Does your rewards card know if you’re pregnant? Privacy experts sound the alarm : NPR

The steps you take to protect your privacy should reflect your level of risk, says one expert.

Granger Wootz/Getty Images/Tetra RF Images

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Granger Wootz/Getty Images/Tetra RF Images

The steps you take to protect your privacy should reflect your level of risk, says one expert.

Granger Wootz/Getty Images/Tetra RF Images

Last month, a viral Twitter link sparked fear and debate about the ways consumer data can be stored and shared by big box stores, and how that could take on a new dimension in a post-Roe world.

It started when the user, Nicole, stated on July 16 that they had received a package from the infant formula company Enfamil after purchasing a pregnancy test from Walgreens with their rewards card.

The tweet included an image of a box containing various tubs of baby formula, a pacifier and a box with the words: “Here’s our first gift for the most important person in the world.”

Nicole wrote that they were asked to take a pregnancy test by a doctor, and they raised the issue of anyone receiving this type of package in states where abortion was now illegal.

Nicole did not respond to NPR’s request for comment. But several others responded to the original tweet with their own experiences of targeted marketing after shopping at other large chain stores. Some common stories of receiving these types of packages after miscarriage.

In an emailed statement to NPR, a Walgreens representative said, “The privacy of our customers is important to Walgreens. We have not provided information about individual customer purchases to Enfamil.”

So can an infant formula company take a customer’s details and send them a package? The history of this type of marketing is long, and the legality is complicated.

How does it work?

One of the most infamous examples involves a case from 2012, when the father of a teenage girl found out his daughter was pregnant through Target coupon ads before she told him herself.

Alicia Sloan Lederman, an associate professor of law at the University of Iowa College of Law, cites this as a historical example of how valuable your purchase history and spending habits can be to a store, regardless of algorithms. your search or online submissions.

“Companies like Walgreens, Target, really any organization, can put together profiles of the kinds of things that consumers in particular categories are likely to buy,” she said. “So it could be that people who are pregnant buy X, Y and Z bundle of goods, then the company can conclude that, okay, well, because you bought X, Y and Z, you’re probably like these other categories of people in a certain class, such as pregnant women. Therefore, we will assume that you are and send you the intended article.”

In a statement to NPR, Reckitt, which makes Enfamil formula, said it did not have access to Walgreens’ customer information. However, he said that consumers can voluntarily opt-in to receive marketing material and that this can happen “through a third party that states that the information will be shared”.

Lederman said the fine print for many store rewards programs allowed corporations to collect and share consumer data and make inferences about targeted marketing items.

In most cases, signing up for a rewards program means you agree to have your data collected and used in that way, Lederman said, but she argued that another issue lies in the expectation that consumers have the capacity to navigate the this type of law. separate language, a concern privacy and data protection researchers have voiced for years.

“To my mind, the question is less, ‘Have Target or Walgreens, or any company, clearly stated what their policies are?’ and more, “Is it reasonable for any individual to be expected to go through and read these policies, especially in a world where, I don’t know, I rely on these companies to get the things I need in basic life?”

Now that some states can pursue criminal charges against those seeking information about abortions, or the abortions themselves, Lederman said that data could become valuable to more than just stores trying to track your spending habits.

“Information can flow across contexts, including law enforcement officials, including doctors or medical providers, or in some states, private individuals who may have an interest in pursuing suspected abortionists,” she said.

How to protect yourself

Lederman argues that the most effective solutions to these problems lie in broader legislation and stricter regulations surrounding data collection and storage.

“It’s a systemic problem. And the ways to shut it down are things like statutes that make it more difficult to share information with law enforcement for certain purposes, without proper safeguards, without proper procedural protections, or for companies that data minimization simply collects less data. or destroys it after a certain period.”

However, there are many ways you can protect yourself and your data, no matter where you live or where you shop.

“The first thing I always say when people ask me this question is don’t panic,” said Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit organization that aims to protect basic rights in the digital age.

“I think a lot of what gets us into trouble when we think about digital security is that we tend to get overwhelmed very quickly and throw our hands up and say, ‘There are so many ways that my privacy is being invaded.’

Greer said the steps you take should reflect your level of risk, and there was no universal way to keep your data more secure. But there are a few things you can do as a starting point. Their first recommendation is an “app diet”.

“Just pay attention to how many apps you have on your phone,” they said. “Chances are, most of the apps on your phone are collecting and storing some kind of data about you. And that data can be used in ways you haven’t even begun to imagine.”

Greer also emphasized the importance of having strong protections for accessing your phone and using a password manager to protect your accounts.

“The biggest mistake that many, many people are still making is using the same password for all of their accounts or using Face ID on their phone, which if you’re worried about law enforcement actually has legal precedent to suggest that a law enforcement officer can force you to unlock your phone by holding it to your face,” they said. “They can’t force you to give them your passcode.”

Their final suggestion is to look for sources that don’t store data, including search engines like DuckDuckGo and end-to-end encrypted messaging services like Signal.

“That’s what I think is very important to a lot of people, because as reproductive health care becomes more and more criminalized, people are looking for information. People are scared. They want to know what their rights are and what kind of the health care they can access and where. And all of that includes searching the Internet.”

Ultimately, Greer said the most important privacy effort any consumer can make is to call their congressman and let them know that legislation protecting digital privacy is an important issue.

“We need collective regulatory action by Congress to make it illegal for companies to collect so much data about us in the first place,” they said. “That’s the only thing that’s really going to protect people in the long run.”