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I'm pretty sure it was over when we switched to debit/credit cards. Everywhere you go, how much you buy, all that stuff has been sold for quite a while now.

chgs 1y ago
People voluntarily used loyalty cards well before then.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  I remember when loyalty cards first came to England. There were consumer rights shows on TV devoting entire episodes to the evils of their spying. It’s amazing how much worse things have gotten, yet how people seem to care less now than they used to. I wonder if it’s just consumers being so overwhelmed by their lack of control that they’ve become apathetic to the problem as a whole.
  - tpxl 1y ago
    Legitimate question: At this point, what could a loyalty card possibly measure that isn't already measured on a bigger scale? The cc/bank provider already gets an itemized bill, and they get it for everywhere you shop as opposed to a single store (so a superset of this data is already collected). This is in some (most?) cases already shared with stores, and even if it isn't, what can a store do with it the bank/cc provider can't do worse.
    - hnlmorg 1y ago
      Banks don’t know what specific items you’ve purchased from a supermarket. Just that you spent £123 at that store. Thats where the paranoid was, around the fact that your individual shopping habits were being stored. Also we are talking about the 90s here. So cash payments were more common.
dingnuts 1y ago
cash is tracked as well, it's been over for a long time. each bill has a serial # and it gets scanned going in and out of the bank. Yes, it's still marginally easier to launder cash but if you just take it out of the ATM and spend it at a store it'll get tracked accurately
- codyb 1y ago
  How would one find out what data brokers knew from their cash purchases? Do banks sell this information? This bill was pulled from this ATM in Georgia by one Claudius McMoneyhands, and then deposited by one CashMoneyBusiness LLC in South Carolina three weeks later Seems like there could still be intermediaries and a lack of what you actually bought with it at least?
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
    Oh boy, don't give them any more ideas. This would work.
    - rustcleaner 1y ago
      I suggested that this might be happening and had someone pretty quickly dismissing that the Chinese ATM maker here (oddly specifically, and happens to be my bank ATM here in Wyoming which I never stated), would put in the extra hardware for that. The hardware is mostly there already for imaging (how does the machine verify it's valid cash?) and it analyzes digits with a small neuronet for cheques (decades old tech). It's all there, just write some back-end stuff, and process bill images at a colocation if the ATMs don't have the horsepower to get the serial number locally.
- genghisjahn 1y ago
  I don't think this is as accurate as you are making out. Wawa (a connivence store in the Philly area) isn't tracking each $10 that goes in and out of the register. It could float all over the city before hitting a bank, and even then banks typically track serial numbers for large demonizations and we when there's a suspicion of illegal activity. Happy to learn more about this if I have it wrong.
const_cast 1y ago
No, it was before this, with phone lines and wiretapping because forcibly allowed by law. As soon as we said "okay, you're allowed to record stuff if it's for a good purpose", it was over.

chgs 1y ago

People voluntarily used loyalty cards well before then.

hnlmorg 1y ago
I remember when loyalty cards first came to England. There were consumer rights shows on TV devoting entire episodes to the evils of their spying. It’s amazing how much worse things have gotten, yet how people seem to care less now than they used to. I wonder if it’s just consumers being so overwhelmed by their lack of control that they’ve become apathetic to the problem as a whole.
- tpxl 1y ago
  Legitimate question: At this point, what could a loyalty card possibly measure that isn't already measured on a bigger scale? The cc/bank provider already gets an itemized bill, and they get it for everywhere you shop as opposed to a single store (so a superset of this data is already collected). This is in some (most?) cases already shared with stores, and even if it isn't, what can a store do with it the bank/cc provider can't do worse.
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    Banks don’t know what specific items you’ve purchased from a supermarket. Just that you spent £123 at that store. Thats where the paranoid was, around the fact that your individual shopping habits were being stored. Also we are talking about the 90s here. So cash payments were more common.

dingnuts 1y ago

cash is tracked as well, it's been over for a long time. each bill has a serial # and it gets scanned going in and out of the bank. Yes, it's still marginally easier to launder cash but if you just take it out of the ATM and spend it at a store it'll get tracked accurately

codyb 1y ago
How would one find out what data brokers knew from their cash purchases? Do banks sell this information? This bill was pulled from this ATM in Georgia by one Claudius McMoneyhands, and then deposited by one CashMoneyBusiness LLC in South Carolina three weeks later Seems like there could still be intermediaries and a lack of what you actually bought with it at least?
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
  Oh boy, don't give them any more ideas. This would work.
  - rustcleaner 1y ago
    I suggested that this might be happening and had someone pretty quickly dismissing that the Chinese ATM maker here (oddly specifically, and happens to be my bank ATM here in Wyoming which I never stated), would put in the extra hardware for that. The hardware is mostly there already for imaging (how does the machine verify it's valid cash?) and it analyzes digits with a small neuronet for cheques (decades old tech). It's all there, just write some back-end stuff, and process bill images at a colocation if the ATMs don't have the horsepower to get the serial number locally.
genghisjahn 1y ago
I don't think this is as accurate as you are making out. Wawa (a connivence store in the Philly area) isn't tracking each $10 that goes in and out of the register. It could float all over the city before hitting a bank, and even then banks typically track serial numbers for large demonizations and we when there's a suspicion of illegal activity. Happy to learn more about this if I have it wrong.

const_cast 1y ago

No, it was before this, with phone lines and wiretapping because forcibly allowed by law. As soon as we said "okay, you're allowed to record stuff if it's for a good purpose", it was over.