Web Coupons Tell Stores More Than You Realize 125
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that a new breed of coupon, printed from the Internet or sent to mobile phones, look standard, but their bar codes can be loaded with a startling amount of data, including identification about the customer, Internet address, Facebook page information, and even the search terms the customer used to find the coupon in the first place. The coupons can, in some cases, be tracked not just to an anonymous shopper but to an identifiable person: a retailer could know that Amy Smith printed a 15-percent-off coupon after searching for appliance discounts at Ebates.com on Friday at 1:30 pm and redeemed it later that afternoon at the store. Using coupons also lets the retailers get around Google hurdles. Google allows its search advertisers to see reports on which keywords are working well as a whole but not on how each person is responding to each slogan. That alarms some privacy advocates. Companies can 'offer you, perhaps, less desirable products than they offer me, or offer you the same product as they offer me but at a higher price,' said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the United States Public Interest Research Group, which has asked the Federal Trade Commission for tighter rules on online advertising. 'There really have been no rules set up for this ecosystem.'"
Just like the "real world" (Score:4, Informative)
Companies can 'offer you, perhaps, less desirable products than they offer me, or offer you the same product as they offer me but at a higher price,
So? I can do the same thing if you come into my store. "50% off, today only." But only for you, not the guy behind you.
Re:Diff story? (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is that the store loyalty card gives a fixed rate based on whether or not you pay the fee, and you have to opt-in to be tracked, and the information provided is much less. In theory such a system as this could be tweaked so that everyone ends up paying the maximum amount the store's algorithm thinks they're willing to pay.
Market segmentation (Score:5, Informative)
Market segmentation has always been around - you sell things at Bed Bath and Beyond (just as an example) for outrageous prices, but also mail 20% off coupons in several different mailings. Different people get different advertising packages, and it's already based on your purchases since mail-order places tend to share mailing lists as an extra revenue stream.
So it's the new old thing again. Different prices to different people is exactly how the market works today - you buy something for full price, or wait until it's on sale, or wait until you have a coupon, or wait until it's on clearance. You choose the price by choosing when/how to buy.
I'd like to point out that there's no difference between this model and ordering online - online they have your name and IP address and the link you clicked to get to their store along with google keywords if you clicked from google. All this does is expand the same idea into physical stores like fast food that otherwise would be anonymous. If you pay cash, which since more and more places are starting to accept debit/credit cards means you're already giving them more information. And of course the card processing fees increase the cost of providing the service, increasing your food costs indirectly.
So yeah nothing new here.
Re:Barcode Anonymizer (Score:4, Informative)
Not likely to work, unless these guys are complete idiots and developed their system from scratch. Which isn't out of possibility, but coupon systems have been kind of a commodity service since the turn of the millenium.
Most coupon barcodes don't encode the relevant data anymore, they just encode a key or two to records in a DB somewhere. It use to be that things like price and quantity were encoded directly; but, just like your suggestion, it was too easy to modify a 20 cent off a can of soup coupon into a 20 dollar off a case of beer coupon. /did work on barcoding systems, still has a bunch of UCC manuals
Re:Barcode Anonymizer (Score:3, Informative)
How big are these bar codes? Hint: they don't contain any of that information. They just contain a number that refers back to a database. Mess up the barcode and the coupon doesn't scan. Maybe the manager will override that and give you the discount anyway, maybe they won't.
But there is just no way for the coupon itself to contain the data. It's just a key to a database.
Wrong, how barcodes really work. (Score:4, Informative)
Standard barcodes hold suprisingly little info. 5-20 digits. Thats its.
That information (generally) represents a unique ID, if the rules are followed, which will not collide with any other companies.
This number can be unique per product or per item, or whatever the company that owns the prefix wants.
Thats it.
No times. No email. Nothing else.
What happens, is when you use one of these special coupons is that its linked to a entry in a database that knows all about you.
The point to this is ... by the time you print the coupon, you've already given them all the information (how do you think they could 'print it in the coupon' anyway.
The only value this provides is a confirmation that you used the coupon you printed. Nothing else.
If you're using one of those retarded little 'discount' cards, you've already given them enough info to confirm it even without unique IDs on the coupons.
So that brings up the real question, if you're worried about being tracked, why are you doing things that intentionally make you trackable? Why are you creating accounts on websites and then telling them what you like to buy (by using the coupons). Why are you getting the little rewards cards?
A biggest question is ... WHY THE FUCK DO YOU CARE?
Seriously, little hint guys, no one really cares that much about what you do, they just want to sell you more shit, stop being such irrational fear mongers when it comes to privacy. You'll get much further if you pick your battles rather than ranting on about something every time you realize whats been going on for 100 years.
Re:Diff story? (Score:2, Informative)
Not that it works, just try to get a cappuccino at rome and compare how much you paid to how much italians pay for it.
Obviously the concept of haggling is not illegal per se, but there are certain services that require having the price fixed first. How can you answer to the waiter asking for a stellar price after you consumed your coffee?
Re:Diff story? (Score:4, Informative)
In Firefox, goto tools, options, privacy and select "Automatically start Firefox in a private browsing session", this way your online coupon will not contain any extraneous information. Also remember that the coupon provider will only know what information you provide (you don't have to tell the truth).
No kidding (Score:5, Informative)
This story is sensationalist as heck.
Of COURSE there's a lot of information in those coupons. Each one is unique. Therefore, each one can be tracked back to the user who received it. We have access to any information they've sent in (most common is name, age, and zip code, in addition to their phone and carrier, and their phone model if they went through a mobile website). What we don't do is sell data or phone numbers. Nor do we do reverse lookups or spamming. Stores can save any information they want about their users, such as what they've bought, or their number of 'loyalty points' and stuff like that. A SOAP request can pull down that information to their cash registers, and the cashier can update and add new information.
It's very similar to when the cashiers ask you for your phone number. The difference is that with coupons or rewards systems, people have an incentive to actually provide the info.