Just bought a 2m section of flexible tube for a gas stove, and the sales clerk asked first for my phone number, to which I replied “I don’t have one”. Then she asked me for my name, to which I replied “I’ll pay in cash”. She then insisted it was so “the cashier will call you by name”, to which I replied “I’m not giving you my name, I’ll pay in cash”. [Edit: she apparently got a bit upset when I refused to give info, but ended up entering “no name” according to the receipt]
Am I wrong for not wanting to give personal data for an item paid in cash, in person? No other hardware store ever asks me for my personal info.
I’m just about certain you are way overreacting to this. Stores sometimes ask for your phone number to see if you’re in their system (if you’ve been to one of their stores before) so they can do things like track your purchase history and send you promotions. I don’t know why they asked for your name but I doubt it’s anything nefarious.
And if we don’t want to be in their system tracking purchases and stuff?
That’s a completely valid concern about privacy and anonymity and every opportunity we have to not provide information in these scenarios is a reasonable response. But be aware of all the other ways you’re already “in the system”. A cellphone, even if you aren’t using it, communicates thousands of times a day with outside systems. Then let’s talk about inference. It means deducing something about a person without getting direct information from them. You leave so many disparate pieces of information in your daily activities that it’s possible to infer a number of things about you with a high enough degree of accuracy that it’s useful. This information should be private and should only be available to others if we choose to allow it. But it’s not.
And if you find yourself in a situation like OP you don’t have to say something ridiculous and obviously untrue like “I don’t have a phone”, you can just say “I don’t want to provide that”. And it’s probably fine to give someone your first name in a situation like this.
I use Cape on a GapheneOS phone so neither my cell provider or my phone knows my name.
I understand that people can only limit the data that gets collected and Incognito/Deleteme etc. can’t get all the rest. In my opinion the only way to prevent the further exploitation of our data is for people to just not play.
We’re already playing.
A purchase should be a one time thing. Especially with cash. You give me whatever I need, I give you whatever you ask for. No more interaction. Certainly not asking for my phone number without a valid reason. You wanting to track my purchasing history possibly to sell to third parties is no valid reason.