This document discusses privacy issues related to frequent buyer programs used by grocery stores and other retailers. It notes that while these programs aim to profile customers' purchasing habits to target them more accurately, they also collect a large amount of personal information from customers. This information could potentially be misused, such as being used against individuals in criminal cases, sold to third parties without consent, or stolen through data breaches, violating users' privacy. The document examines technologies like loyalty cards and electronic toll payments that facilitate data collection and the risks they pose to customer privacy.

1. Anju Amatya<br />ACSG 575<br />Paper: Frequent Buyer Program<br />This is an information age where everybody relies on information. Everybody wants information about people - be it for business purpose, for keeping record or any other purpose. The businesses are modernizing with the world and thus with their business techniques and tactics. With the development of technology it is easy to keep record of individual. To take an example – you just provide your phone number to a phone company, it provides you all your call history and all the problems and solution related with that phone number. This arise a very important issue called “privacy”. Privacy issues are important because they affect all individual. <br />Let us take an example and be specific. In departmental stores, Safeway is a grocery store chain which uses a program called club card in which if a customer agrees to become the member of the store and provide their personal information, they provide them some sort of card like club card, loyalty card, membership card which can be used for discount while buying goods from them. To get the card each customers have to fill out the form which includes name, address, telephone number or billing information and in return they provide card with bar code in which all their information are stored. So each time whenever they buy anything if they have card they show it to attendant who scan it along with the thing one has purchased. It records everything date, time, quantity and record in the database which they can use it evaluates the customer what is his/her interest is what she frequently buys. We even don’t need any ID to become member of any club we can just give our telephone number (or someone else number).<br />Whenever we scan our membership card/club card assuming that we would get some kind of discount not knowing that instead we are providing them our personal information and allowing them to record in their database about what we bought. However in reality, the fact is different. We don’t get any discount; they raise the price of the product than their actual price. Customers who don’t have membership card have to pay much more than its actual price. Main target of the store is to profile and target their customers more accurately rather than giving some savings. <br />Most people think that companies keep their data private and it is only to benefit the customer. This is not true, as of today there are no laws stating what a company may or may not do with this information, after all, you voluntarily signed for the card and presented it to the cashier upon checkout. In fact, there has actually been a case where the information collected on a particular customer has been used against him in court. Like for example firefighter, Philip Scott Lyons was arrested and charged with attempted arson. Police alleged that Lyons tried to set fire to his own house while his wife and children were inside and the evidence used against his arrest was the record of his supermarket purchases that he made with his Safeway Club Card. Police investigators had discovered that his Club Card was used to buy fire starters of the same type that was used in the arson attempt.<br />Private information could be sold illegally and there is potential risk for identity theft. Identity theft is one of the risks that may arise through implementation of this technology. Identity thief may pay a store employee for information about us that appears on an application for goods or services. With our information they may apply for credit card, they can misuse our information and take benefit from us. Main issue raised in this article is how safe it is to be member of such frequent buyer program. How they use our information for our benefit as well as for their own benefit? How they use our purchase record to flourish their business and how they can use that record against us. Privacy issues arise because databases contain lots of information about an individual. Our privacy will not be ours as everybody will knows many things about us. Technology that is being used are like computer, software for examining customer data and provide them deals according to their purchase, database to store all the information, card with bar code, scanner or card reader. Internet is being used for online shopping and use card to take advantage of deals. Before use of technology the cash register can record amount of purchases and didn’t record about who bought what. It was not easy to track the purchase of each customer but now since every transaction is recorded in database due to which it is easy to trace customers. Companies can now directly market to greater amounts of people and build customer loyalty and relationship. <br />Similar program to frequent buyer program is electronic toll road technology. The objective of an electronic road toll system is to reduce traffic congestion, increase convenience and safety. The vehicles do not have to slow down or stop to pay the tolls, so it increases the overall efficiency. But while looking for our convenience we don’t see that every movement is being recorded which results in loss of privacy. The electronic road toll system creates large personal information database that could be useful to the government and the private industry. Vehicle tracking information could become important in many court cases, such as criminal investigations, work compensation and personal disputes. The government can have access to private information such as date and time and the route vehicle took. <br />So, the impact of data collection could be far more disturbing. Like using cards, they can track purchase histories, segment customers into groups based on how much and how often they purchase. Such information will help stores target profitable customers and supply their needs. This information’s about our shopping habits can be accessed with a subpoena or warrant and used against us in court proceedings. Companies that collect information from places like supermarkets can sell the information to insurance company, Credit Card Company. They can match up our shopping history with database from other databases or public records like how much we paid for our house, what we purchase and can use it to decide about our insurance etc. There are the possibilities that hacker and cracker can break into database creating threat to our privacy.<br />Even though Safeway insists that the data they collect is kept private, but there are no laws that state Safeway cannot sell this information to marketers/companies or even use it against you. Our personal information can be easily compromised and appropriated by others for illicit use. So to avoid becoming a victim, we must be careful in protecting our identity, and care should be taken when providing our name and address to, as well as other information relating to us.<br />References<br />http://www.dbmarketing.com/articles/Art144.htm<br />http://couponing.about.com/od/groceryzone/a/disccards.htm <br />http://couponing.about.com/od/groceryzone/a/loyaltyprograms.htm <br />http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jun2002/nf20020620_7007.htm <br />http://couponing.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=couponing&cdn=money&tm=6168&f=10&su=p284.9.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=0&zu=http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/loyalty_cards2.html <br />http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/loyalty_cards.hhtm <br />http://www.safeway.com/IFL/Grocery/Privacy-Policy <br />http://www.walgreens.com/topic/help/generalhelp/privacyandsecurity.jsp <br />http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/security_risks.html <br />http://archive.seattlepressonline.com/article-9715.html<br />http://www.nocards.org/savings/regular_price_study.shtml<br />http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jun2002/nf20020620_7007.htm<br />http://www.nocards.org/overview/index.shtml<br />http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26301<br />http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26340<br />http://bhc3.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/data-privacy-data-ownership-and-who-you-trust/<br />http://www.seattlepi.com/local/70072_loyal11.asp<br />http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-19018304/supermarket-loyalty-cards-can.html<br />