Tell-All Checkouts

Should You Answer the Cashier's Quiz? It May Not Matter

You're ready to pay. But, first, the cashier has a question: "Did you find everything you were looking for?" Or maybe it's "Do you have our advantage card?" Hey, even "Paper or plastic?" is pushing the envelope these days.

Getting the third degree in the checkout line can be a pain. But there are two questions that really drive consumers out the marketplace door. Especially now as privacy concerns loom larger than ever before:

Can I get your phone number?

Can I have your Zip code?

Don't even think the go-ballistic request: "Can I have your Social Security number?" Not a chance. Even though they already have it, along with all the other info -- unless you're living off the grid.

"Usually they ask for either phone number or Zip code, never both, but it's still odd," says Fairfax reader Arlene Fletcher, adding that such inquiries are standard at clothing stores and big electronics chains where she shops.

She's not consumer-paranoid, but she doesn't like the questions. She suspects the worst: that complying like some shopper drone will get you more telemarketing calls and more junk mail, maybe even put your personal data at risk.

At the very least, checking out of a store shouldn't be a test. "Why do they ask for your info?" asks Fletcher. "What do they use it for?"

Consumers aren't comfortable giving up information about themselves anymore. Not even the impersonal Zip code. And who can blame them? American corporations, including major financial institutions that eat your personal info for breakfast, such as Bank of America, Citigroup and MasterCard, have suffered troubling data breaches over the past year or so, making the data on more than 50 million consumers vulnerable to crooks.

Those questions are "actually pretty annoying," says Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute, an Elk Rapids, Mich., research organization studying privacy, data protection and information security. "But they're really not a major cause of privacy violations."

Beyond the irritation factor, he assures, checkout-line inquiries seldom intrude further. "Ninety-nine percent of the time, what is happening is they are doing an aggregate demographic analysis by location of the store," he says. "If you are worried that they now have the history of what you buy at the store, it could happen, but that possibility is pretty remote."

Particularly when stores ask for Zip codes. Robert S. Seiner, president of KIK Consulting & Educational Services LLC in Pittsburgh and publisher of the Data Administration Newsletter, says giving out your Zip code isn't risky "unless you're the only person who lives in that Zip code area.