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FWIW all of the obfuscation techniques make it easier to track you through the store. Then, unless you use a different card each time you go, or only use cash a
by AndrewKemendo 10mo ago
FWIW all of the obfuscation techniques make it easier to track you through the store. Then, unless you use a different card each time you go, or only use cash and never use the wegmans rewards stuff, then you pwn yourself immediately.
Better to just avoid altogether, however every possible store is using this (I was pitching this to Target as early as 2016) and govt reps are active supporters of this tech.
There aren’t really any alternatives that aren’t “grow your own food.” Even local retailers can use these systems and are increasingly cloud-SaaS
- spike021 10mo agoWas just about to make the same point. Even cash could be tricky if you got it from a bank because you'd be using your debit card and obviously the bank knows all your info.
- AdieuToLogic 10mo ago> Even cash could be tricky if you got it from a bank because ... Cash would only be an issue if a merchant associated tender used in each sale with the customer. In this scenario, the business is actively working against their customer's interests and would need to be thought of as such. EDIT: Assume for a moment a merchant did try to associate tender used with each customer and that all cash transactions are made by people who did a cash withdrawal from only a bank (which is definitely not the case in real life). How would the merchant establish the identity of each person? Ask every bank within a 20 mile radius if one of their tellers or ATMs issued each note used? And what would happen to financial institutions which produced this information?
- simoncion 10mo ago> Ask every bank within a 20 mile radius if one of their tellers or ATMs issued each note used? For at least ten years, Bank of America ATMs have accepted cash deposits. They claim that cash funds deposited at one of their ATMs are immediately available for withdrawal, so BofA must have very high confidence in the accuracy of their bill scanners. I expect that these bill scanners are not the exclusive property of BofA. From this information, a few things seem likely to me: 1) Now that you have those highly-reliable bill scanners, it wouldn't be much work to make them scan and report the serial numbers on each bill. 2) It wouldn't be much work to add those scanners for bills that leave the ATM. Given that the ATM knows from whose account the cash withdrawal is being made, that's the ATM arm of the automated surveillance system fairly well buttoned up. It has been ages since I've stepped inside a bank branch, but I remember tellers sometimes using bill counters to double-check their hand counts. If they still do that, then a bank simply orders the tellers to always use the counters and there's where you capture the serial numbers for teller-counter cash withdrawals. As for data distribution, just use data brokers. > And what would happen to financial institutions which produced this information? Nothing? It seems substantially in line with the spirit of lots of existing anti-money-laundering regulations.
- AdieuToLogic 10mo agoThe problem is not if a bank can track individual legal tender and associate it with an account holder, but instead if a company which is not a bank (such as a grocery store) could determine same. In other words, how would a merchant be able to establish a specific $20 USD bill was used by a specific person? No bank would share this information with an entity other than law enforcement and likely would require a court ordered subpoena to do so.
- reaperducer 10mo agoThen, unless you use a different card each time you go Or use one of the pool phone numbers. NPA-867-5309 is a common one.
- taftster 10mo agoJenny left her number in your neighborhood too?
- yial 10mo agoI largely thought this wouldn’t work, but having tried it at several grocery store chains while traveling with a 100% success rate so far I’m not complaining. (Nothing worse then being told you can’t sign up because customer service is closed, and you have to sign up to get the pricing, and there’s no generic store card they can scan as a curtesy ). - this has worked for me in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Virginia, West Virginia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
- IncreasePosts 10mo agoI'll share this here now that I only drive EVs, but I suppose cashiers and random people at King Soopers(major grocer in Colorado, associated with Kroger's) would enter 555-555-5555 as their phone number for their rewards, and every time I would pump gas at their stations I would get $1/gallon off.
- d12345m 10mo agoThat number also works at Walgreens (at least in Arizona and New York).
- AndrewKemendo 10mo agoI meant bank card
- mlrtime 10mo agoWhat is the NPA for?
- anywhichway 10mo agoThey always show me my total before the cars swipe, so as long as the obfuscation works until the card swipe, at least it would prevent dynamic pricing.
- AndrewKemendo 10mo agoI mean that assumes that you can’t assign the highest price to non-facially recognized people. Part of the dynamic pricing is that you don’t need to have specific individual targets to do cluster based pricing So if I am running the dynamic price tuning, then I’ll just jack up prices if faces are obfuscated. You have to understand the moment you walk into any private establishment that’s a business, you are quite literally walking into a Skinner box at this point.
- what 10mo agoThe prices are posted on the shelves… do you think they change the price when you scan it at the register?
- AndrewKemendo 10mo agoThe shelves have digital tags now…
- ezfe 10mo agoDynamic pricing can’t be done legally in many states because prices on shelves have to match at checkout, and multiple people can see a label at once.
- iamnothere 10mo agoThis is defeatist. You imply that local retailers are in on this as well, I know for a fact that my local co-op is not. Neither is the local farm stand or the local salvage grocery store. If you aren’t in a huge metro, shop local and you’ll do fine. Why do you want everyone to give up? Don’t be evil.
- AndrewKemendo 10mo agoI want people to finally get mad enough that they do something about it instead of sitting here with half ass solutions and just bitching about it. Humans do not and have never proactively solved existential threats, it’s just does not exist in the history of humanity. Humans are exclusively reactionary when it comes to major existential threats. So something needs to happen to cause the reaction and all the frogs are already half cooked
- iamnothere 10mo agoDidn’t expect a reply, so thanks for replying. Getting people active may be your intent, but it comes off like a demoralization campaign. I don’t know who is involved in it or why (although I can guess), but there is a lot of intentional demoralization in these surveillance and privacy threads. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoralization_(warfare) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoralization_(warfare) If you really want people to fight, it’s better to use fighting words, to cheer on allies who are fighting, or to give examples of how you have successfully fought back. This also counters attempts at demoralization.
- AndrewKemendo 10mo agoComfortable people don’t start, maintain or complete revolutions. Shit’s gonna have to get really really bad really really quickly for anybody to actually seriously mobilize against the reality of the insanity that you live inside. It’s just so fundamentally corrupt and broken at every possible level Anyone suggesting that we need some kind of relatively small skin procedure when the patient has stage four skin cancer is still living in a dream world