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No, even if you are the customer, say at a supermarket, they're still going to take your purchase data and sell it. Supermarkets are especially sneaky, they'll charge you extra if you refuse to be tracked via a "loyalty" card, and then they market that extortion as savings!

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Supermarkets will give you as many 'loyalty' cards as you want. And you can put false info on them.

I assume they can still track your purchases by credit card #.

Handy tip: in the US, enter (nnn) 867-5309 (where nnn is the local area code). There's a real good chance someone already has a card assigned to that number.

Actually, BevMo is now being much more brazen about it. They scan your driver's license under the guise of age verification.

I'm several decades past 21. There's no way in hell that I'm an underage drinker. When pressed the last time I was there, I was told that age verification up to the age of 50 is store policy.

Along the same lines --

In bars occasionally young women will come in who will give you free packs of cigarettes in exchange for scanning your ID. I've heard, mind you, this could be completely false, the cigarette companies sell that data to insurance companies.

Ha, I don't use loyalty cards because of the tracking but I never thought of the price difference that way, it makes sense.

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