True Tale #9: Cloning Yourself to Confuse the Supermarket Spies
Whether it's how Castro and the Mob assassinated Kennedy or how aliens and the Masons really run the world, most of us have at least one friend or crazy uncle who subscribes to every conspiracy theory ever concocted. But is it paranoia if we really are being watched all the time? Even a quick run to the grocery store has become an opportunity for companies to invade our privacy. Every store now seems to have its own discount card, which means shoppers can either pay higher prices or let the companies use the cards to collect data about their buying habits.
"It's bad enough facing the cashier with my cart full of vodka and fish sticks," says Rob Cockerman, a print designer who lives in Sacramento, California, and shops at Safeway. "Will someone someday realize that I only buy ice cream after midnight? If I buy condoms one month, and a pregnancy test the next, does some kind of red flag get raised?"
But rather than scramble his grocery store's data, Cockerman likes to flood it.
After registering a new card using his real name and address, he carefully photographed his card and printed the bar code and number onto a sheet of address labels. He then put a request on his personal website for everyone who wanted to help him become Safeway's Ultimate Shopper: "If you shop at Safeway, I need your assistance in creating an army . . . an army of clones. Together we might amass a profile of the single greatest shopper in the history of mankind." Drop him an email, he said, and he would mail a copy of his barcode to be attached to another person's card. Those who participated would still get savings from their cards, but they would miss out on the odd promotions that the store offers from time to time.
People emailed him from as far away as Fairbanks, Alaska, and Washington, D.C. "The reaction was incredible," he says, estimating that about 250 people are shopping under his name.
Of course, a far simpler tactic is to sign up with an alias when registering for a discount card. But where is the fun in that?
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