Dear Barnes & Noble

[elfs]

Dear Barnes & Noble,

I am fully aware of the fact that each and every purchase I make with my credit card is tracked in a database somewhere. I am also fully aware that my membership in your loyalty club makes it possible for you to keep a secondary database of every purchase.

But frankly, sending me email one month after a visit to your store with the message, "By now you should have read those cookbooks, programming books, and SF novels we sold you. Here's a list of what you bought back in December, in case you forgot. We didn't. Please tell our other participants what you thought about those books," is creepy.

This may be the very moment when I decide to never pay with anything other than cash again. ATMs might be able to track my movements, but at least they won't know when I buy politically sensitive or sexually explicit books. It's one of those things I always "knew" was happening, but it's not until a big nameless, faceless conglomerate tells me right out, "We Know What You Read," that I start to wonder if trading my privacy for convenience is worth it.

Sherri at Philosecurity has a great article on how we trade our privacy for convenience and credit card companies have a vested interest in disregarding your privacy as much as possible: the more information they have about you, the earlier they are likely to discover fraud conducted by others in your name. Anne C at Existence Is Wonderful (from whom I got the Philosecurity link) likewise adds that the modern credit system is irretrievably linked to certain privileges (you cannot buy a house without a credit record, and it's even hard to find a job today without one) and not having a credit history is the equivalent today to being an "economic non-person." Like Anne, I thought I was doing well by having very little credit use history up until about 30; it wasn't until Omaha pointed out that I couldn't buy a car without a credit record that I started to use credit. Now I've become accustomed to the convenience. The cost of that convenience was made eerily apparent to me this morning.