Attention shoppers: There’s a new aisle open in the privacy debate. Supermarkets are cheering a new way to discourage “basket splitters”?pesky shoppers who don’t put all their food purchases in one store’s basket?while privacy advocates are booing about Big Brother watching what you eat.Suppose Martha Shopper has a membership card from Stop & Shop. She likes the discounts and coupons, but not the way the supermarket chain knows how many tubs o’ lard she buys each month and how few bunches o’ broccoli. What she may not know is that if she (or anyone else) visits SmartMouth.com and punches in her card number, up comes her buying history, along with analysis and tips for improving her diet.Stop & Shop, which has 275 stores in the Northeast, partnered with the Watertown, Mass.-based SmartMouth Technologies to provide the service, but privacy advocates fear that the move could lead to more sinister information-sharing?such as with health-insurance companies. “[The service] plays right into fears that privacy advocates have had [about customer cards] from the outset: one, that your data will be shared without permission, and two, that your data will be used to keep tabs on whether you’re eating healthy or not,” says Katherine Albrecht, founder and editor of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN).Officials are quick to say that no identifying information is sent to SmartMouth, and they insist that few customers care. Midway through a six-month pilot program with SmartMouth, Stop & Shop Director of Customer Relationship Marketing Ed Porter reported that only a couple of customers have complained. “We’ve had some inquiries, but thankfully it’s not a big issue,” he says. “It’s more some folks realizing, oh, you’re actually collecting information when I use my Stop & Shop card.” Anyone with a Stop & Shop card can access his buying history at SmartMouth.com, but so far the program has only been promoted in Rhode Island and parts of southeastern Massachusetts. Porter said the company will decide in July whether to expand it.In an odd twist, Albrecht says SmartMouth might actually be good for privacy in the long run. That’s because the more consumers know about the information gathered by CRM systems, the more likely they are to complain?and the harder it gets for stores to ignore those complaints. Visit Albrecht’s site at www.nocards.com. Related content BrandPost The future of trust—no more playing catch up Broadcom: 2023 Tech Trends That Transform IT By Eric Chien, Director of Security Response, Symantec Enterprise Division, Broadcom Mar 31, 2023 5 mins Security BrandPost TCS gives Blackhawk Network an edge with Microsoft Cloud In this case study, Blackhawk Network’s Cara Renfroe joins Tata Consultancy Services’ Rakesh Kumar and Microsoft’s Nilendu Pattanaik to explain how TCS transformed the gift card company’s customer engagement and global operati By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 31, 2023 1 min Financial Services Industry Cloud Computing IT Leadership BrandPost How TCS pioneered the ‘borderless workspace’ with Microsoft 365 Microsoft’s modern workplace solution proved a perfect fit for improving productivity and collaboration, while maintaining security of systems and data. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 31, 2023 1 min Financial Services Industry Microsoft Cloud Computing BrandPost Supply chain decarbonization: The missing link to net zero By improving the quality of global supply chain data, enterprises can better measure their true carbon footprint and make progress toward a net-zero business ecosystem. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 31, 2023 2 mins Retail Industry Supply Chain Green IT Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe