Ha! They already have a decade of my purchase history from being a Prime customer and I shop using an Amazon Credit Card. They've got everything they need and I don't mind.
Few people would be bothered by something like this. If they would be bothered, we'd see bigger noise about grocery store loyalty programs which are basically to track purchases.
In my area, anyway, a huge outcry happened when these programs began to be adopted. Even now, eyeballing people checking out at the local shops, I'd say that only half of people (at most) are using loyalty cards. And many people I personally know who use loyalty cards do so in a manner to subvert the data collection (usually by having one loyalty card that is used by many people).
So it seems to me a substantial percentage of people really are bothered by them.
This is without any prompting on my end, I never ask a cashier to do this for me.
So apparently it's common enough that some cashiers on-instinct just stick a store card in whenever someone says "no". It's common enough that none of them look at me surprised when I refuse.
I, for one, won’t ever go in an Amazon Go store. If other stores implement this tech without an opt-out, I will either start shopping in a ski mask or go without.
Just FYI, the local area code and Jenny's number (867-5309) is a default that exists for most loyalty programs. So if you don't want to be tracked you can use that. I've heard that this was implemented for military folks who tend to be a lot more transient than regular locals.
Or just not use anything at all. Or do what I do, and prefer shopping at stores that don't have a loyalty program. In my area, stores that have loyalty programs also have higher prices so that the "discount" from the loyalty card makes the price roughly the same as at similar stores that don't have a loyalty program.
So I go to the stores that don't have one. That's not only better for privacy, but is more frictionless and comes with no price penalty.
That's a fair argument, but I think Amazon has enough about me that what you're suggesting is a minor concern relative to what they already have.
I'm much more concerned about my Amazon search history getting leaked as a .txt file than I am about Amazon using imagery of me to train their ML models.
You'd be surprised how few people actually ever think about the motivations behind such loyalty programs. If you asked, they'd probably say it's good for the shop as it keeps us going to the place where we get discounts though these cards instead of the competitors (hence, "loyalty"). Most of them most definitely don't know how valuable that data is and how it can be used and for what purposes.
If you want to talk about privacy, it's always a valid concern in this day and age, but your comment feels like you're building a strawman.
I was pointing those out because of their obvious privacy implications, not because I thought that the article was presenting them as privacy-related.
> your comment feels like you're building a strawman.
How so? I was merely pointing out two of the several things the article said that got my spidey-senses tingling. I don't see how what I said is anything remotely like a strawman argument.
Exactly, and that's the definition of a strawman.
Again, I do agree with your larger points about privacy, but the presentation of your argument rubbed me the wrong way.
No, it's not. A strawman is when you are asserting that someone is making an argument they aren't making, so that you can knock down that argument rather than what they are really postulating.
I am not doing that. I haven't asserted that Amazon was making any sort of privacy argument here. I am the one making the privacy argument.
I can't come back at you and say, "but I wasn't talking about mortality rates, I was just talking about hand-eye coordination. Your objection is irrelevant to my point."
Similarly, when Amazon makes a statement that using credit cards linked to email is a good way to get around making an Amazon account, and JohnFen correctly asserts that this does nothing for privacy whatsoever, and that Amazon will still make ghost tracking accounts for every shopper, that's not a strawman. They're just pointing out that Amazon's solution doesn't solve the problem.
The reason we don't want accounts isn't because making them is too hard or because we don't own smartphones -- it's explicitly because of the tracking. It's not a convenience problem; using a credit card and a smartphone are both equally convenient for most people.
Amazon is saying, "tell the people who are worried about making accounts that they don't need to, so it's fine." JohnFen is replying, "that doesn't address the reason people like me are worried about making an account."
Reading between the lines of marketing (or any text, really) is an important element of critical thinking. There's no rule that says I have to only talk about what your commercial wants me to talk about.
Are you really suggesting we should just uncritically nod along with whatever facile ideas are fed to us by an advert? <-- (Psst...this is actually a strawman)
Saying "but you may as well" gives the impression that you refuted the point the quote was making, but in reality you were refuting a point that, by your own admission, the quote was not making. That is a strawman.
Reading between the lines of a commercial is fine, and encouraged. Dismissing the point of the commercial entirely because of a semi-related tangent is not.
