Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads

There are quite a few interesting tracking flows out there.

My rent is paid through a company called Bilt.

I discovered that when I shop at Walgreens now, Bilt sends me an email containing the full receipt of what I bought like so:

    > Hey [inahga],
    >
    > You shopped at Walgreens on 12/1/24 and earned Bilt Points with your
    > Neighborhood Pharmacy benefit.
    >
    > Items eligible for rewards
    > TOSTITOS HINT OF LIME RSTC 11OZ
    > $3.50
    > 
    > +3 pts
    > TOSTITOS RSTC 12OZ
    > $3.50
    >
    > +3 pts
    > Other items*
    > EXCLUDED ITEMS
    > $0.07
    >
    > *May include rewards-ineligible items and/or prescriptions.

Ostensibly (hopefully) it would exclude sensitive items, plan B, condoms, etc...

I'm curious how this data flows from Walgreens to my rent company, but maybe I'd rather not know and just use cash/certified check from now on.

This is called Level 3 data, and any merchant can choose to provide it for a reduction in the transaction fees they pay.

Here's a small comment thread from a few months back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41213632

It’s honestly crazy that we allow companies to sell our data — and even financially incentivize companies to share our data like this.

The problem is that to you it seems like your data but to Walgreens they see it as theirs. They generated it with their point of sale system.

The data is about a transaction that you made, but they generated all of it.

Until we have agreement as a society about what “my data” means, this kind of stuff is going to run rampant.

>what “my data” means

It makes me wonder, if everyone 'owned' their own data, I wonder if it could be used as a form of UBI. Everyone has data from using services, everyone owns it, everyone can sell it to make a living just doing whatever they are doing everyday.

This is only just a shower thought I had the other day though, there are probably many pitfalls when it comes to such an idea.

You will never generate enough money from information about your consumption to fund your consumption. Obviously there's other data, but you get the point.

UBI isn’t meant to fully fund consumption. It’s “basic” income such as rent or groceries. I will accept that consumption data doesn’t cover consumption and that the value is already priced in but I don’t accept that it has no value or that UBI is meant as complete income replacement.