Every time I go to Party City, they ask me for my Zip code, and every time, I give them a random answer. I make sure its an existing Zip code, so they can’t identify it as an error, but nonetheless, it is andom. Why do they need to know where I live? Information leaking and information gathering is everywhere, not just on the Internet, and frankly, its pissing me off. I don’t like being watched.
Yesterday, I was shopping at Target. They went one step further in what I feel is clearly crossing the lines. After I said no to the dozens of credit card offers that their employees are forced to push, I was given a receipt with a username and password so that I could go on line and “anonymously” rate their performance Anonymously? How? They generated the username/password pair after I had given them my credit card which reveals my identity. So, their computers have a record of who I am and what username/password corresponds to me. If I were to “anonymously” answer their survey, they would know who I am, what I bought, what I said about them, and even the cashier to whom I spoke — if I didn’t like her performance, would she be fired? I don’t like that. Now maybe they don’t record the identity-survey response connection in their database, or the cashier-survey response, but maybe they do. If you trust them, then be my guest …
This is a case where it is not only morally okay to lie, but one might argue that you have a moral obligation to do so. If everyone were to give random answers to surveys, these devices would become useless in identifying us — its called poisoning their database. Even anonymously gathered information is disturbing. These companies want to know what our buying habits are so they can “better serve” us. Better serve or better entice? Playing on the irrational impulse to buy is a desired skill in the marketing world. Look at the debts incurred by the average American who has not only not learned self-discipline in frugality, but does not even appreciate the value of such restraint. In the Target case, even if I had paid cash, the username/password would be linked to the cash register and the cashier behind it. Did she know that when she so vigorously pushed the survey?!
Do not underestimate the power of poisoning databases. Every time I get email scam saying things like, your Paypal account is suspended, please click here to reactivate it, I write an evil little program. It goes over and over to their site and enters randomly generated username/passwords. I make sure to disguise my IP address and then leave them with the task of figuring out which username/password is potentially victim, and which is a waste of their time.
I’m sorry Kant, but sometimes, it is morally right to lie.