizing risk. I'd wager that at least a double digit percentage of young males are as careful as young females in their driving behavior. From the insurance perspective, who cares? The risk pool still pays a premium.

wzdd 4y ago

> How does a supermarket knowing my personal shopping habits negatively impact me, in concrete terms? Target notifies teen girl's father that she is pregnant: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ... Man falsely accused of arson in part because his shopping history included fire starters: https://michaelzimmer.org/2005/02/19/safeway-shopper-card-leads-to-false-arson-arrest/ https://michaelzimmer.org/2005/02/19/safeway-shopper-card-le... Man claims that supermarket threatened to use this purchase history to call him an alcoholic when he sued them for injury: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-feb-11-fi-7017-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-feb-11-fi-7017-... Man's purchases of expensive wine used to increase his alimony payments in divorce court: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1753&context=dlr https://digitalcommons.du.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=17... Some random third party rents a list of General Nutrition Centers Gold Card members and then puts their information up for sale: https://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2003/06/10/GNC-acts-to-protect-list-of-top-customers/stories/200306100021 https://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2003/06/1...

jIyajbe 4y ago

My rule of thumb is, stores would not offer loyalty programs if it lost them money.

32121386 4y ago

There are two three to consider here, when assessing potential negative impact: (1) Data is forever. Just because something is fine now, doesn't mean it will always be fine in the future. Millions of women in states with abortion ban trigger laws thought the free cycle tracking apps with permissive privacy policies were a fair trade off. Now it might not be. (2) It's not "just" your personal shopping habits. It's your personal shopping habits, combined with your cell phone location data, combined with your credit score... combined with your web search history... take a look at the Social Credit Score in China. 1.2B+ people whose data is combined and analyzed every second of every day. Think it can't happen here? (3) If this data were only useful to the supermarkets themselves, why would it be sold to so many other companies? If this data is only valuable for optimizing supply chains, why do companies hire PhD-educated data scientists to do stuff with it? Seems like overkill if your objective is make sure you have sweetcorn on the shelf at the right time.