Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Tesco stocks up on inside knowledge of shoppers' lives:

Strange - only last Friday we were sitting at a lunch-bar in Stockholm discussing the 'big brother' use of ICT. Peter Becker was concerned at the increasing threat to personal freedom and privacy by the us of databases and data mining. I was sceptical. Ray told us how he and his friends used to swap loyalty cards to mess them around.

Looks like Peter was right. But big brother is not the government in this instance but a bleeding supermarket company.

Read the full Guardian article - its scary.

"Tesco is quietly building a profile of you, along with every individual in the country - a map of personality, travel habits, shopping preferences and even how charitable and eco-friendly you are. A subsidiary of the supermarket chain has set up a database, called Crucible, that is collating detailed information on every household in the UK, whether they choose to shop at the retailer or not.

The company refuses to reveal the information it holds, yet Tesco is selling access to this database to other big consumer groups, such as Sky, Orange and Gillette. "It contains details of every consumer in the UK at their home address across a range of demographic, socio-economic and lifestyle characteristics," says the marketing blurb of dunnhumby, the Tesco subsidiary in question."

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