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She scours flyers and websites, alerting her @couponcutiecanada Instagram account’s 254,000 followers to supermarket sales and deals at the likes of Lululemon or Amazon.
But one of her tried and true savings methods — apps like Checkout51, Caddle, Drop, and Eclipsa, which offer gift cards, points and cash back in exchange for uploading receipts, tracking purchases or completing surveys — poses a mystery to the savvy shopper.
“The purpose of these apps is to collect data mainly, from my understanding, but I don’t know for sure,” said Schaubroeck, who lives in Dominion City, Man. about 100 kilometres south of Winnipeg. “I don’t know a ton about that side of it.”
Schaubroeck’s right about the apps collecting data, but where does the information go and who is really profiting from it?
Source: Toronto Daily Star
Date: March 17th ,2023
Discussion
- “Daily surveys net users five cents each. An uploaded receipt from stores like No Frills, Dollarama, Home Depot and Sephora can make them between 10 cents and one dollar. The receipts help Caddle learn which customers have bought products featured on the app, so it can validate that it prompted a purchase. Other brands want Caddle to land their products reviews. The receipt identifies when someone bought a target item, so Caddle can offer them money for writing a review.”
The article says “It’s a “misconception,” he added, that companies like his collect data and pass it along to clients with people’s names and other identifiable details.”
It is easy to see why the daily surveys and uploaded receipts information could be anonymized, but surely “The receipt identifies when someone bought a target item, so Caddle can offer them money for writing a review” means that Caddle has to know exactly who bought the item.
Why is it an issue, or not, to share this information? - “There’s a clear disclaimer there that says, ‘hey, this is how we’re going to use your data’ and it’s not buried somewhere and in legalese.”
Is this sufficient?
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