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Comment by throwaway4aday | Hacker News Reader

If you're talking about the tracking done by reward systems then that's a voluntary agreement that people enter into. You can choose not to use a rewards program. As far as I know, if you use a credit card they only know the total of how much you spent and once again you can choose not to use a credit card or bank card and pay with cash if you wish. This proposed data collection has no opt out option.

It's kind of exasperating how little people think about the difference between voluntary participation and forced participation when it makes a world of difference. Maybe we have just lived in good times too long and we have become soft, weak and amnesiac about what happens when the other aspects of human nature gain dominance in society.

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> It's kind of exasperating how little people think about the difference between voluntary participation and forced participation

It is totally exasperating when folks excuse corporation tracking you as 'voluntary agreement' when the only alternstive to tracking is forgoonf essential services like mobile phones and living like a hermit

Its not difficult to pay with cash and to not enter your phone-number at the register. Paying with cash is a helpful way to budget.

Until they go cashless :(

Mobile phones an essential service?

It's also exasperating to those who think that unless you pay cash you're not being fingerprinted regardless of any choice you did/not make. And with RFIDs picked up in your basket, cash likely not going to help either. What does it take, a combination of 5-6 purchases in one area, perhaps repeated in part a handful of times to make a profile that almost certainly you? It's the buisiness of groceries to fingerprint you, even before anything digital came along, how else do they optimize what they sell?

> If you're talking about the tracking done by reward systems then that's a voluntary agreement that people enter into. You can choose not to use a rewards program. As far as I know, if you use a credit card they only know the total of how much you spent and once again you can choose not to use a credit card or bank card and pay with cash if you wish.

I'm not in Norway, but my local cafe has a rewards program that is automatic. It's linked to my credit card number; so long as I pay with that card, it happens. I get a decent discount on a sandwich every now and then.

Even if they didn't offer the reward thing, though, I would still assume that my purchases were being linked to my CC#. I'd assume it's being done so across merchants, too, where merchants use the same payments processor.

(And I'm not fond of this. To me, it's a good example of why privacy regulation matters: I shouldn't need to give up privacy for the sake of being able to have the convenience of a CC; the processor's fees are there to pay for the convenience. One shouldn't be forced to go through cash, and even then, there are places — and government places, too — that don't accept cash.)

> As far as I know, if you use a credit card they only know the total of how much you spent

Oh, no, no. They report so much more:

  Merchant name
  Purchase amount
  Date
  Billing zip code
  Sales tax amount
  Tax indicator
  Merchant postal code
  Merchant tax ID
  Invoice number
  Order number
  Customer code (if purchasing cards)
  Item commodity code(s)
  Item description(s) (SKU)
  Unit price(s)
  Quantity
  Unit of measure
  Extended price
  Discount per line item and line item total
  Debit or credit indicator
  Discount amount
  Shipping amount
  Duty amount

https://www.heartland.us/resources/blog/what-to-know-about-l...

The information you linked doesn't seem to indicate that a grocery store would do this.

> Level 3 credit card data involves large transactions that take place primarily with B2B or business-to-government (B2G). These transactions take place using corporate purchasing cards, which allow the companies or government agencies to monitor purchases and have access to detailed spending reports.

Instead, it seems that level 1 would be what most businesses that sell to consumers would use

> Level 1 data primarily refers to small business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions. This level only requires the following information for credit card transactions:

Merchant name Purchase amount Date Billing zip code

Right you are. I skimmed and misinterpreted.

What if the government said it was optional, but those who sign up get a 2% discount on their taxes? Would you find that more acceptable?

This must exist in some places now. I once got a discount in Sales Tax in Honduras (about 1%) for paying with my credit card instead of cash in a restaurant.

But this is not what is happening in Norway, isn't it? There's no alternative offer on the table, there's not even an invitation to propose an alternative, there's no opt out, only govt wanting to get deeper into private people's business.

I didn't dig into it but I assume you're correct for this Norwegian case.

I guess I was more curious if the main point of contention was the mandatory part of it or whether it was more about the fact it was coming from the government. I think some people distrust government so much that even if it were offered as opt-in, using a similar approach as a private company, some people would still trust a private company more than their government.

Why would the grocery store, who tracks inventory changes with each sale, only be able to know the credit card total?

OP means the "card issuing bank" knows only the total amount spent, not the individual items cost.

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