Today I went to Dominick’s, a Chicago grocery chain, to buy some last minute items for the party I’m throwing. I needed bourbon to make cherry bourbon balls for next week’s cookie exchange, so I picked up a bottle while I was there. All was fine and dandy until I got to the checkout line. The checkout lady asked to see my driver’s license, and without thinking I handed it to her. It took me a few seconds to realize she was keying something into her register.
“Excuse me, what are you doing?”
“I’m putting in your birthday.”
“Why?”
“The computer won’t let me continue until I put in your birthday.”
“Wah? Give me back my driver’s license.”
“Ma’am, I need to put in your birthday.”
“You can put in any date. You don’t have to put in mine. Is Dominick’s storing this information? Is it deleted after this transaction?”
“Ma’am, I don’t know that.”
“Give me back my driver’s license and put in a phony date.”
“Ma’am I can’t do that.”
“Yes. You can. You see I have a legal ID, and it’s not a requirement that I give you my birthdate in order to complete this purchase. Lie to the computer.”
How many times do people give information over to a retailer without thinking about how that information will be used? How many people challenge retailers? In Europe, you own your information. In the US, the collecter (doctor, retailer, phone solicitor) owns it and you have no say-so about the secondary uses of that information. The loss of control and indiscriminate information collecting bothers me more and more. I want control over my data.
I won’t be purchasing alcohol from Dominick’s anymore. I’ll go down the street to the hole-in-the-wall store that only takes cash. The store owner never carded me after the first purchase. He knows his customers and remembers who’s been in before. That’s data collection I can live with.
