And this is why we pay with old-fashioned untraceable cash, and never join "store loyalty" tracking programs.
Your Doctor Knows You're Killing Yourself. The Data Brokers Told Her (Bloomberg)
Information compiled by data brokers from public records and credit card transactions can reveal where a person shops, the food they buy, and whether they smoke. The largest hospital chain in the Carolinas is plugging data for 2 million people into algorithms designed to identify high-risk patients, while Pennsylvania’s biggest system uses household and demographic data. Patients and their advocates, meanwhile, say they’re concerned that big data’s expansion into medical care will hurt the doctor-patient relationship and threaten privacy.