A truism about the free tools online is that if you aren’t paying for the service, then you are the product.  Take your grocery store’s “club” card program.  You sign up and give them your name and phone number, and every time you shop, you swipe your card and get discounts on certain items.  If you shop at the same store all the time, it makes total sense to take advantage of these discounts to save yourself some cash.  It is easy to see why a consumer would use an offer for a discount, but why does offering it make sense to the store? Every club card swipe gives the grocery some data points, some of it in aggregate, for example to track what brand of black beans is popular in this community, or that there is an uptick in baking supplies needed towards the end of the year.

Read full article on Tripwire – The State of Security