The privacy of shoppers signed up for Woolworths’ new loyalty card Everyday Rewards has been questioned with the fine print revealing the supermarket can record licence plates, capture video and audio of customers and link them to membership numbers.
Woolworths states video footage and audio recordings are used for security, theft prevention and safety purposes only.
One customer said he was not bothered too much with the recording of licence plates and CCTV footage - “I’m not planning on stealing anything or abusing anyone” - but questioned how the information was kept secure.
The man pointed to an IT oversight last week which saw Everyday Rewards customers cashing in by creating multiple accounts and sharing points to get vouchers.
“Our team is well versed in protecting the information we do hold,” the spokesman said.
My selection of paragraphs may have made Countdown/Woolworths look less competent than the article makes out, but I don’t think it’s too far off.
Does anyone know if the terms are different from the previous Onecard? It doesn’t mention it in the article. Wonder why there’s so much fuss about their new rewards card, when they’ve had Onecard for years before the rebrand.
Considering the focus on bodycams and licence plates, and the increasing issue of violence against staff in the last year or two, I’m guessing this is new.
And it’s not that they are doing these things, but that they can use the information they gather to tie you to your rewards account. Ostensibly so they can catch shoplifters and the like, but (not having read them) it seems the Ts&Cs don’t hold them to this restriction.
I guess I already assumed when you were swiping your onecard they were already linking your shop to your onecard number. I figured they were already doing all these things - I mean did we really believe all these loyalty membership schemes were for our benefit?
Not to mention you used to link them to your AA smartfuel card as well, or how the New World card can link with flybuys for even more data.
I think until recently it was probably not easy to link a car registration via number plate recognition to a one card, and security video was probably used more as a deterrent. With better technology (and higher need, with the violence against staff) that would mean declaring this sort of use. I’d assume it’s still pretty manual, checking which person paid for groceries at which till at what time, then tracing it to the onecard and therefore their personal details so you can send the cops after them or ban them from the store.
I swear I read a couple of years ago that one of the supermarkets was trialling facial recognition already. I’m sure that would make it easier to tie it together. Just seems like a tech that already exists somewhere or maybe it’s just my imagination.
There have definitely been supermarkets trialing facial recognition, but that’s about grabbing the face of shoplifters then automatically identifying them if they try to enter the store again.
New World got in a bit of trouble using this on everyone entering the store trying to identify previous shoplifters. I wonder if countdown has a new plan - identify the loyalty card used by the shoplifter and preventing sales/calling police if the card is used?
Enshittified aside, until I saw this is in New Zealand, I was immensely confused as the Woolworth’s I know of in the US is long since defunct.
Whatever the store behind it, the practice is repugnant.
Apologies that I don’t tend to look at which community I’m clicking on while scrolling. That would’ve served as my first clue, yes?
Interestingly, NZ hasn’t really had Woolworths for many years. The Australian Woolworths that owns the stores rebranded all the Woolworths stores into “Countdown”, a different supermarket company that they owned, starting about 2009. Countdown was an existing NZ supermarket that was bought by (or some sort of merger with) the company that Woolworths Australia bought. After the purchase they had a bunch of Woolworths and Countdown stores, and rebranded them into Countdown as it had the public image they wanted.
So since perhaps 2011 there have been no Woolworths stores in NZ, and only recently did the Woolworths Australia owner decide to rebrand all Countdown stores to Woolworths, something that drew a bit of criticism that they were spending $400 million NZD on rebranding at a time when their high prices (and profits) were partly responsible for the high inflation rate.
This new loyalty card scheme is part of that rebrand.
