Comment by slaymaker1907 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by slaymaker1907 | Hacker News Reader

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I actually requested a card at Safeway (wanted for convenience, not privacy), but apparently they are not giving those out anymore. You have to give them your phone number or else accept the additional costs for your food and lack of benefits at the gas station.

The rewards card is a much better model in my opinion because while it gives them quite a bit of data, it does provide some anonymity. I'm sure it is possible to reconstruct from that data who I am (i.e. convert it into direct PII like name and address), but that at least takes a lot more effort and processing than if they have my phone number.

Most people are ok giving up SOME privacy for the sake of convenience/cost savings. I doubt most people are truly willing to give up all privacy for said benefits once they understand what they are actually giving up.

The typical model that I'm familiar with on those rewards cards is that they just ask for that same info for you to get the card in the first place, so it's of basically no benefit privacy-wise. I suppose this can differ from place to place, and you could always supply a different number or one not strongly linked to you, I guess.

Is there anything stopping you from getting a card for 555-867-5309?

They need a phone number. I've never heard of any store actually trying to use it to contact you.

PS: If you ask nicely the cashier will almost always punch in a working number for you. They want the reward points.

Not at most places and often times that number will have a large reward points pool already built up because others are also using it to avoid giving out their number.

You use your reward card when paying with a credit card? Or have you only ever paid cash?

Because if you have, your reward card has probably already been linked to your credit card, phone number, email, etc. by now.

That at least takes extra processing and data sets. I think that does matter as far as privacy is concerned. We tend to think of privacy and security as all or nothing, but it really doesn't have to be that way and may be impossible to achieve if you go down that route.

Rewards cards offer zero anonymity. Their entire purpose is to keep track of your purchase activity so you can be profiled by data brokers.

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