Norwegian Government to Track Every Item Purchased by Consumers
By Koen Jacobs, June 3, 2022
Statistics Norway (SSB) knows where Norwegians live, how much Norwegians earn, and what Norwegians have on their record. If Statistics Norway gets its way, they will also soon find out exactly what Norwegians buy in the grocery store, and otherwise spend money on with their bank cards.
Statistics Norway has “ordered” the grocery chains NorgesGruppen, Coop, Bunnpris and Rema 1000 to share all their receipt data with the statistics agency. Nets, the company that processes 80% of all in-store payments, has also been required to share detailed information on all customer transactions.
The data that will be collected include:
- Transaction date
- Transaction type status
- Bank card service
- Organization number of the company where a bank card was used
- Name of the company where a bank card was used
- Name of bank card user, bank account number
- Amount payed for individual items
- Total amount paid
NorgesGruppen has stated that they will appeal the decision to hand over receipt data, and that they will ask the Norwegian Data Protection Authority for guidance.
Statistics Norway has said that it concerns 2.4 million receipts daily, and 1.6 billion transactions annually in the country. The data will not be deleted, once processed for “statistical” purposes.
According to the statistics agency, the collection of this data is not intended to track people individually, but of course, that would go against the communitarian goal of micromanaging people’s lives, everywhere and all the time.
