Hi, I was wondering if there is an app that enables loyalty cards sharing. When you open it, you can enter your card code of the Store. Now you can use a card of any other participant who entered his own card for the Store (the backend will send a random one) and your code can be used by anyone else using the service. Usually the cards are just permanent ID (shown as a bar code), so it shouldn’t be that hard to implement.
While using this, the shop would have no chance of creating a profile on you and tracking you (as the purchases would be “random”), they have these data anyway. You would only give up the data you fill in when you ask for the card.
Do you know something like this? Or am I missing something important, or do you see some major flaws in this design (I don’t use loyalty cards, but sometimes they could be quite useful)? Thanks
That would be nice… Because they are super annoying from a privacy standpoint but usually let you save a bundle
Yep, I agree. And even if you were to get a generic loyalty card with no info tied to it, or fake credentials as someone else in the thread suggested, it would still be attributed to a single person/household where they build a solid marketing profile and may tie it to credit card or other financial or tracking information.
It would be nice, but the important part is to apply for a loyalty card with fake credentials. If you apply for a card with your real name and then let somebody else use it, that just makes stuff weird.
When you sing up for such a card, do they usually check it? I can image some stores checking your ID the first time.
Some do, some don’t in my experience. They will still build a profile on whoever uses the card though. Then they just need to tie that to a real identity later. Are you paying with a card with your name on it? Whether they would invest any time putting the profile together this way or not is another matter. But they could.
It’s like the data anonymization claims from big tech. Many claim the data the collect is all anonymized, but lots of researchers and studies have shown how easy it is to deanonymize the data and build strong profiles on individual users from anonymized data.
This isn’t a bad idea, but the original poster’s setup is much better for privacy. It would be similar to a VPN with shared IPs, so would obfuscate the individual users by lumping in the shopping habits with tons of other users making any profile built on that cards use unable to be tied to a specific person.
As I mentioned in another comment on this thread, even if you were to get a generic loyalty card with no info tied to it, or fake credentials, it will still be attributed to a single person/household where they build a solid marketing profile and may tie it to credit card or other revealing financial or tracking information that is unique to that user.
This is a good idea. If it doesn’t exist, someone with the skills should build out an app or service. I don’t have the skills or the time, but would definitely donate if someone else took up the cause.
I personally have the skills (I hope so), but from the time standpoint it’s not as great nowadays. I also don’t want to write an app that would be used just by few people (the cards should also be separated by region, so even more people would be needed to start going).
Could it be designed so users generate and share the vast majority of the content? I’m envisioning something that is mostly self-sustaining once coded if it were simplistic enough so that continued development or features were largely unnecessary short of ocassional bug fixes and maintaining hosting.
It wouldn’t need much moderation as the scope of the service would be sufficiently narrow. Could it then be written to limit what type of content was even permitted to be submitted in the first place and where content filters catch anything off-topic?
Just spitballing ideas. Anyway, if you ever found time and had interest, I’d be happy to toss some funds at it in an effort to help cover any development, hosting or maintenance costs.
I’ve been using the stocard app on android. You can just add the card to your phone and then someone else’s phone and now you both have it.
Yeah, but that you have to do that manually and share it among more people to be really secure. But yes, could be also an option.
