Casey Liss

And so the motivation is, hey, do you want a few bucks off your groceries? And the way they do is they don't ask you for your phone number anymore, but on the stupid little paddy thing that they have there... You type in your phone number to essentially get your discount to say, oh, now we know who you are.

Now we will register your groceries in the app and give you the discount that you're entitled to for doing rewards, blah, blah, blah. Right. Whole Foods has the... The Amazon, well, I don't think it's Amazon. But anyway, the Whole Foods has the thing where you get the diamond-shaped QR code-y thing in their app and you scan it in the thing. God knows what's on that QR code that they're scanning.

Now we will register your groceries in the app and give you the discount that you're entitled to for doing rewards, blah, blah, blah. Right. Whole Foods has the... The Amazon, well, I don't think it's Amazon. But anyway, the Whole Foods has the thing where you get the diamond-shaped QR code-y thing in their app and you scan it in the thing. God knows what's on that QR code that they're scanning.

It's probably all your information anyway, right? And I forget if I said this, but recently I changed my action button to launch the Whole Foods app.

It's probably all your information anyway, right? And I forget if I said this, but recently I changed my action button to launch the Whole Foods app.

Because I realized the main time that I'm trying to do something under time pressure on my phone and I find it frustrating is unlocking it and launching the Whole Foods app so I can scan it. So that's what my action button does now because I'm using the camera control for the camera. Action button launches the Whole Foods app, which is terrible. I don't even shop at Whole Foods that often.

Because I realized the main time that I'm trying to do something under time pressure on my phone and I find it frustrating is unlocking it and launching the Whole Foods app so I can scan it. So that's what my action button does now because I'm using the camera control for the camera. Action button launches the Whole Foods app, which is terrible. I don't even shop at Whole Foods that often.

I mean, it's within walking distance, so if you need something last minute, you just walk to the Whole Foods, but I don't actually do my grocery shopping there. I do it at Star Market, which is a local chain that is probably owned by whoever the hell owns all the chains in this area now. Shaw's bought them recently, where recently means like 10 years ago. But anyway, Star Market has the app.

I mean, it's within walking distance, so if you need something last minute, you just walk to the Whole Foods, but I don't actually do my grocery shopping there. I do it at Star Market, which is a local chain that is probably owned by whoever the hell owns all the chains in this area now. Shaw's bought them recently, where recently means like 10 years ago. But anyway, Star Market has the app.

They don't ask you your phone number, but if you want your discount, they have nothing for you to scan as far as I'm aware. You've got to type your... So I'm typing my telephone number into the keypad rather than giving it to them, which I guess is better than reading out into the air, but... Anyway, it's ridiculous.

They don't ask you your phone number, but if you want your discount, they have nothing for you to scan as far as I'm aware. You've got to type your... So I'm typing my telephone number into the keypad rather than giving it to them, which I guess is better than reading out into the air, but... Anyway, it's ridiculous.

For the driver's license thing, I think one of the reasons you see a lot more of this happening is twofold. There are more online account thingies these days that give you some way to prove you are who you are to give some kind of backstop for account recovery. And they essentially just need you some proof of identity.

For the driver's license thing, I think one of the reasons you see a lot more of this happening is twofold. There are more online account thingies these days that give you some way to prove you are who you are to give some kind of backstop for account recovery. And they essentially just need you some proof of identity.

And they have you scan your driver's license or your passport or some other thing. Obviously, only do that if you think the value of being able to recover your account through proving who you are is worth the...

And they have you scan your driver's license or your passport or some other thing. Obviously, only do that if you think the value of being able to recover your account through proving who you are is worth the...

loss of privacy of giving these people your thing how much do you trust the company do you really care about this account like usually this is an optional type thing but that that's part of the same family of activities of like they just need you to prove who you are but you're not there a lot of times if you're there in person if they just need your driver's license for you to prove your identity you don't have to scan it or give it to them you can just show it to them

loss of privacy of giving these people your thing how much do you trust the company do you really care about this account like usually this is an optional type thing but that that's part of the same family of activities of like they just need you to prove who you are but you're not there a lot of times if you're there in person if they just need your driver's license for you to prove your identity you don't have to scan it or give it to them you can just show it to them

And maybe, you know, you can see if they're typing down your driver's license number or do they just want to say, yes, a human being has now seen and like a, like a, you know, a bouncer at a bar looked at your ID and decided, I think this is a real ID. You are Joe Schmo. You have a state issued identification, thumbs up. And then they never scan it.

And maybe, you know, you can see if they're typing down your driver's license number or do they just want to say, yes, a human being has now seen and like a, like a, you know, a bouncer at a bar looked at your ID and decided, I think this is a real ID. You are Joe Schmo. You have a state issued identification, thumbs up. And then they never scan it.

And hopefully they never write anything down about it. You're just showing it to them and then putting it back into your wallet. So that is another kind of middle ground. But yeah, like Marco said, you can just say no and see what the consequences are. Most of the time they just need the information.