My thing is those dang affinity cards. If you use one of them, even without using a credit card, there's a complete record of your purchases. I don't use one in a local grocery store that has one, thus shopping there as seldom as possible (I can't get their sales). Now they have another big brother policy....you can't use their self-checkout unless you use an affinity card! So, even with using cash, everything a person purchases is somebody's business.
We really don't have any privacy left. I can't imagine how freedom is even possible without individual responsibiity, enforced and reasonable laws, and freedom to move and think.
Use “Ghostery” on your browsers to block the trackers!
Ghostery is built and maintained for users that care about their online privacy, and is engineered with privacy as a primary goal. Ghostery use is anonymous. No registrations or sign-ups are required. The Ghostery plug-in does not place cookies into your browser. Neither the Ghostery application nor Evidon receives any data from Ghostery users unless the user opts-in to participate in Ghostrank. Ghostrank data itslef is anonymous, is NEVER used for advertising targeting purposes, and is only shared in aggregated, non-personal, statistical form.
Trade your affinity card with someone else’s, and keep doing that. You get the perks, they get data they do not realize is scrambled.
<....”The targeted ads for something I look at online follows me constantly”....>
I’m using “Abine”...Do Not Track ME system. In the first four days it blocked over a thousand companies and websites tracking me.
So far I like it...as it does not interfer with any other programs at all...and appears to be doing it’s work. Plus my computer is actually faster with out all that loading on.
Most people don’t realize that social networks like facebook,google etc. all track you....even when you are NOT on their site.
We shall see how this works....I also use StartPage....
Just ask the checkout person for their card. The cashiers at the Grocery stores usually have one at the register.
So get the affinity card, but then register it to somebody that you don’t like.