Buyer Beware: They Want Your ZIP Code

I know the man behind the electronics counter is probably just doing his job. Still, his question seems out of line.

I have handed him cash for a joystick to my son’s computer. But before he rings open the cash register for my change, he stops with his hand poised over a key.

“Your ZIP code?” he asks.

In light of the money I have just given him, his question makes no sense. Unless the rules were changed and no one told me, giving personal information isn’t generally required with hard currency.

So what’s it to him?

“I don’t care to give you my ZIP code, thank you,” I answer, my tone of voice perhaps better suited for Buckingham Palace. He just shrugs and puts my purchase in a bag.

My response, I realize later, probably was more from instinct than understanding. On reflection, it also made about as much sense as a topless dancer getting embarrassed when her slip shows in a restaurant.

After all, I write checks all the time--which not only have my ZIP code, but also my name, address and phone number clearly imprinted on them--and never give it a second thought.

When making inquiries of my bank over the phone, I regularly give out my Social Security number and my mother’s maiden name.

To open up a new charge account, I unflinchingly disclose my yearly salary and my outstanding debts.

So why care about this?

Perhaps it is because, for some reason, this feels different. More calculated.

More, well, sinister.

A few days later, it happens again. This time it’s at a Simi Valley grocery store, where I also am paying with cash.

My six cans of cat food and gallon of milk already are at the end of the counter in a bag.

“Your ZIP code?” the cashier asks.

*

The question isn’t just being asked of me.

“It makes me really mad,” said Sherri Lindemann of Newbury Park, who had just emerged from the Buenaventura Mall where she encountered the same inquiry.

“I said I didn’t want to give it to them. I got asked that at a store in Newbury Park, and they said if I didn’t tell them, they wouldn’t sell me the product.

“What do they want to know it for anyway?”

Plenty of reasons, according to Calabasas market researcher William Bilkess.

“They can tell from a ZIP code what your average income is, ethnicity, how many new cars sold in that area . . . there’s a lot they can find out,” Bilkess said.

“It gives you a buying profile. And a lot of times, they probably know more about your buying habits than you do.”

Scary?

Arnie Fishman, chairman of Lieberman Research West in Los Angeles, doesn’t think so. To him, ZIP code information is small potatoes.

What he’s more interested in is getting a personality profile of the person doing the buying.

“If you’re trying to connect to people so that your message about a product is going to be minimally effective,” he said, “it’s interesting to understand some of their personality and lifestyle characteristics.”

Such as?

“OK, you want me to tell you who you are?” he asked over the phone. “You take a test we just came up with.”

Hell, I’d wanted to know that for years. What did I have to lose?

Fishman then read out groups of words and asked me to choose from the group that best described me.

Group One: outgoing, interaction, social, lots of friends, crowds, party.

Group Two: quiet, solitary, reserved, intense friendships, concentration, private.

Then came the next two groups, with words like practical, hard-working, strict, sensible and realistic; or theorize, fantasy, possibilities, hunch, inspiration.

After four more groups of words, the test was over.

“Are you sitting down? Because I’ll tell you who you are,” he said, chuckling.

“You’re a person who would be characterized as someone very much into life.

“As far as problems are concerned, you tend to take an attitude of walking by the graveyard and whistling,” he said. “You’re generous to a fault. You view life as a cornucopia of endless pleasures that requires no effort to obtain.”

*

He went on, but by then I already had the eerie sense that a stranger had discovered things I assumed were known only to a few people close to me.

As he spoke, it struck me that all of us--without realizing how much information we actually were imparting when we answered a few, seemingly innocuous questions--could be victims of data rape.

Fishman didn’t see it that way.

“Nobody really cares about you individually,” he said. “They aren’t trying to find out what drives you. They want to find out what drives certain groups.”

How come I don’t feel any better?