Members rasputin1963 Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 Do you think that your credit card company (or the merchants/services you patronize) monitor your specific buying habits? Do you suppose they share them with all-and-sundry sans your permission? Assuming that they do, then which of these two reactions might be closest to yours: a). My God, just tattoo a barcode on my forehead and put a chip in my forearm, because we're moving into a brave new world that makes Orwell look like PAT THE BUNNY, or b). Hell, they were gonna find out and share my habits anyway. In fact, it might be a good thing, as they can use my habits to further pinpoint their advertising and merchandising to better meet my particular needs with greater and greater accuracy. What say you? Can loss of privacy actually have beneficial effects? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Cry Logic Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 No. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members amplayer Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 I choose both answers (a) and (b), because to some extent, I feel both are true. I doubt if the bank issuing the Credit card cares much about how you spend your money, but that is undoubtedly valuable to other businesses. There are probably laws governing how/if they are able to share that info, but I'm ashamed to admit that I don't know what they are. One thing is certain: if they are allowed to sell the information, they surely do so. Why wouldn't they? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Magpel Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 Absolutely yes, your spending (and saving and borrowing) habits are monitored, your consumer profile is updated in real time, and "major events" such as deposits, loans, etc., often trigger very specific offers and outreaches, based on business rules. Data is big, big business--or at least it was 8 or 9 years ago when I got one rather creepy inside look at all of this... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Magpel Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 The Credit companies--because their risk and exposure is so great--have the most valuabale, detailed, vigilantly kept, comprehensive databases around, and these dbs are of acute interest to the government and other big players, and I am quite sure they are for sale to qualified buyers.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TimOBrien Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 Do you think that your credit card company (or the merchants/services you patronize) monitor your specific buying habits? Uh.... DUH. Of course they do. They always have. Little tip: ALL merchants have always monitored the buying habits of their customers for thousands of years. (That's how THEY know what to buy and stock. That's how markets and trade work....) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spokenward Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 The Credit companies--because their risk and exposure is so great--have the most valuabale, detailed, vigilantly kept, comprehensive databases around, and these dbs are of acute interest to the government and other big players, and I am quite sure they are for sale to qualified buyers.. There is a pdf linked from here:http://www.aclu.org/safefree/resources/18512res20040809.html All of that information that the constitution thinks should not be of interest to our government is now purchased by our government and data-mined by our government. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 Honestly, I don`t care. Also, I wouldn`t be surprised if this was going on pre 9-11. My attitude is if you have nothing to hide, who cares. YMMV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Kendrix Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 Then there is Google who knows everything you've ever searched for on the web. Not just what you bought but what you may have just thought about buying.... Not what you've said but what you may have simply thought about or studied. Hmmm. Then there is the GPS revolution on cell phones. Very soon our whereabouts will be tracked to the nearest 30 feet 24/7. I dont have anything to hide. However, for some reason that one really bugs me. Privacy is history. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 Everybody's got something to hide, except me and my monkey. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 Unless the government is cracking down on those of us googling "free porn", I`m not too worried about what they have on me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Beck Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 I have them completely thrown off the trail. I only buy stuff I don Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Super 8 Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 Every time I pick up a copy of Catcher in the Rye I notice I'm being followed by men who dress in black and talk to their hotdogs. Why do I keep buying that damn book??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 They'll find out I tend to buy food a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 You sick bastard! And then... you EAT it?!??! God help us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Kendrix Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 You sick bastard! And then... you EAT it?!??! God help us. He's been doing this since the 60's or even earlier. The file on him is very thick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Beck Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 Every time I pick up a copy of Catcher in the Rye I notice I'm being followed by men who dress in black and talk to their hotdogs. Why do I keep buying that damn book??? I but Al Gore and Obama books using my CC, and then take them to another book store and do a no recipt exchange for something I really want, like Bruce Swedien's Make Mine Music. I buy Glenn Beck and Laura Ingraham books with cash, while wearing a hat and sunglasses. I also take the battery out of my cell phone on those book runs, since just turning it off isn't enough anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members slight-return Posted April 22, 2008 Members Share Posted April 22, 2008 When the grocery "member cards" first came out, I got one and only ever bought OJ and paper towels on it outliers unite! oh wait, if we do that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff Leites Posted April 23, 2008 Members Share Posted April 23, 2008 They'll find out I tend to buy food a lot. What! You eat food!? Then you are contributing to global warming! (Seriously, I think the tree huggers have jumped the shark this time. They