Using data.

• Author: Arthur, Ed
• Position: TELECOM & TECHNOLOGY

When I shop, when I go through a checkout stand at my local supermarket, when I use my "preferred customer" cards, things are happening behind the veil of sleek, clean machines and friendly clerks. With every swipe of a customer card, credit or debit card, with every "beep" when a bar code is successfully read by a scanner, an entry is made to one or more data collectors about my buying habits.

I have come to accept that all my purchases, including if and how much cash back I take or not in addition to making purchases, are recorded and stored for later use by--not humans--computer algorithms designed to extract information related to every business function.

All that Data

What is it used for? What does it determine through algorithms regarding my habits, relationship with the store and preferences? How does it affect what I get in the mail, in email and for check-stand coupons? Am I not sent some offers I might otherwise be sent? Do I get offers others do not? Is the information (data) just stored without any identifiers along with thousands of others for retail and wholesale stocking purposes? Or, as privacy advocates boisterously worry, am I being tracked by name, age, address or other personal information? Are my buying habits potentially attached to other personal data, such as my driving record, employment history or hospital visits? What about information from pharmacy purchases? Is that fair game? What goes on? How much of what I consider my private buying habits are really needed to conduct business efficiently in the 21st century?

To get answers, I went to a couple of major retail sources I believed would have the answers I needed. One is a senior manager at the Alaska and Pacific northwest retail chain, Fred Meyer. The Fred Meyer chain is owned by the retail giant Kroger, whose policy on press questions is generally to direct them to corporate public affairs and legal beagles outside Alaska. Fred Meyer stores in Alaska also have just what I was looking for: frequent customer cards, pharmacies, gas stations and a wide variety of goods for sale (from food to furnishings and gardening supplies to household repair needs). Generally, I will not use unidentified sources, but a manager, John I shall call him, agreed to speak with me providing I would not identify him by name. "Store policy," he says. After an initial conversation in which I had to convince him I merely wanted information and was not a head-hunting privacy zealot, he...