Beware of Web Coupons

[Lousada]

A new breed of coupon, printed from the Internet or sent to mobile phones, is packed with information about the customer who uses it. While the coupons look standard, their bar codes can be loaded with a startling amount of data, including identification about the customer, Internet address, Facebook page information and even the search terms the customer used to find the coupon in the first place.

And all that information follows that customer into the mall. For example, if a man walks into a Filene’s Basement to buy a suit for his wedding and shows a coupon he retrieved online, the company’s marketing agency can figure out whether he used the search terms “Hugo Boss suit” or “discount wedding clothes” to research his purchase (just don’t tell his fiancée).

Which could lead to:

Companies can “offer you, perhaps, less desirable products than they offer me, or offer you the same product as they offer me but at a higher price,”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/bu...e&ref=business

[Jag_Warrior]

I was just on another board where some Americans are going on & on about how they're "afraid" to fill out the census form... because they're worried the gubment will have too much information on them (much of which the IRS already has, every bank they deal with has... and their landlord certainly has ). What's funny is these same Americans probably have Facebook pages, play on Twitter, log onto Google with usernames... and are sitting at their computers right now, printing out these coupons.