won't be happy until the green house gasses are gone, resulting in the earth being a ball of ice). Sorry I got off topic, just my rave of the day.... I don't care if my charges become some useful data in someone's databank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted April 23, 2008 Members Share Posted April 23, 2008 There's no need to panic. Just stop buying and selling stuff and they'll have no way to track you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Will Chen Posted April 23, 2008 Members Share Posted April 23, 2008 Honestly, I don`t care. Also, I wouldn`t be surprised if this was going on pre 9-11. My attitude is if you have nothing to hide, who cares. YMMV +1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Magpel Posted April 23, 2008 Members Share Posted April 23, 2008 It would be very possible to mobilize against data collection--by using technology and grass roots activism to generate such ridiculous quanitities of false and fraudulent records that data capture anbd mining would cease to be cost effective anymore--too much noise, as it were. Just saying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members js1 Posted April 25, 2008 Members Share Posted April 25, 2008 Yes, the credit card companies monitor your purchases. There is one upside to this, though. I got a call during my Xmas dinner last year from my credit card company. A number of transactions had been made (on line gambling, among others) that are out of character for me. The credit card company detected this, and called to check if the transactions were legit. Since the responsibility of bad transactions falls to them, not me, in practice it would have worked out the same. But I didn't have to go and challenge the bill - they came to me. However, in general, I'm not a fan of the footprints left by living my life. js Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted April 25, 2008 Author Members Share Posted April 25, 2008 Now I have to explain myself a bit as to what prompted my original post here... Have you noticed how, when browsing DVD's at BLOCKBUSTER, that there are now some very precise subgenres of film.... Maybe it's always been this way, but now it seems like they have it down to a fine science. They'll even have critic's blurbs on the box which say things like, "Like the hilarious love child of OFFICE SPACE, I SAW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and PARIS, JE T'AIME. Richard Schnickel, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. I get the feeling that the movie industry has each one of us pegged for our particular tastes with a great deal of precision.... based upon our rentals and purchases. That wouldn't be so bad, except, now one gets the curious feeling that the market research was the impetus for the movie being conceived of in the first place. The cart is leading the horse. You follow me? We romantically like to imagine that the artist's impulse came first.... say, in the form of a novel or screenplay.... then it gradually found its audience. But it t'ain't true, that way, anymore. And why should it be? I suppose. Now with vast amounts of computer/Internet data on each of us. But it causes the Entertainment industry to always go with what is "the sure thing" rather than risk throwing something altogether new/original into the ring. So there's a dismal sameness to a lot of the movies at BLOCKBUSTER anymore. Have you seen, for example, the many, many, many titles that now exist as part of the modern, so-called "torture-porn" films.... like the SAW series, which dwell on questions of hardcore torture mingled with sex....? [i'm not dissing that genre, I'm just pointing out its ubiquity.] I've read that our zipcodes are a very big deal. Zipcodes, it seems, are quite accurate barometers of things like: our race our ages our politics our sexuality our household income preferred merchants/services our musical tastes our religion our education preferred sports number of children number of cars make of cars number of pets....and so forth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spokenward Posted April 25, 2008 Members Share Posted April 25, 2008 I'm not sure if this is completely to your points, but - The movie business did invent the idea of typecasting, so yes, there sure are formulas. And the business has changed. Peter Bart, the editor of Variety was interviewed by Frontline The decision-making process for movies has become so complex that producers and even agents and directors are all thrown. The best way to describe it is what they call a "green-light" meeting. A green-light meeting is when the decision is made finally whether or not to make a given picture.The green-light meeting, when I first started at Paramount, would consist of maybe three or four of us in a room. Perhaps two or three of us would have read the script under discussion. And people said stupid things like, "I kind of like this movie." Or, "I look forward to seeing this movie." Inane things like that.The green-light decision process today consists of maybe of 30 or 40 people. There's one group there to discuss the marketing tie-ins. How much will McDonald's or Burger King put up? There's somebody else there to discuss merchandising toy companies and so forth. Someone else is there to discuss what the foreign co-financiers might be willing to put up. So everyone is discussing the business aspects of this film. And it's sometimes unusual for someone actually to circle back and talk about the script, the cast, the package -- whether the whole damn thing makes any sense to begin with. So there is marketing voodoo involved in the pictures that get made. The way that studios acquire and distribute product from smaller production companies often leads to similar pictures being developed and released at the same time. If you can identify one hot trend - you can usually find three pictures trying to exploit it. What is going on at Blockbuster is a funhouse mirror of the movie industry. They have their own problems, and their own formulas. The smaller the market that you are in - the more constrained and ridiculous their assortment looks. It can be hard to generalize from that. They are increasingly competing with Netflix and PPV. The movie business has to wedge their product into a seasonal calendar. Theaters still show one picture per screen and it can change once a week. So scheduling will create seasonal formula releases, you know the spring break movie, the halloween release. When you think of movie hybriding - people do model other movies, just like musicians do. So there is research on the large and the small level. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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