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From: jrbd@craycos.com (James Davies)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Safeway Stores to Accept Charge Cards
Message-ID: <1991Apr9.232330.11735@craycos.com>
Date: 9 Apr 91 23:23:30 GMT
References: <1991Apr6.000027.462@colorado.edu> <9334@rsiatl.Dixie.Com> <11216@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Organization: Cray Computer Corporation
Lines: 48

In article <11216@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> randolph@cognito.Eng.Sun.COM (Randolph Fritz) writes:

>Folks, can any of you tell me just what all this lifestyle information
>is used for currently?  *Not* potentially.  What's being done with it
>now?  

I don't know about this one, but...

>And, equally serious question -- is the information you get any more
>detailed or valuable than could be gotten by scanning the telephone
>book and walking through your neighborhood?  I'm beginning to get the
>strong impression that vast amounts of effort are being spent to
>gather information that -- for the most part -- just isn't that useful
>and is pretty easily available anyhow.

Definitely valuable.  My viewpoint on this comes from running a small software
business.  I would have paid great amounts of money (well, say $1 per name)
to get a mailing list of people who fit certain criteria ("owns a PC Fortran 
compiler" would have been the best in my case).  It isn't hard to extrapolate 
from this to makers of consumer goods.  Would a maker of charcoal lighter 
fluid like to know who buys lots of charcoal?  You bet they would (so that 
they could send the heavy barbeque-r some coupons).  The same applies to lots 
of other consumer goods...think about the junk you get in the mail these days 
(I do, and I assume others do, too) advertising random groceries, soap,
deodorant, etc.  Now think what it would be worth to the manufacturers if
they could narrow down their mailings to people who already buy each item.
Hopefully you see what I'm getting at.  This sort of use of the data isn't
really a problem -- in fact, it could actually reduce your junk mail or
make it more personally relevant.

Of course, other reasons for this to be valuable were pointed out by John
DeArmond in his POS posting -- for example, your health insurance provider
would be delighted to find out that you were buying 3 cartons per day of
cigarettes...odds are that by dropping the coverage of all smokers, they
would save quite a bit on reduced lung-cancer claims.  This sort of data
use is a severe invasion of your privacy, and is increasingly likely
to occur once the data is available.  As John points out, Safeway (or
whoever owns the data) is unlikely to be so moral that they would turn down
the millions upon millions of dollars that they could get just by letting
Prudential have a copy of their records, especially since there is no
legal reason that they couldn't do so.

Personally, there's no way I would ever get a frequent-buyer card.
For that matter, I'm getting pretty leery about using my credit cards
these days, too.

						Jim Davies
						jrbd@craycos.com