RFID Shopping Card

It sounds good - loyalty cards and Shopping Card entitle us to freebies or cash simply for shopping at our local superstore. Of course, retailers get something in return: a heap of information about us we might prefer them not to know. That's before they get started on the new tags that track you and what you buy.

Every time you reach the checkout in the two biggest supermarket chains, it's the same question: have you got a card? It can get irritating, but nonetheless we have willingly signed up to their reward schemes - in droves. According to market researchers TNS, around 85% of UK households have at least one loyalty card. We've accepted the membership rules of these innocent-looking, points-mean-prizes clubs: you show us some loyalty, say the retailers, and we'll give you nice bonuses in return.

According to them by using RFID Shopping Card, the loyalty, on the face of it, is based on how much you spend with one particular retailer. Sure, the rewards aren't huge but, as Tesco likes to put it, "Every little helps." Besides which, we in the UK love bargains, and getting something for nothing even more. But the question is: how much does the nothing really cost? It is not simply a matter of choosing to be "loyal", now synonymous with "open your wallet", to one supermarket over another - the cost is in having your purchases scrutinized and analyzed in staggering detail by the loyalty card retailers using RFID Shopping Card. You'd be amazed what they can do with a seemingly innocuous flow of till receipts, coupled with your loyalty card. Worse, having accepted the principles of these schemes so gamely, we have paved the way for the kind of surveillance technology that will turn your stomach once you realize that it is happening in real time and not in some implausible, futuristic film. Right now, we are the unsuspecting guinea pigs for comprehensive trials of new customer-tracking, shop spy technology in the form of RFID Shopping Card.

On the surface, loyalty cards or RFID Shopping Card get you to increase - or "consolidate", as the marketing people say - your spend in one store. Given the choice between two stores, we are more likely to shop at the one where we earn rewards. "Most retailers who have launched a loyalty scheme experience a 1-4% sales uplift. The more common ones... are around 2%," says Crawford Davidson, marketing director of Tesco Personal Finance. When you consider Tesco's UK sales grew to £23.4bn in the year ending February 2003, that small percentage represents one hell of a consolidation.

Behind this visible profit benefit lies the genius purpose of these schemes using RFID Shopping Card. In the dark days before their introduction, the retail giants tried to gain consumer attention with advertising, mass marketing and special offers - effectively chucking money at us indiscriminately in the hope that it would boomerang back in increased sales. Then retailers found a way to scrutinize the shopper - not as a generic mass but as an individual: you.

Consider the detailed information that every RFID Shopping Card user volunteers to the store. Each swipe of the card sends your spend - what you bought, where and how you paid for it - into a databank profile of your purchase history, along with the personal information you gave when you signed up for the RFID Shopping Card. A Boots Advantage card application form will have asked you for your employment status, number of children, spectacles or contact lens usage and, if you are pregnant, when your baby is due. The Nectar card, meanwhile, asks how many people live in your house, the ages of those under 18, the number of cars you have and your total household mileage. The Clubcard form at least puts its questions about dietary preferences and who you live with in an "optional" information box, but the chances are you'll have filled it in, anyway.

Now we have a busy industry of data-miners looking at your profile to glean specific observations on how you like to buy. Edwina Dunn, CEO of Dunnhumby, data analysts for Tesco, says, "You can find people interested in cooking from scratch, or people who shop with distinct flavors in mind, or where convenience is key. We are trying to track lifestyles in terms of what is in the basket using RFID Shopping Card." Studying till receipts will show whether you use a grocery store for a main shop or for a specific menu, or the number of people in your house, signaled by how much toilet roll you get through. If you've just had a child, your loyalty card retailer will be among the first to know; if you're about to go on holiday, they can tell that, too.

Similarly, If the Metro Future Store's contract consumers likely sign (when obtaining a loyalty card) does not permit RFID tags embedded in the RFID Shopping Card, then consumers might have recourse for breach of contract. If it does not, then consumers over time perhaps will (a) demand such privacy protections in the contract or (b) decide they don't care. Option (b) is a real possibility. After all, an RFID tag in a RFID Shopping Card seems similar, based on the below description, to the U.S. speedpass or ezpass transponders, neither of which has resulted in a privacy outcry.

German RFID Scandal: Hidden devices, un-killable tags found in Metro Future Store

Germans say, "Nein! We won’t be your versuchskaninchen". "We won't be your versuchskaninchen." That's the message German privacy advocates are sending to executives at the Metro Future Store in Rheinberg, Germany after discovering RFID devices hidden in the store's loyalty cards or RFID Shopping Card. They also found that RFID tags on products sold at the store cannot be completely deactivated after purchase, despite Metro's claims.

"Versuchskaninchen" is the German word for guinea pig, which is how German consumers feel Metro and its partners have treated them since opening the Future Store last year to test experimental RFID applications on live shoppers. The revelations came just one day after Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) toured the Future Store with a delegation of privacy experts from German advocacy group FoeBud, who sponsored her visit.