Unrelated, but this reminds me of one of my favourite Mitch Hedberg bits.

“I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughtnut... I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I give you money and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. To some skeptical friend, 'Don't even act like I didn't get that doughnut, I've got the documentation right here... It's in my file at home. ...Under "D".'

Really funny when you think about how this joke aged in this era of rampant privacy abuse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWx6uA5aCrE

It's also to prevent fraud by the cashier. Any transaction without a paper trail showing proof of purchase makes it easy for staff to simply pocket the cash.

> It's also to prevent fraud by the cashier

Example:

- cashier says you owe $X

- you pay in cash

- cashier gives you receipt

- after you leave, cashier voids the transaction & pockets the cash

There are plenty of ways the cashier can get caught, but catching then be a non-trivial exercise. It depends on the products being sold, quality of systems to prevent fraud, etc.

Voiding a transaction leaves a paper trail. Many registers require manager keys to void. Not producing a receipt requires no paper trail.

Worked at a popular teen retailer in HS. Friend of mine would have his friends (not including me) come in and return items. He'd simply give them the item back, pocket the cash/gift card. Got caught by fraud prevention due to high return count.

Haha, good one, I'm completely sharing that perspective. However, I sometimes buy largish Dunkin' Donuts boxes for my colleagues or for our clients and throw the receipt away. One time a manager wanted to pay me back, because it was clearly a business expense and reimbursable. I argued "heck, I don't care, people have good times, done". "NONONONO, next time make sure you get the receipt!!!"

Your employer probably loves you, would you work an hour for free?

I guess a receipt could also be useful in the event of food poisoning or similar... also, i can imagine a few other edge cases where the info on a typical receipt (name of server/cashier, date and time of purchase, item/batch number of purchased product etc.) could be useful later on ...

I've expensed doughnuts while on trips for business.

Still I get your point, but there are times I'd want a receipt.

That's simply for taxes, though.

Another comedian's take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxpIv4FoD2A

I don’t need to be accused, while stepping out on the street still eating the doughnut, of having stolen the doughnut. Especially while on holiday outside my home country.

I think the receipt is a proof that the store recorded the transaction and is not evading taxes.

I see a receipt come out of every till for every transaction. Afterward, they ask if I want it. If I don't, they drop it in the bin.

I don't see how the receipt is proof that the store isn't evading taxes - someone would need to collect them all and compare them to their tax filings.

More like, proving I didn't buy the (a) doughnut. To an insurer who is ready to ding my rates if I did. (Or, if I can't prove I didn't, as things may end up going...)

> I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut.

Well, if you go to sit down and then an employee accuses you of not buying anything (or of stealing something, or whatever) and threatens to call the cops.

I'm not being facetious, and it's not just the recent news; a lot of people have been trained to keep receipts at establishments for this exact reason.

It's sad commentary when such an accusation alone is bad enough that we require such documentation to prove our innocence. It's an unfortunate reality.

I'm sure the government would love having no record of (taxable) sales

Patrice O'Neal had an amusing bit about receipts as well.

>> I give you money, you give me product.

What a concept. I refuse to use the card system for public transportation in my town because they will only give you a card in exchange for your personal data. I find it deplorable.

Yeah, booo to cities looking to optimize affluence and patterns, hopefully for more efficient lines and service, with the help of consumer data and recurring habits, or offering convenient service as in recovering lost cards. Booo !

There is a difference between collecting usage data of their customers and also requiring the user to provide their name address etc..

Of course with enough transportation usage data (+ maybe additional external data) the identity can be reconstructed in a lot of cases, but the same entity already collecting PII does indeed sound problematic.

Do you really need to track every time that each individual move to do that?

What alternative measures would you propose for tracking volumes and trips?

Track the fact that a journey took place, but not who took it.

The organisation that runs the Tube in London, TFL, did a project[0] where they tracked the path people took by their phone's WiFi signal (all anonymised). This was used to see what routes were preferred and how they could be optimised. Previously all they had was entry/exit data.

[0] https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2017/septem...

> looking to optimize affluence and patterns, hopefully for more efficient lines and service, with the help of consumer data and recurring habits, or offering convenient service

Oh, so the exact same reason Facebook tracks you. Except, of course, that it's relatively easy to not use Facebook, but it's a real, substantial cost to not use public transport in your city (or only using single journey cash tickets).

Neither one does matter to me actually. I already expressed similar views before. It's cool to have music suggestions based on what I like and not what's popular overall. I'm fine with my city's transit department optimizing stuff for everyone, and me being one of hundred of thousands of users. I don't matter, individuals overall don't matter, and there's a significant gain from it for the community. I don't know what is so wrong with it and why people are so offended that some tech literate people don't care.

In other words, you are one of those people who uses the "I have nothing to hide" argument in favor of rampant personal data collection.

Yes, I have nothing that I, at some point, disclosed to a service or company to hide. Show me that it's implacably wrong and that it brings a global deficit for everyone and society overall then.

Fare evasion and occasionally paying for the single journey ticket might be an option, depending on your location. I know of at least a few places where it won't cost much more than a card over the long run.

It should be up to communities to make these decisions and if they value privacy more than efficiency than so be it. We shouldn't default to "Make things as efficient as possible at the cost of privacy implicitly and by default".

Fat chance of that, if you've seen just how forward-thinking, efficiency-minded, or capable most (all?) public transit authorities are.

You can recover lost cards without collecting personal data, by the way.

Same here. I also made sure to buy + top up my oyster card with cash exclusively while I lived London.

Tip for US users WRT loyalty cards: Most of these systems allow you to use your phone number rather than having the actual card. Use whatever the local area code is with 867-5309 as the phone number (from a song). I've never had this not work.

Another popular approach is to exchange loyalty cards occasionally with friends (or strangers!), to scramble the usage data.

I've done that too. Throw them all in a hat and redistribute them randomly once every couple of months.

All this discussion has convinced me of is that Germany really is a tech and consumer market backwater that should have no business imposing their bureaucratic obsessions on the rest of the Union. You thought GDPR was clunky, it's nothing compared to the coming copyright reform disaster.