P.I.: Give Me Your Life History (+)
PRIVATE EYE: We need this information to better serve you.
I went to a store the other day and before they would let anyone in the door you had to fill out a form with your name, address, age, email, phone, family income, and education level. I asked what they needed this info for and they said demographics to help them stock products more aligned with my interest. After providing the info they let me inside and assigned a clerk to follow me. The clerk didn’t offer to help, she just recorded every item I looked at and how long. She said knowing my interest helps them stock more products I would be likely to buy. She also said the more data they collected about me the better they could customize advertisements they send me in the future. She told me not to worry they keep my personal information private and will only share it with third-party partners.
Sound like a place you want to patronize? I didn’t think so. Where exactly is this place that so blatantly spies on you? Well on the Internet of course. Any website that requires registration has the potential to behave this way. There is nothing evil about it, but that doesn’t make it any less desirable.
Never heard of Bug Me Not? They describe the site as:
In short you enter the website you want to access (but avoid registering) and Bug Me Not will provide you with a user-id if one is available (the user-ids are entered by the BugMeNot community). They only provide user-ids for free sites.
What about the key fob barcode thingies that are all the rage at stores these days? In order to get the sale price you have to use the membership card. This is the same privacy invasion as the web registration? Not by a long shot. It is an invasion of privacy if you pay cash. If you pay by check or bank card then they have all the data anyway. A big difference is they can only collect personal data about what you bought, at what time of day, and what store. They don’t know every product you browsed and how long you browsed it.
It is your privacy – work to protect it.
I went to a store the other day and before they would let anyone in the door you had to fill out a form with your name, address, age, email, phone, family income, and education level. I asked what they needed this info for and they said demographics to help them stock products more aligned with my interest. After providing the info they let me inside and assigned a clerk to follow me. The clerk didn’t offer to help, she just recorded every item I looked at and how long. She said knowing my interest helps them stock more products I would be likely to buy. She also said the more data they collected about me the better they could customize advertisements they send me in the future. She told me not to worry they keep my personal information private and will only share it with third-party partners.
Sound like a place you want to patronize? I didn’t think so. Where exactly is this place that so blatantly spies on you? Well on the Internet of course. Any website that requires registration has the potential to behave this way. There is nothing evil about it, but that doesn’t make it any less desirable.
- So look at your options:
- Avoid the website
- Register as they request
- Register with bogus information
- Use bugmenot.com
Never heard of Bug Me Not? They describe the site as:
BugMeNot.com was created as a mechanism to quickly bypass the login of web sites that require compulsory registration and/or the collection of personal/demographic information (such as the New York Times).
In short you enter the website you want to access (but avoid registering) and Bug Me Not will provide you with a user-id if one is available (the user-ids are entered by the BugMeNot community). They only provide user-ids for free sites.
What about the key fob barcode thingies that are all the rage at stores these days? In order to get the sale price you have to use the membership card. This is the same privacy invasion as the web registration? Not by a long shot. It is an invasion of privacy if you pay cash. If you pay by check or bank card then they have all the data anyway. A big difference is they can only collect personal data about what you bought, at what time of day, and what store. They don’t know every product you browsed and how long you browsed it.
It is your privacy – work to protect it.
I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind
- from the song "Eye In The Sky" performed by Alan Parsons Project, words by Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons (c) 1981
posted by Quinqube at 16:39
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