I am a private person. I cannot adequately explain how much I cherish my privacy and guard it jealousy.
While many people have woven Facebook into the fabric of their lives, I avoid it like the plague. It took one time for my Facebook photo to appear on another website I was visiting with a message to share the site with family and friends for me to uninstall the app. It gave me the creeps to think some uninvited invisible force was looking over my shoulder and following me around pretending to be my best friend and guide.
Other than the Twitter account associated with my work, the all-seeing eyes of social media does not exist in my life. I am just not one of those people who shares personal information indiscriminately.
But I also am a smoker.
And I am finding my right to privacy is up against big businesses like Walgreens, Stop & Shop and Rite Aid that take the personal information of smokers and scan it into their systems under the guise of age verification. I knew Stop & Shop and Rite Aid did this and I do my best never to buy cigarettes there.
And before all the health experts and concerned parents chime in, save it. I know smoking is a nasty habit — but this is not a column about the dangers of cigarette smoking, but the right to buy a legal product without being tracked — just as it is with thousands of people who buy alcohol at liquor stores throughout the state.
I went into Walgreens recently to buy cigarettes and I was asked for identification so my age could be verified.
Let's stop a minute so I can clarify something: For those who have not yet met me, my real picture accompanies this column and it was taken last year. Since then, the clock did not turn back. I did not stumble upon the fountain of youth. I didn't rub some magical, decades-erasing cream on my face, and no amount of Botox or number of facelifts will get me even close to looking 21 again.
But I begrudgingly handed the sales associate my driver's license. Before I realized what she was doing and could stop her, she scanned the information into Walgreens' system.
And I admit, it ticked me off. I would have preferred to buy my cigarettes elsewhere rather than have my personal data scanned into a system.
I first noticed this "age verification" happening at Rite Aid about three years ago. I also found out during the course of researching this column that Walgreens owns many of the Rite Aids and Duane Reade drugstores, too.
I don't believe a word of it. Is Walgreens really trying to convince me and its customers that they have tiny little technical fingers in its system that erased my name, address and driver's license number but just retained my birth date after my license has been scanned?
I am not that gullible — and it is insulting to think Walgreens believes its customers are that stupid.
If Walgreens is not tracking smokers and using the information, then why enter and retain birth date information?
What good is useless information clogging up data space after a purchase has been made if it is just for verification and not to track smokers?
And since when has a company — any company — been privy to a consumer's personal information and not used it in some way to benefit itself? I can't imagine Walgreens went through the expense of installing the age-verification equipment throughout thousands of locations if it was not reaping the rewards.
Walgreens isn't alone. Stop & Shop has the same policy — and one swipe of my Stop & Shop card will show them how dramatically I have reduced the amount of money I spend there. I will not support any company I believe is tracking me.
We have always been concerned about big brother watching our every move. We used to think it would just be the government. Little did we know that big brother would turn out to be the businesses you have shopped at throughout the years.
I contacted the attorney general's office about my concerns. This is the only product on the market — including the sale of alcohol — that demands adults show ID and have their information put into a computer.
But the state allows sellers of alcoholic liquor or tobacco products to use a transaction scan device to check the validity of a driver's license or identity card as a condition of purchasing such alcoholic liquor or tobacco products.
I don't want to go off the deep end here, but is the attorney general trying to convince me that businesses abide by this statute by their own volition?
Because in my experience, businesses will do what they want with consumer's personal information — and, when caught violating the rules, get a slap on the wrist, pay a paltry fine and admit no wrong-doing.
So maybe it is the state that is being hoodwinked.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., did not respond for a comment. But Blumenthal and other senators sent Walgreens a letter in February urging them to remove tobacco products from its shelves. Since 2010, 22 percent of Walgreens stores have been caught selling cigarettes to minors, making them the largest violators of underage sales of cigarettes to minors in the nation.
But I am clearly not underage.
Are you not gagging on the hypocrisy?
There isn't a health expert anywhere in the world who won't say cigarettes are poison and unhealthy. Walgreens — a health store and pharmacy — sells that poison with undisguised capitalism. It deliberately keeps its cigarette prices well below the competition to drive smokers to its stores and makes sure it is the last merchandise its customers see before leaving.
There is nothing healthy about that.
No wonder Walgreens is no longer located on the corner of Happy and Health — but on the corner of Cash and Cow.
Smokers? Being tracked is giving me the creeps.