![]() ![]() You can report all sorts of “healthy behaviors,” like using a nicotine patch or setting a weight loss goal or biking for 10 miles, earning points for each bit of information you feed the app. You don’t have to earn your reward points by giving the chain just one kind of data, of course. And you have to share an awful lot of those data points to earn the discount. “Now it’s coming on your smartphone, and they’re texting you, and they’re being more invasive,” Lipson said.Īnd while a grocery store may know how many boxes of Cheerios you buy in a week or what brand of pasta sauce you prefer, Walgreens can collect far more sensitive data about your health, down to how many milligrams of sugar per deciliter of blood you have in your veins. What’s new is that drugstores are increasingly taking advantage of the proliferation of “connection points” available to them, according to Alan Lipson, a retail industry marketing manager for the analytics firm SAS. Retailers of all stripes have long mined purchase data obtained through their loyalty rewards programs for clues about their customers. Low-income customers may not be able to afford to say no to a discount, even at the cost of personal data they would otherwise keep private, she said. ![]() Michelle De Mooy, a consumer privacy advocate at the Center for Democracy & Technology, worries that these programs have the potential to be discriminatory in their impact. They may also be at risk of having their data shared more widely than they want - or even stolen. ![]() In exchange for modest discounts, he said, patients are giving up “very, very valuable” information and leaving themselves open to a barrage of advertising about potentially sensitive health conditions. “It’s extremely concerning,” said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at the nonprofit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. The trend alarms consumer and privacy advocates. ![]() How precisely? If you allow your drugstore to track your location, you might get a text offering a coupon for a specific cough syrup or recommending that you try a neti pot for sinus relief - while you’re standing in the aisle that sells cold and flu medication. But the growing practice is also a boon for their bottom line because it helps them target their marketing efforts more precisely. Exclusive analysis of biotech, pharma, and the life sciences Learn Moreĭrugstores say they’re collecting your data to encourage you to be healthy and save you money. ![]()
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