If you meant it differently (perhaps not to dismiss the quote's "argument" but instead to just bring up the privacy implications separately) that's great and I'll take your word for it (and even agree with it), I just found your original quote to be saying something different.
edit: I see that you are not the original poster of the comment. This comment was meant for that person, not you. Apologies.
That rule applies in general. Even 7-11 has security cameras capturing faces of people entering and leaving the store.
Easy to say, hard to do. It's pretty hard to live without having to enter a retail establishment. Particularly one that sells you your food.
Privacy is a sliding scale and different people set the slider at different sensitivity levels.
And even if one's sensitivity level is high enough to cause personal problems, they're solvable. People that deeply concerned about their privacy have had proxy shoppers buy things on their behalf.
If they make it accessible enough, all stores may. Even if they don't, I imagine all stores will have something similar in some timeframe. So.. what will you do then?
I think that's unlikely. There is likely to be a large enough percentage of shoppers who avoid this sort of thing to support at least a couple of stores who make it a selling point that they don't do this.
But, if there is no option then I'll have to figure out what my response will be. It would likely have to be a compromise position between buying as much as I can without involving a store at all (buy produce directly from farmers, do a lot more bartering with neighbors, etc.) and employing single-use credit cards when I can't avoid the store.
That would be OK, actually -- there are still plenty of stores that don't use loyalty cards.
The difference between the two things, though, are that you can shop at a store that has loyalty cards without having to use them yourself. You couldn't shop at a store that uses this program without using the program yourself.
this already exists in nearly every retail store already. full of cameras and for advertising purposes they have been building profiles on people for decades
AFAIK many retailers (Target, for example) use an identifier derived from your CC number and don't even need your email or phone number to build a profile on you.
I totally agree with being concerned about your privacy, but I don't understand the increased harshness on this service specifically as opposed to the already-pervasive services that already collect your data on a daily basis. Is it just because this one is Amazon and it's fun to hate on them?
But this is real-life shopping, not online. Online shopping is 100% optional. Real-life shopping is not.
> Is it just because this one is Amazon and it's fun to hate on them?
No, my criticisms and concerns about this would be no different regardless of what company was doing it.
What? Is someone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to go shopping? I don't understand this statement. "Real-life shopping" is just as optional as online shopping is. Hell, "real-life shopping" is more optional in this regard because you can always pay with cash and escape the aforementioned privacy concerns. You can't do that online.
Really? And how do you get your food if you don't go shopping? Most people can't run a self-sufficient farm.
And using cash isn’t opting out of real-life shopping, it’s just opting out of one payment method.
There are probably laws requiring it in some places round the world, there are probably customers who want it, it speeds up the process by not requiring an email address to be typed in, and the total cost of a receipt printer is tiny.
What it gets me is a few less entries in the databases of the store, credit card companies, and the marketers who buy credit card information. Every little bit helps!
If anything it's full disclosure high level surveillance. I imagine big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart already have sophisticated surveillance systems that attach your card info to visual surveillance systems for Loss Prevention. I've heard of people who were repeat shoplifters at Wal-Mart that eventually got caught; and when they did, Wal-Mart had essentially a running tab of all the things they had ever shoplifted and slammed them with a grand theft charge despite the fact the time they got caught they were only attempting to shoplift a $5 bottle of shampoo or something.
I'm not denying the privacy disaster you're worried about, but honestly I think we're already too far gone down this road to be able to do anything about it.
True, I was being a touch aggressive in calling it "spying". However, if this sort of thing becomes so ubiquitous that its impossible to avoid, then it is 100% spying even if fully disclosed.
The difference between data collection being "spying" or not is one of voluntary, informed consent. If every store uses something like this, voluntary consent is no longer possible, and this would absolutely qualify as spying.
Very few people going into retail stores understand the extent of the tracking going on. So yes, to the average person, this seems like creepy stalking and/or spying.
That's not a complete deterrent, but it's something.
How does the system deter shoplifting? You can just do it.
... approximately once. ;)
But you may as well. By giving them a CC# you're allowing Amazon to spy on you anyway -- and that's not even mentioning the copious surveillance in such stores in the form of cameras and behavior detection.
> If shoppers need a receipt, they can visit a kiosk in the store and enter their email address.
Oh, and if you want a receipt, you'll have to give Amazon your email address, too, which allows them to more easily tie your real-world identity and activity to the profile they already have on you.
This sort of thing is a privacy disaster. I wouldn't set foot inside a store that does this.