Who owns your snapper trail?

That big pile of accumlated data from years of using your snapper card, who owns it?

Snapper card are smart cards in use by wellington buses. You use these for payment for your trips, and all other fares except the one trip cash fares have been phased out, so if you commute you gotta use snapper or start paying a forture / carrying cash.

CC licensed photo by Alan Macdougall

Imagine all the bus trips, the shops you go past, the amounts you spend/topup. Google have proven the value of such information in their targeted adverts. Amassed enough data, it has a value, and who owns it? Can they sell it? Need they tell you if they sell it?

Today the New Zealand Privacy Commision told snapper they ought to revise their privacy policy (computerword.co.nz)

There are incentives to register your card -- being able to see an audit trail and claiming lost funds when you lose your card -- but even if you take the risk and don't register they're still building a good profile of nameless you and your movements.

My own thoughts: We can't be complacent and assume someone else is looking out for our prvacy. While I might trust the folks who run snapper today (and I don't yet), do i know for sure i'll trust the folks who buy them out in 2 years time? For myself I would rather they collected no information at all -- beyond a short period of time (maybe 4 weeks), then I want my data gone, erased, unretrievable and/or completely unable to be matched up with me, because it's proven even the most trusted can screw up. In much the same way no-one can find out who voted for New Zealand First last election (though that's possibly a bad example).

Then there's nothing to lose, and nothing to sell.