You must be providing your phone number to virtually each store for shopping these days. The stores insist on your phone number for billing and tracking purposes, reward points, offers and what not.
This is a big compromise on our privacy. Once the number is with the store, you receive daily or weekly messages for new offers, the customer service executives start calling and messaging you even on whatsapp insisting any time of the day from their store number or even their personal numbers. Very often than not, this data (at least customer name and phone number for few 100s of Rupees) to all and sundry and you start wondering where in the world have these people got access to your details from. Never know, they could be selling you PAN and Aadhaar card details too (insisted upon high denomination transactions), so these telecallers / scammers would access your home / office address too.
On an average, every telecom customer receives more spam calls than from friends, family and business associates.
After routinely sharing my number with many stores over the years and now inundated with spam messages, calls, emails and what not, I have stopped giving my phone numbers to stores now.
However, last week, I visited a store and the person at the counter insisted on phone number saying no bill can be issued without it nor would the product be eligible for exchange, return, refund, repairs, etc. if they did not have my phone number. I had to buy the product for some urgent reasons, so proceeded anyways (without sharing the phone number).
High time the concerned Ministries look into this matter and issue appropriate guidelines. We already live in a lethargic state of data privacy – shopping need not result in additional unauthorised exposure.
