Some of the collection is creepy, and I’ve largely stopped using mobile apps and loyalty programs myself. However, some of the concern seems very misplaced.

“Oh no McDonald’s runs a Customer Lifetime Value algorithm, a thing in use for decades and which has minimal privacy implications.”

“GASP the Golden Arches knows I like Diet Coke and has applied a marketing segmentation to me!”

Congrats, you’ve discovered they use concepts taught in Marketing 101?

At first I thought "building a 515-page dossier" was needlessly hyperbolic for what amounts to a printed PDF of typical CRM values from a database. It's not like a McDonald's detective meticulously crafted it.

However, companies do have an absurd amount of data on us, and the fact that it's automatically collected makes it more troubling, not less. But it's normalized.

  "When I spoke with Cranor, she was floored by just how often I went to McDonald’s: “This guy eats a lot of McDonald's.” My boss, who was also stunned by my processed-food choices, says I now have to stop eating there. Despite my love of crispy Diet Cokes and greasy french fries, I agree."

I wonder how many of us would stop going not just to McDonald’s, but all the other places if we knew just how much they ALL have in our files. They're not tracking us to be helpful, they're tracking us to increase their profits.

> “McDonald’s secret sauce is really commercial surveillance,” says Jeff Chester

Great line. I do really love their fries though.