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[IP] Supermarket Big Brother Cards & RFID [Bal'more City Paper]




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.

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