Here’s an interesting fact in this Red Tape Chronicles post about how to protect your private data bits from retailers who don’t know any better: by the terms of their merchant agreement with credit card issuers, stores are not allowed to force you to present ID in addition to your credit card.

Check page 29 of the Visa merchant agreement (PDF).

Bob Sullivan doesn’t like to hand over his personal information except when necessary. Considering the identity theft problem and how retailer’s wireless networks are often wide-open for incursion, we can understand why. If a store cites its policy, you can threaten to complain to the provider. Violating the agreement could get them excommunicated from the network, and not able to accept credit cards.

Data collection: Just say ‘I know my rights’ [Red Tape Chronicles]

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