Box Tops for Education

Box Tops are a thorn in many a parents' side, but they serve a good purpose. For those of you not aware, on most things you buy - sandwich bags, cereal, oatmeal, cleaning wipes, etc. - there is a small logo on the top flap that can be clipped and turned in to a local school. The school will collect these and turn them in for cash

Of course, there is an opportunity here, and the Box Top folks just figured it out. Since all these (mostly) parents go shopping to purchase products before turning in box tops, there shopping habits could be monetized! Yaaaaaay! AND we'll spin this as helping THEM out!

So, rather than clip and cut, keep up with and then tape these Box Tops (of all sizes) to forms the schools send home, they made an app. At first, it sounded awesome. My orginal thought was there is some QR code in the Box Top I can scan and turn in. Oh no, they'll make it even easier for you - just take a picture of your receipt and the magic of image recognition will scan your receipt for eligible products. By the way, while they scan your receipt, they're going to go ahead and grab every other product you bought, the date and time you bought it, what store, what location, and any payment information that might be on there as well.

According to the Box Tops for Education app privacy policy, they will collect:

• computer or device information
• social networking services shared with the app
• ad info (normal)
• Name
• email
• postal address
• username
• password
• phone number
• age
• gender
• demographics
• credit card/payment information
• marital status and number of children
• contact information of family members
• purchasing information by scanning receipts
• other information about you, your family, your school or others (such as interests or product preferences)

The policy also discusses ad and social media linking information. But where it gets interesting is a section where they describe using "other sources such as public databases...data aggregators and other commercially available sources" to obtain information about you. On top of the data points above, they may collect:

• income
• purchasing behavior
• interests, hobbies, preferences
• media interactions
• blogs and online postings
• geolocation data

This is not tinfoil hat time. As with any other metadata collection and aggregation system, this is dangerous. Imagine knowing everything listed above about a person and also knowing they've increased their alcohol consumption in the past three months. Or that they've purchased pregnancy tests recently and are now purchasing Iron supplements. What about medicines and prescription information on the same receipt?

It's a shame, really. Box Tops were a good money make for schools.