The Hidden Cost of "Savings": Unmasking the Surveillance Behind Frequent Shopper Cards
In my household the frequent shopper cards like the Kroger plus card are referred to as ‘the regular price card’ as items are frequently higher in price than average and the card only gets you a normal price. That of course isn’t always the case but the discount isn’t given out of the kindness of their hearts.
The allure of the Kroger Plus card, or any similar frequent shopper program, is a powerful one: immediate savings at the checkout, discounts on fuel, and personalized coupons. However, what consumers gain in nickel-and-dime savings, they forfeit in a priceless currency: privacy. These cards are not merely discount tools; they are sophisticated data collection mechanisms that paint an unnervingly detailed portrait of your life.
The Central Intelligence Unit: Who is 84.51°?
At the core of this vast surveillance system is Kroger’s wholly-owned subsidiary, 84.51°. This is not a quaint corporate offshoot; it is a full-scale retail data science, insights, and media company. Its fundamental purpose is to harvest, analyze, and monetize the data generated by the 62 million-plus U.S. households that use the Kroger Plus card.
84.51° acts as the retailer's central intelligence unit, transforming raw transaction logs into granular consumer profiles and then selling the "insights" to other corporations.
| 84.51° Function | Privacy Implication |
|---|---|
| 84.51° Insights | Creates hyper-detailed profiles of shopping habits, allowing partners to infer sensitive personal details (e.g., family size, health issues) for targeted marketing. |
| 84.51° Loyalty Marketing | Uses data to personalize offers, reinforcing the data-sharing cycle by providing incentives only to profiled users. |
| Kroger Precision Marketing | A retail media solution that sells ad space directly to Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies, promising them direct access to shoppers based on their established purchase history. |
In short, Kroger is increasingly becoming a data company that operates grocery stores, with 84.51° being the engine that turns your shopping cart contents into a new, highly lucrative revenue stream.
The threat to privacy extends beyond the physical loyalty card. Retailers have developed multiple frictionless ways to link your purchases to your identity, often with minimal consumer awareness.
- The Phone Number at Checkout
When a cashier asks for your phone number to look up your "account," you are giving them the universal key to your digital dossier. Even if you do not carry the physical card, this number instantly ties your entire current shopping basket to your name, address, email, and historical purchases. This is a common practice used to:
- Track "Loyal" Non-Card Users: It ensures that every discount-seeking shopper contributes to the profile database.
- Facilitate Cross-Platform Tracking: The phone number can be matched against databases from data brokers or social media companies to link your in-store purchases with your online browsing and app usage.
- Payment Card "Anonymization"
Even if you forgo a loyalty card, many stores track debit and credit card transaction data. While the store may not immediately link the card number to your name, they can still:
- Track Spending Habits: They can track how much you spend and how frequently you visit, building a profile on a "known customer identifier" that can be used to measure the success of promotions and predict when you might stop shopping.
- Combine Data: They can contract with data analysis firms to aggregate and analyze these payment card transactions, often for purposes like deciding on new store locations or validating their internal models.
The choice is clear: The small discount at checkout is a Trojan Horse. By embracing the convenience of a shopper card or providing your phone number, you grant a massive corporation the permission to track your most mundane and most intimate purchasing decisions, with that data feeding into a billion-dollar data-brokering ecosystem. The cost of "savings" is the loss of your retail anonymity.
What Are The Solutions
Great but you still want your discount right? So what is the solution?
This can be difficult but not impossible to bypass, there are many people who enter random numbers, or even numbers from songs and area code and 867-5309. I've also heard with places like Kroger you can request a new card each time and to not hold up the line they hand you a card and ask you to fill out information later.
The best thing to do is shop somewhere else but that's not always an option in small towns or rural areas. One thing to do is never provide real information, instead provide fake names, a burner phone number, and fake e-mails or proxy e-mails that you can disable.
