Privacy and Woolies
Kevin C
To paraphrase privacy principle 6
Any person who believes an organisation has information about them can
ask the orrganisation
"do you hold information about me - yes or no"
the organisation must answer for no charge.
if the organisation says "yes" then they must tell the person what
information they hold about them - but they can make a reasonable
charge for that information. As the information is stored
electronically and as other woolies departments must be accessing that
information I believe a reasonable charge is about 1 cent.
I think the first step is for people who have "Everyday Rewards" from
Woolies to ask them - what information do you hold about me and then
if they say they hold our purchases we ask them can we get access to
the details of our own purchase. It is my guess that woolies would be
happy to give them to us. They just thought people would not be
interested.
I will start and if others do the same it will be interesting to see
what comes back. I will put up what I send to them and report back
what they respond.
Most organisations if one person asks something they tend to ignore.
If two it is a coincidence if three it is a need:)
Kevin
Kevin C
have put in the following request
"I would very much like to get electronic access to the details of my
purchases so I can better monitor what I purchase and when I purchase
it.
Does woolworths keep track of what I purchase and if so it be made
available to me in an electronic form?"
Oliver Boermans
> As the information is stored
> electronically and as other woolies departments must be accessing that
> information I believe a reasonable charge is about 1 cent.
Wonderful idea; Although I suspect the data is likely to be stored in
a manner that would make extracting the purchasing behaviour of an
individual non-trivial and therefore expensive and untimely. The
retailer's interest in the data would be as an aggregate so that is
likely to be the form their system would be set up to report on.
Personally, as a consumer I'd be much more likely to participate in a
FlyBuy scheme that gave me full access to the data gathered —
particularly if it was presented in a useful manner on the web.
As an optimist I expect this will be the norm in the future, as a
pessimist I imagine mountains need moving first. Best make a start now!