alt Hacker NewsEven in person at major chains with deep pockets, they can track habits and employ tactics to manipulate behavior.
There has been talking (maybe tests as well) of using facial recognition to manipulate digital price tags on shelves based on the buyer. Several states are already working to pass legislation to block this.
There was that widely published issue years ago of Target starting to advertise pregnancy related items to a teenage girl before her parents even found out she was pregnant. They now actively try to avoid being too targeted, to avoid the creep factor.
They’ve had video monitors at self-checkout in many stores for years now. While I heard at some stores they were just a scare tactic and not hooked up to anything, it’s not beyond the capabilities to use facial recognition at checkout to link a person to their purchases. That’s easier today that it’s ever been.
When ApplePay was rolling out, stores like Walmart were trying to push their own standard called CurrentC, blocking ApplePay. It was a QR code based payment system that would allow them to better track your purchases. ApplePay was a problem, since it generates a random number each time.
Amazon had those stores without registers that tracked uses around the store and what they grabbed. I’m sure that, and now Whole Foods purchases, are used to influence what is pushed on Amazon. That’s not too far fetched.
Almost every store these days has loyalty cards to scan, or ask you to put in your phone number. These are used to track what you buy and tie to you.
Lots of avenues, even in person, to collect and use data.
The key distinction I was making was mom and pop stores. I don’t think those are doing it, unless they are getting bought up by private equity and getting new systems deployed, which I suppose is possible. But the big chains where most people shop are absolutely doing this kind of thing, or trying hard to figure it out.
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I’ve been peripheral to these systems and yes they are pervasive even in “mom and pop.”
Increasingly they are pushed for insurance purposes to automate “loss prevention” and make it auditable and also help build cases.
If the question is how do you get away from surveillance the answer is “you don’t anymore” unfortunately.
At this point it is pervasive and there is no way to avoid it. I’ve been extremely close to surveillance systems my whole career and it’s to the point where if somebody wants to completely surveil you 24/7 they can do it very easily for very little money
Last week I had a self-checkout flag a clerk and present them a video of me moving some items around to ensure I wasn't trying to get away with something.
It needs to be pointed out that for food items, it's already against the law to engage in price customization if the retailer accepts SNAP, which pretty much all grocery stores do. SNAP recipients cannot be charge more than or less than other customers. If Walmart wants to charge someone 50% for a video game because their algorithm says that customer will pay it, they might be able to get away with that, but for food, no one is going to risk losing the ability to accept SNAP.
The NY Times article about Target marketing to expectant mothers - see https://web.archive.org/web/20120216181457/http://www.nytime...
Even though they tried to be subtle about marketing pregnancy-related products to new mothers, they didn't go far enough.Perhaps a graphic, on the front page, above the fold, pointing to pregnancy-related sales on interior pages of the flyer. Non pregnancy-related sales should dominate the front page.