[Full-disclosure] Best Buy and Privacy?

["Thor (Hammer of God)" <thor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I found this interesting, so I thought I would share it.

Over the last few years I had amassed quite a number of various gaming system 
games that I never used anymore (if at all) so I decided to trade them in at 
Best Buy (they do this for store credit).  Though $3 for a $50 game wasn't 
exactly attractive, I figured I could get a free Blue Ray out of it, so why not.

I showed up with a stack of games, and sat at the counter for about 30 minutes 
while the guy individually entered each title, catalog number, etc for each 
game.  After all that, he finally said that he needed to see my driver's 
license in order to give me my $73 credit.  I always question this type of 
thing, so asked him why.  "In case these were stolen" he says, going on to say 
it is store policy.  Whatever, I think, so I give it to him.  He doesn't just 
look at it, but starts entering my info into the system - I didn't care because 
it was an out-of-state license, but didn't like that he was actually entering 
it into the system.

He then notices that my license had expired a month earlier.  I actually knew 
this, but wasn't going to offer it up.  He says he can't take it, and I give 
the obligatory "I'm not driving in the store, I'm just giving you games" bit 
and the "it was me a month ago, so what difference does it make now" pitch.  He 
goes asks the manager, and sure enough, they can't take it because it is 
expired.

So this is the point where I really start to wonder and ask more questions 
about what difference it makes.  He then tells me that the reason he has to 
enter so much information, including each individual title and UPC, is because 
they have to send all this information to the Seattle police in case any of the 
titles I turned in were reported stolen by someone.  I asked how they expected 
to match up a stolen title with a redeemed one short of putting 5 "Pimp My 
Ride" games in a line-up for identification, and of course the kid didn't know 
and didn't care.  I then pointed out that even if I did steal it, if the cops 
came around looking for it, I wouldn't have it anymore anyway because it would 
be in the Best Buy warehouse.  More not caring.

While the overall process of wasting police resources on tracking games that 
might have been stolen seems like a complete waste of time and money, what 
really concerned me is that Best Buy was going to send my personal information 
over to the police without disclosing anything to me.  There was no mention of 
it anywhere, no fine print, nothing.  Had my license not been expired, that 
info (which they would not have had) would be put into the public system, and 
there would be no way I could control the information or what they did with it. 
 This would have been particularly bad if I had to explain why I had a copy of 
"Barbie's Horse Adventure" at some point.

As far as profiling is concerned, you would think they would be more interested 
in the fact that I was going to use the $73 credit towards the purchase of a 
couple of seasons of Dexter, but I have no way of knowing that they wouldn't 
have sent this information anyway.  It begs the question as to what other 
information Best Buy is sending to whom, and what kind of privacy rights I am 
implicitly giving up by shopping there.  If they can report personal 
information to government agencies without my knowledge, approval, or any sort 
of notification, and in this case collected the information for the explicit 
purpose of doing so, why else are they collecting?

AFAIAC, there is something seriously wrong with this.  Anyway, I thought I 
would share this in case anyone found it interesting.

T

There's no reason to think "outside the box"
If you don't think yourself into it.


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