I dropped by the Apple Store in Palo Alto yesterday to pick up a new iPod as a present for M__. She recently gave me a Nano for my birthday and I liked it so much I had to reciprocate. The Nano is an impressively small device and the tiny color screen is beautiful. And Apple is just one of those companies that somehow manages to keep you coming back for more and more. Their strategy of selling clever design and great style in a commodity-driven consumer electronics space is clearly paying off. So I didn't think twice before taking out my credit/debit card, punching in my pin, and walking out the door happy with the gift.
What surprised me was the email that was waiting for me in my inbox when I got home:
From: Apple To: DeWitt Clinton Subject: Welcome to iPod and iTunes.
Thank you.
We're excited that you chose to buy an iPod nano and we want you to have the best experience possible. Take a look at our getting started guide for step-by-step instructions.
[...]
But wait a second. How did they know I just bought an iPod? I hadn't registered it yet. We hadn't even taken it out of the box. I didn't give them my name or email address at the store. Let me think... All I did was...
Oh, right. I swiped my Visa card at their point of sale. Which happens to be the same card I use to pay for my .Mac account. Which is linked to my Apple account and my name, home address, product registrations, and email address.
The problem is that I might not have wanted Apple to make this connection. Quite frankly, it is not Apple's right to go digging out my personal information at the time of sale. If I choose to register the product, then great, they do have this right -- I am then opting in to that process (presumably after I've read their privacy policy). But when I swipe my credit card at the store I am not voluntarily opting in to anything other than the requisite security and fraud check with the issuing credit card company. No one informed me at the point of sale that they would be associating the purchase with otherwise unrelated personal data. And no one gave them permission to do so -- they just presumed it was their right to use the data as they saw fit.
I still like the iPod, and Apple products in general, and I'm certain I will buy from Apple again. But I am now far more likely to buy through a third party, so as to place an intermediary into the mix to help protect my privacy. There really ought to be laws regulating such use of personal data. As we move away from being an anonymous and cash-based enconomy, it is foolish to blindly trust the corporations to always act in the consumer's (your) best interest when they have so much to gain by taking advantage of all the new data.
What have your experiences been with consumer privacy?