[Year 12 IT Apps] Newspaper Article: Privacy on the net

[Anderson, Stuart L]

There's this article

Shopping loyalty cards

Supermarket loyalty programs offer very little value but are used to collect enormous amounts of your personal data.
 
http://www.choice.com.au/Reviews-and-Tests/Money/Shopping-and-Legal/Shopping/Shopping-loyalty-cards/page/Sophisticated%20databases.aspx
 
 
Stuart Anderson
VCE Accounting and IT Applications teacher
Kambrya College

________________________________

From: itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of ken price
Sent: Wed 26/05/2010 8:55 AM
To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Year 12 IT Apps] Newspaper Article: Privacy on the net


Thanks Cameron/User 2384736 ;-)

That is an article that students should appreciate.

I'm particularly interested in the loyalty card issues (frequent shopper cards etc). I went to a meeting once where a rep from one of the larger retail chains showed how the data willingly handed over through the use of loyalty cards provided the retailers with a massive source of information. They process this intensively in ways that shoppers are probably unaware of.

For example, knowing that shoppers in supermarkets near university campuses tend to buy coffee in large cans, frozen vegetables and bulk pot noodles on Thursday nights means they can arrange stock accordingly in those stores. On the other hand you may not want the retail chain to be able to see that you buy supermarket pizza, frozen garlic bread and bottles of soda water at the supermarket then head to their liquor franchise and buy a bottle of whiskey every night when you're marking exams. (I'm sure you can dream up some buying pattern more incriminating than that, but you get my drift)

But sadly I can't find much about this sort of retail data mining on the web. Anyone know of good Australian articles showing what is and can be done with this simple data? May be of use with students I think.

Cheers
Ken
TASITE www.tasite.tas.edu.au <http://www.tasite.tas.edu.au/> 


On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 8:08 AM, Cameron Bell <bell.cameron.p at edumail.vic.gov.au> wrote:



	http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/forget-facebook-privacy-your-digital-life-is-being-monitored-20100525-wavc.html
	
	The first three paragraphs are amazing. (And scary)
	
	Cheers
	
	User: 2384736
	




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