So my cousin was here and saw a grocery receipt on the table and asked if I was using it and if he could take a picture of it, I was like what, why?
So, there is this app that pays you some cents for receipt pictures and supposedly it pays you if it finds items that have cashback… shit sounds sketchy as fuck, I saw that on their app they sell credit cards and you can invest in some crap, but what I really found disturbing is this thing about them paying you to send them all your receipts… what the fuck are they doing with that info lol
Crazy stuff, but I’m completely out of touch with cellphone things, is this crap normal??? I was quite shocked by it, and checking the company online, Méliuz, I just see stuff about it buying bitcoin.
My wife uses Fetch. Does a lot of this. She scans all our receipts but also receipts she finds. She’s gotten gift cards from it. I don’t trust it though.
I’m picturing people dumpster diving just to find receipts to scan. I didn’t know this was a thing… hell, I always destroy my personal info on mail packages, gonna start destroying receipts as well.
Man. I never thought I should buy a shredder
Good for compost but I wouldn’t compost receipts. Thermal paper is loaded with BPA.
They don’t need to go dumpster diving. People leave plenty of receipts in self checkout printers or on the ground in the parking lot.
The only catch to that is, Fetch started getting wind of people doing that, so it might tell you that you have so much time to scan the barcode of one of the products included, or the entire receipt will be invalidated. If you just bought it, you would have it handy (so, best to scan the receipt as you unload the groceries, at home). If you found the receipt in the store, you might be able to find the merchandise in time, like a little one-shot game of Supermarket Sweep. But if you found it outside the store… your chances go down a bit. And, I think, if you have too many receipts invalidated, they might just brand you a cheater and kick you off the program. But I’m not really sure.
I’ve often wondered if typical retail receipts contain any sensitive info which would give me reason to shred them before discarding but the worst thing on there is last four digits of whichever card I used, and the merchant address, date/time, what I bought, but nothing directly tying it to ME unless some weirdo wants to figure out how to correlate people with last 4 of card numbers, but how inanely ridiculous that would be…yet here we are apparently 🤦🏼♀️
Sometimes the cardholder’s name will be printed on the receipt.
I wonder how it goes with AI-generated receipts.
The Google Rewards Opinion app does this, scan receipts or answer random questions for Google Play cash. I assume they do it for market research to figure out better advertising (Google is in the advertising business after all).
Never heard of other apps doing that but I’m sure it’s the same idea, other apps must use or sell that data to ad brokers.
I was bored so I looked up these apps for receipt scanning and it looks like it’s a combination of couponing and consumer data broker. Most of them require you to activate promos on the app first, go shopping, then get “cash back” for certain promo items when you take a picture of the receipt.
I’m guessing this is on top of the discounts you can get directly from grocery store apps (which are surely already brokering purchase data).
One or two of the apps don’t require activating offers at all so I guess those ones are JUST data brokering.
Another interesting one I’ve seen: Upside.
It isn’t necessarily encouraging to buy a specific product, but rather to buy from specific businesses.
To the consumer: they look at the app and buy gas from participating stores, which typically show as having a 5-10 cent discount on gas. The customer uploads a picture of their receipt to confirm the purchase and amount, and get credited that discount. Theres a monthly purvhase target that unlocks a 1 time discount of 30 cents per gallon, etc.
To the business: they pay a fee to Upside to be a participant. Upside promises to only participate with a certain % of stores in the area. It’s likely the business also pays for some of the discounts obtained.
Essentially paying upside is meant to increase sales volume. While a gas station could just dicount their gas, they are paying Upaide to effectively advertise and steer consumers to THAT store. As Upside is national, many custpmers use it, even in unfamiliar areas to choose gas stations.
I say not a specific product, because my understanding is it’s extended to other business categories besides gas.
Market manipulation, ultimately. I’m sure in some part they are sellong your location & purchase data as well.
I do this with an old phone on wifi. I don’t think it’s a huge deal. I use fetch and haven’t seen any ads or credit card offers etc. you just exchange points for gift cards. I know it’s probably harvesting some data from me, but I don’t really use that phone for much else, and I use a VPN/not my real email.
