anonymous video rental store
Jim Miller
jim at bilbo.suite.com
Wed Dec 15 14:03:54 PST 1993
I'm not convinced a simple anonymous customer/buy-back(or deposit)
mechanism is the ideal solution. First, the clerk sees what videos you
rent and might be able to identify you from a picture. Second, if the
store issues ID cards, then the store can track which videos are rented by
each ID. Although the store doesn't know for your real identity, it
wouldn't be to hard to find it out in many cases. The clerk coud look out
the store window and get the license number of your car.
You could avoid some of these problems if the store didn't issue permanent
ID cards, but instead issued one-time ID cards. You would get a new ID
card everytime you rented some videos. This would make it impractical for
the store to automatically track your rentals.
This doesn't eliminate the posibility of a clerk remebering your face and
pairing it up with a specific rental, or a rental pattern.
"Oh yeah, I remember that guy. he usually comes in late Friday night, just
before closing. He always rents children's videos. Is he some kind of
pervert?"
Jim_Miller at suite.com
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