[Bluetick Coonhound]

I cannot post the entire article since it may be paid content, but a snippet is attached below the link.

In summary: get off social media, and pay cash.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/metadat...entity-even-when-name-isnt-1422558349?tesla=y

"Your shopping habits can expose who you are even when you are just one of a million nameless customers in a database of anonymous credit-card records, according to a new study that shows how so-called metadata can be used to circumvent privacy protections in commercial and government databases.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writing Thursday in the journal Science, analyzed anonymous credit-card transactions by 1.1 million people. Using a new analytic formula, they needed only four bits of secondary information—metadata such as location or timing—to identify the unique individual purchasing patterns of 90% of the people involved, even when the data were scrubbed of any names, account numbers or other obvious identifiers."

 

[Pabstman]

When i fill out a bonus card or such i give them fake info including phone number. A lot of the tracking done today is by you phone number. I can't count the number of times I've been to stores paying cash and they still ask for my phone number. I just tell them no.

 

[Bluetick Coonhound]

The WSJ article discusses how they are cross-correlating purchases against purchasing habits, social media postings, and more.

This goes way beyond a loyalty card or a phone number...

 

[ATST]

So just pay cash.

 

[Systematic Mechanic]

How about the Government stop Spying on us!

 

[Ruble]

How about the Government stop Spying on us!

But we might all be tewwoists....

 

[Bluetick Coonhound]

Folks, the WSJ article is not about the government.

It is about researchers and/or the private sector developing algorithms to link data together, and the algorithms are now to the point that they can figure out the identity of the person with 90% accuracy.