Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2003 09:48:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Lesher <wb8foz@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Supermarket Big Brother Cards & RFID [Bal'more City Paper]
To: farber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (David Farber)
<http://www.citypaper.com/2003-10-01/feature.html>
Good background on "Loyality Cards" and Rob's workaround:
Carlson had the flash of inspiration to
set up Rob's Giant Bonus Card Swap Meet
(http://epistolary. org/rob/bonuscard).
Carlson's site works like this: You enter your Giant
card number on a form. It puts this number into a pool
of numbers gathered from participants. Drawing from this
pool, it displays for each visitor a bar-code replica of
someone else's number, allowing the visitor to print it
out and tape onto his or her own card. Should you actually
take the time to do this and then visit the local Giant
to use this card, you are, to Giant, someone else. If
enough people do this, the argument goes, Giant's shopper
profiles are rendered muddied and ultimately useless.
as well as a look ahead at RFID.