Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 08/13/2026 2:10:32 PM PDT by DFG
McDonald’s compiled a 515-page dossier on one of its loyalty-program customers — using years of fast-food purchases to predict how often he would return, how much he would spend and even what he was likely to order.
Reece Rogers, a journalist for Condé Nast-owned Wired magazine, discovered the extensive digital profile after requesting the personal data McDonald’s had stored about him.
The file revealed a “Minority Report”-style trove of predictions about his future behavior, including that he would visit McDonald’s 2.16 times over the next six weeks and spend an average of $13.49 per order.
The fast-food giant calculated Rogers would spend a total of $29.15 over that six-week stretch, according to the report.
The dossier ranked a Large Diet Coke as Rogers’ most relevant product based on his past behavior, followed by a Spicy Snack Wrap and The Grinch McShaker Fry Large.
It also slotted his eating habits into oddly specific behavioral categories, including “Food-Led Afternoon Snack” and “On the Go Lunch in a Rush.”
McDonald’s also assigned Rogers a “Customer Attrition Likelihood” of zero — suggesting the company’s algorithm saw little chance that he would stop patronizing the Golden Arches.
The massive file contained a detailed history of Rogers’ transactions, the offers McDonald’s sent him and the loyalty points he accumulated.
It even kept track of every time he scanned a code while participating in the chain’s Monopoly sweepstakes — along with the prize he received.
“McDonald’s takes data privacy and security seriously, and we take robust steps to safeguard customer information,” a McDonald’s spokesperson told Wired.
“Like many digital loyalty programs, we use information such as past purchases to provide a more engaging, personal customer experience—like delivering the most relevant deals, offers and messages,” the spokesperson added.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
I sort of agree. There is an exchange of goods here. My information for your product.
There are two schools of thought here in the modern age:
1. Stay off-grid. Pay cash, get paid in cash. Ride a bicycle. Pay bills in person. (like Ted Kaczynski).
2. Flood the field with digital presence. Remember, "no reasonable prosecutor" would even take the case. /snark.
I choose #2. Leave a tangled web of personalities on social media, banking, and online presence. Like Free Republic.
Don't forget to donate, patriots. A dollar a day doesn't hurt that much.
Use their app? They know your purchase history.
Big deal.
Publix knows mine. They sometimes send me coupons based on what I buy. Kroger too.
Whoopie.
I own a small pizza restaurant. I know what my regulars want. Is that a problem?
Yep. YAWN.
Yes, I do.
Their app is constantly tracking you. Don’t believe me? Revoke its permissions
It logs you out after a order because you turned off its tracking
Why does a fast food app need to track you? (It doesn’t)
I deleted it from my phone.
Good article to post - I guess if I don’t want to be tracked by McDonald’s, I can:
1. Pay by credit card (I doubt Visa provides them with credit card info beyond the last 4 digits)
2. Pay by cash (I believe all McDonald’s still take cash)
3. Not go to McDonald’s (lots of practical alternatives)
Now a question to the Flock Apologists on this site. How do I opt out of Flock tracking without doing something super-expensive and time consuming (Uber, if even available, or walking)?
“Hamburgers are good for you, don’t be fooled.”
Only the meat in them.
“Hamburgers are good for you, don’t be fooled.”
Let me clarify - the meat and the cheese are healthy, the other stuff in the burger (ketchup, mustard, pickles) are so small in quantity that they’re essentially harmless.
Bottom like, buy the burgers, especially Quarter Pounders, throw out the buns, and you’ll have a healthy meal.
Probably should not have done that.
Not really. You scan the QR code, you fill out your survey, you pay with your phone, you use your "points". All results in a electronic data base built by you.
McDonalds is just collecting it.
And while the personal data is just something that they can sell to the data brokers the big money is in the meta data.
So what?
Every consumer club you belong to does this.
Everything app you put on your phone tracks you.
Yes, you are missing the scale of it. Once the computerized system is set up, probably by region or possibly only in one massive data location, all the information is transmitted wirelessly from each of its digital payment systems in each local McDonald's when every customer pays by credit card on online order. Once in the main system, it is automatically compiled by customer and analyzed by a variety of metrics—region, time of day, probable age or sex, typical spending, etc. A few big set-up costs for hardware, software and programming—divided by millions and millions of customers every day of the year.
Companies also build in some ways to measure whether the effects of their targeting are paying for themselves, such as tracking whether a customer's purchases increased as a result of digital ads personally selected to fit his profile.
It's all analyzed by algorithms without much human involvement unless there is a need for the company to study a specific type of behavior in their customer base, such as in a given region (southwest might prefer more Mexican-influenced spices, northeast might pump up the sales of hot chocolate for more months than the South, midwest might like a milder selection of dips, etc).
Companies that don't do data analysis are wasting a lot of money trying to run a one-size-fits-all approach in a huge nation that still has distinct regional variations. That's the general approach to enhanced supply-meets-demand systems. But this McDonald's dossier takes to to a very granular, individual level, to the point where their personalized advertising not only provides what the customer wants, but relentlessly pushes things he didn't know he would want. That is the traditional goal of advertising, but this is way beyond a print ad in a monthly magazine—personalized ads selected by the dossier will show up multiple times a week or a day on his smart phone, computer and digital tv.
The aggregate degree of tracking by almost all mega-corporations is becoming scary, due to their personally predictive models such as the McD's one described in the opening post. It's as if the local police could know when to stake out a given customer suspected of a crime by knowing when he would be most likely to show up at McD's or Costco. I'm not saying those companies are doing that or could be subpoenaed to divulge this info, but it's worth thinking about in terms of privacy.
Your post is very smart and thoughtful about how companies market and where the line is drawn between advertising and privacy.
I say, let the customer and consumer decide. If people don’t like what companies do, they can go somewhere else. Ain’t capitalism grand?
I once worked in B2B high-tech marketing, seeing how the sausage was made when these systems were first under development. Now I’m seeing the often helpful, sometimes appalling results.
“B2B” = back to back?
business to business
,,, and pairing off with traffic volumes and weather info to assess the probabilty of you calling into their stores at given times. As you get closer, deals are sent to your phone.
I might allow it if they tell me if the softserve machine is working or not.
Its safe to assume it isn’t though
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.