July 13, 2021
Purchasing from retail stores used to be simple. You could walk in, grab what you wanted, pay for them with cash, and walk out. Not anymore. Increasingly, many stores are refusing to sell to those unwilling to give out their phone numbers.
The first time this happened to me, I attributed their requirement for my phone number to purely nefarious intentions—after all, who wouldn't want to profit by selling phone numbers (and purchase histories) to marketing companies?
I've come to question the exclusivity of my attribution. Imagine you buy a barbell rated with a load capacity of 200 kilograms. Later, the manufacturing lead realizes that her unit-conversion team erred in the pound-to-kilogram conversion, mistaking one pound for 1.2 kilograms. Your barbell's true load capacity is 110 kilograms, not 200 kilograms! The lead then reaches out to her retailers (to inform them of the error), who then reach out to their customers. Without your phone number (or e-mail address), how would they get in touch with you if something goes wrong?
Of course, not every product has associated risks. The socks you want to buy aren't going to explode or snap apart. However, I can understand why retailers would want to hedge themselves against potential lawsuits—'We informed you of the defect as soon as we became aware of it.' And, well, this makes sense.
However, when you give them your phone number, they are not signing you up solely for "you're-in-danger" alerts. They also sign you up for marketing messages. In regard to this, there appears to be little choice—sign up for both, or we'll refuse to sell to you.
There's one additional problem. Most of the IT companies that handle your data for retailers are lax with security—the number of data breaches that occur every day is staggering. These data breaches in turn become another source of spam, phishing, and marketing messages. Don't we have enough of those already? (Open up your SMS app and count the spam you've received over the past week.)
As a general rule of thumb, assume that any information you give your retailer is public information. Not wanting to share your phone number is probably prudent—as long as you're willing to risk your barbell snapping in two. If your retailer refuses to make a sale without your phone number, you could always make up one—listen to 8765-309/Jenny for some great ideas.