From: remailer@2005.bart.nl (Senator Exon)
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 16:16:17 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Something that just crossed my mind. Sorry.
Message-ID: <199606030519.HAA08335@spoof.bart.nl>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 10:01 AM 5/31/96 -0700, Sandy wrote:
>At 10:35 PM 5/30/96 -0500, snow wrote:
>
>>It is my position (until proven wrong--please) that larger business DON'T
>>want anonymity. They _want_ to be able to track purchases and use of their
>>product for several reasons. 

Let me first claim that I am an employee of a "larger business."  Not that unless someone tracks me through the remailers is there any proof of that, but accept for now that it's not outside of the realm of possibility.

I wish I could prove you wrong.  I can inform you that you are correct, actually.  There are large retail companies that track sales data on credit card account numbers and cardholder names in direct violation of any contract you may have with American Express (and possibly Visa and others, I have not seen those contracts).  The data they capture is pretty impressive.  I'm sure most of you probably get a direct mailing or two from them every now and then, based on your shopping habits.

>Two quick answers:
>
>1)      What big business wants and what it would be
>        willing to accept in order to make sales, are
>        two different things.  While demographic data
>        are nice, an more robust economy full of big
>        spenders is better.

And demographic data on big spenders is worth more than anonymous cash from people who buy packages of gum.  Much more.

The best part of the equation is that the big spenders are giving up the demographic information for free, every time they hand over a credit card.  You even filter out the gum-buyers because gum-buyers use cash, which you don't track.

An economy of big spenders is worthless unless they're in your store.  The cards give evidence of who spends in your store, so you target your advertisements accordingly.

>2)      Big businesses are made up of individuals.
>        Most individuals would still prefer to have 
>        their own privacy preserved even if they would 
>        prefer less privacy for others.  

All it takes is one well-positioned executive who values profits more than his own privacy to say "Capture this personal data" and that data gets captured, regardless of who gets fired complaining about it.  Trust me.  And I value my job more than I value your privacy, which is why this is going out through a remailer.

I also shop only with cash, here and elsewhere.  Double-blinded e-cash will be the only way to go, if it ever is the way to go.