Ask HN: Anybody know if supermarkets collect and sell your receipts?

1 pointwilliamle83001 comment

I'm a huge fan of buying top shelf bourbons and started seeing ads for Knob Creek bourbon on Instagram recently. It's led me to think that Von's (my local grocer) sells my purchase history to ad networks.

Anybody ever have this experience?

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Based on what limited experience I have with FB ad targeting[0], there is quite a lot of data purchased from credit card companies. There may be aggregated receipts funneled into one of their sources, though I haven't yet seen a specific grocery source called out anywhere. Nonetheless, it's pretty trivial to identify purchase behavior via CC data and target people who are known to buy/consume alcohol—e.g., bars, liquor stores, etc.—and push my product.

0: FB ads run on instagram by default

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