almond9090's Profile
Coincidence? or is Willy Wonka Stalking Me?
Hi,
I don't think you are being paranoid, but it was probably a coincidence. If you have ever bought candy at that store, it was probably enough to trigger the willy wonka coupon.
If you visit a website, they will see your ip address, but that is not enough to uniquely identify you, because the ip address belongs to your ISP provider, and you get slightly different ones randomly assigned to you. If you have previously registered at a website, then they will have access to any info you have volunteered, because it will be stored in a cookie on your computer. You can delete cookies via your web browser if you are worried about that.
The ability to make the connection between any voluntary personal information divulged in cyberspace and other sources such as store incentive cards does exist, though. There are information brokerage companies, like ChoicePoint, that could probably write out a dossier on your personal life that would shock you in its level of detail, but so far they haven't noticeably abused that capability for two reasons:
1) The information is so valuable, they won't release it without a dear fee, and it probably isn't feasible for a marketing/advertising campaign to pay a high fee for a broad consumer base.
2) There is a risk of abuse of the information and a liability issue if part of the information is mistaken. When the use of this connected information becomes more prevalent, and it will, the public will demand regulation on a similar level as is currently done with financial credit records. For now it is more profitable for companies like ChoicePoint to guard the info and stay below the radar in terms of government regulation, although hacking incidents sometimes throw the spotlight on them ( see this story from over 4 years ago: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7024899/ ).
In the information age, personal info is like gold, and anytime you give out personal information, you have to decide if you are getting a fair value return on that info. Often, online access to things like games and contests are a cheap way to gather data without having to pay to much for it. Grocery store incentive cards give identifiable benefits via discounts, but the amount if probably a pittance compared to the value of the consumer info gathered. The only way to truly opt out is to establish a sham online identity, and then to pay cash for day-to-day purchases and forego any discounts. But by now there is probably so much info about you out there, it is probably too late to alter your consumer profile. The one saving grace is that most people don't consider their behavior to be deviant as part of a large statistical sample, so we shrug off the harm if somebody is keeping track of our free behavior. All personal info is equally valuable, and there is no human judgement applied. For example, a mom buying her kids frozen pizza for dinner every night for a week might not want that fact to be advertised, but there is no crime in it, and getting a "buy 4 get 1 free" coupon for frozen pizza might be helpful. The machine printing that coupon and the IT infrastructure behind it doesn't raise an eyebrow at her buying habits.
Sorry for the overly long answer, but it is an issue I have thought about. Your experience might benefit others, so if you like, you can post it on answers.yahoo.com and get a larger audience to notice, and hopefully benefit from your experience. You are welcome to connect to me there as "Steve Polychronopolous".
Best regards,
Mark
