Do you have a loyalty card and if so do you know what they do with your information?

[ivykaty44]

just wondering as a man behind me in the supermarket didn't have one and told me that the tax office can look at your spending habits - I knew the supermarkets used them as free surveys, but not the tax office surely?

see I would see it that if you save up your points to spend at Christmas that you were just being sensible and using your points at Christmas not that you don't make on the spot decisions! Is that naive of me? I wouldn't sign up for anything from a sales call even if I did do on the spot decisions!

Yes, you can tell at lot from data but it can't tell you everything

Off to have a look at Acorn profiles

No it can't but it can give you indicators and something called propensity. It's all about the likelihood of you doing something. And of course if you use something like USwitch to check prices then that's another layer of info on top of your reward points info.
Acorn profiles are the most basic. They aren't really used to determine much these days as there is so much more info available.
Ooh just realised I'm working on a Sat night.

so paying cash would stop people spying on you and finding out your profile as a person, I guess voting is private and having someone know how I would vote or which newspaper I read....1984

NO!!!

I am MORE than my TESCO Clubcard!!!

Is there a massive warehouse of computers harvesting all this data from all these different companies so that when Tesco take over the world we will be their slaves?

Yes cash is the way to go and no online shopping. Always tick the boxes about info sharing too.

Well- the fact that you shop at Tesco already tells them something.

PaulineCJ- you seem to know quite a lot about this. Do loyalty card companies and credit card companies share information?
What about banks (current accounts I'm thinking about)?

DH had a thing through from his bank showing a whole year's activity (with charts, graphs, tables etc) - it broke spending down by goods, services, utilities etc. Was a bit odd to see it all condensed like that.

I do not have any loyalty cards.

Some banks share info with third parties but not direct transaction info. Very very strict rules around this though. You can opt out of this too. They more usually use it in their own internal depts. So as an example like a dodo I left my card in the cashpoint in Spain and rang to cancel it. I then received an OB call a few days later saying "we notice you don't have a credit card with us and it might be handy if you lose your debit card again"
TBH a lot of your transactions are out there anyway e.g if you buy a TV in Currys and you don't have a license then TV licensing will be onto you straight away.
I work for a large data corp but not so much in the data mining side.

Banks doing a breakdown like the one you have from the bank is more about financial planning than data mining. It's a good tool to have, I nearly shit myself when I saw mine!

Banks doing a breakdown like the one you have from the bank is more about financial planning than data mining. It's a good tool to have, I nearly shit myself when I saw mine!

Well if my bank do data mining the are rubbish at it. They havent got a clue. Their mailshots are so random.

beenbeta- you can opt out of them completely- I never get any marketing from my banks.

Plus- the fact that DH and I maintain separate accounts for everything would probably really confuse anyone trying... I have seemingly no housing costs, he has no utilities or food... and we use completely different banking companies.

Can you sign up for clubcards as Mrs M Mouse, Disneyland?

Used to get a lot of those when I worked at MVC.

I tend to assume the worst with these things tbh. Dh has signed us both up for Nectar - I'm uneasy about it.

I'm sure the taxman has better things to do than check out what brand of tampax I'm buying.

I have heard of the taxman using this information before, apparently it's useful if people have no obvious source of income but then spend a fortune on smoked salmon, champagne etc when they are doing their shopping. It's along the lines of Al Capone being jailed for tax evasion.

I couldn't resist checking the acorn thing and it's SOO wrong about me, I should shop in Waitrose and buy Hello
and be old (working on that)

Unless you are actually under investigation, I am pretty sure HMRC are far too overworked and have far more important things to do than studying what you spend at Tesco or Boots.

Long may Tesco contune to pay for my holidays every two years !

if you buy a TV in Currys and you don't have a license then TV licensing

yues but that is because the shop is duty bound to take your name and address when you purchase a tv, they are not duty bound to check that you really are Mr S, Doo and live in Cartooon World, UK or any other fictional address you choice to give to keep your I.D. personel

My boss brought a tv to show a dvd on in the office, we got a lot of letters but no one has ever called - though they would find it hard to get through the security guess where I work

Does that mean I will get a Bogof deal on my MP?