Frequent Shopper Cards Face Legal Curbs In California
Two bills restricting the collection and use of data acquired from loyalty marketing cards used by groceries and supermarkets are making their way through the California State Senate, according to a report in yesterday’s San Francisco’s Chronicle. A third bill would curtail the ability of marketing to compile data about individuals who have not “opted in.”
Both supermarket bills address concerns about how the grocery industry could use its databases to monitor customer behavior.
The Supermarket Club Disclosure Act of 1999, which will be voted on later this week, would require supermarkets to disclose how they intend to use the data they collect for the loyalty discount cards. Shoppers would have the right to have sales information deleted.
The Supermarket Privacy Act of 1999 would give cardholders the right to prohibit collection or distribution of cardholder data after January 2000.
While both those bills focus on the specifics of loyalty cards in supermarkets, a third bill, the Personal Information and Privacy Act of 1999 makes the blanket assumption that an individual’s (right to) privacy has been violated whenever information about that individual has been collected without the individual’s consent.
