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Comment by drcongo | Hacker News Reader

My main takeaway from this article was learning that people actually want to be algorithmically profiled on their shopping. Personally I wouldn't even have a loyalty card in the first place.

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10-15% of goods in my trolley are "£5 or £2.50 for loyalty card holders". You actually have to be a member to pay correct market rates for their goods.

If you've ever paid by credit or debit card, they can associate the name on the card with your Tesco Clubcard account.

Your face is regularly visible on CCTV when you swipe the card. If you drive to the shop, they could easily find the number plate of the car.

This also applies to anyone who sometimes accompanies you, e.g. children.

(I don't know if this is legal or whether the do it, but the data is available.)

> If you've ever paid by credit or debit card, they can associate the name on the card with your Tesco Clubcard account.

If you're shopping in-store in the UK, the supermarket can't profile you based on your bank card without express consent, as it falls under personally identifiable information.

Okay, and?

I replied to the wrong comment, I meant to reply to the "what's the downside?" comment.

Something regulator should ban and then heavily fine any supermarket engaging in this.

The CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) are doing a review: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-sets-out-autumn-updat...

I just shop at places that don't do this.

Waitrose it is then

What's the downside? I'm quite serious when I ask that.

If someone is going to offer discounts anyway, then I want discounts on things that I'm likely to buy.

You have no control over what they're doing with that data. Your insurance provider might be very interested in how often you buy those delicious discount donuts, the police might be very interested in the fact that you bought several items that together could form a bomb making kit, or murder cleanup kit. You could end up on a no-fly list just doing your weekly shop.

It would be illegal for insurance companies to use it (and questionable how good the data for this is, because it's not collected with this goal in mind). You can't really buy "items that together could form a bomb" or "murder cleanup kit" at Tesco and police aren't regularly scanning all of this anyway, which would be pointless as the data is so noisy to be useless. None of this has a connection to reality.

Except, in the UK, I do. GDPR is pretty hot on that.

I am quite happy to take the (low and theoretical) risk of harm in exchange for the (high and real) financial compensation.

You're welcome to either pay more or shop elsewhere. We each have a choice.

> We each have a choice.

You really don't though. You can either pay more, or go to another supermarket with a similar scheme. Doesn't really seem cricket, am I really loyal for buying bread or cheese because I needed them and this supermarket is in my neighborhood?

I don't know where you are in the world, but in the UK it is really common to have multiple supermarkets in spitting distance of each other. Most of them deliver if you're not in the neighbourhood. And not all of them offer loyalty schemes.

GDPR is great and all, but it only takes one rogue employee. I speak as someone who had their data sold by a rogue Aviva employee to scammers all over the world. Which made my life hell for several years.

I value the discounts more than a grocery store knowing that I buy fruit, milk, coffee, beef, turkey, and fish. On a $200 grocery run, it's common for discounts to be $20-30.

Am I willing to sell the correlation between this week's trip and last week's trip for $20? Absolutely.

I resisted loyalty cards for a long time, but recently all the large UK supermarkets have started offering loyalty-only pricing - so not using a loyalty card adds maybe 5-10% to your bill. They all profile on online shopping and debit/credit cards anyway, so I figure they don't know much extra about me.

The way I see it, there's a tradeoff to being algorithmically profiled. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc profile you, and in return you get a time-sink, and some moderate recreation (and possibly some societal disadvantages in the aggregate).

Sainsbury's give you 1 nectar point per £ spent in store or in petrol. A nectar point's average value is a half penny, but annually they put on an offer to "double up" your points. That's a full percent off your annual petrol and shopping bills (more if you include the algorithmically generated offers).

The typical UK household spends £1,500/yr on petrol, and £6,500/yr on groceries, so the trade-off is that they give you £80/yr to profile you based on your preference of beans.

Another way to look at it is the card holders are paying the normal price and those who opt-out are being charged an £80 punishment fee for refusing to be tracked.

The UK is in a cost-of-living crisis, and use of food banks is at an all-time high. Not everyone has the luxury of opting out of surveillance when they can reduce their food bills by using this card.

I doubt that people do want to be profiled however I would argue that the information stating they will is hidden somewhere in tiny text on page 267 of the T&C.

Cash is truly the only de-facto standard that gives you privacy on expenditure.

It says in the article that they do want it.

Most supermarkets in the UK now have cameras at the till, so if you pay cash, they still know it is you.

If you are referring to NCR self checkout cameras. This is generally NCR SmartAssist and NCR ScanItAll which is for shrink and employee theft rather than mass identification. I only know of ASDA near me that has this implementation.

Overton window is moving. If they are not doing mass identification now, they will in a couple of years.

People want to spend less on food, and they're either unaware of the tracking or don't care about it as much as they do about paying less.

Unless you're paying with cash, you're already doing just that

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