I hate carrying around store ‘loyalty’ cards (the plastic keytag bar codes). I also hate being tracked, so all the cards are set up under different names. Some stores offer an app that displays a scannable barcode, but the device-level intrusiveness is pretty high (plus I don’t want ten new apps, don’t care about their sales, etc.).
When I’ve looked for keyring managers, all I’ve found are similarly intrusive apps. Under the guise of telling me what’s on sale or ‘helpfully’ opening automatically, they want permissions such as full Internet access, locations, accounts, etc. No thank you; I just want a super-basic app that lets me scan the barcode, name it, and retrieve it in a readable format when I want to. Period.
You’re right in that a lot of apps rather openly dig into your personal data - searches, shopping, price checking, etc. All you have to do is read the fine print and they will tell you they’re using data from your use of the app, and there aren’t many barriers to them using a huge amount of your identity and personal info as part of it. Even those who are casual/accepting of such tracking probably want to think that one through.
Not quite sure what you want here - most retailers don’t participate in third-party discount or loyalty programs. Some kind of replicating the bar code on the screen in a scanner-readable form would let you store all the cards in a ‘digital wallet’ and avoid having to carry the cards themselves, but most apps replace, say, the BigGrocery card with some program/card of their own. Do you have an app on hand that actually replaces the BG “rewards card” or whatever in virtual form?
Also - using false names, addresses etc. doesn’t affect the tracking much. The stores and their data clients (wholesalers, conglomerates, marketing data aggregators) like to have a name/address/email attached to the account, but that’s not really the purpose of the tracking and the info derived from ‘Joe Blow at 1600 Spotsylvania Ave’ is just as valuable as that tied directly to the real you. They aren’t tracking you-for-you; they are tracking Consumer #2310598 for the integrated data s/he generates.
(By the way, NEVER sign up for email receipts and NEVER participate in any kind of purchase/receipt-based program if you dislike tracking. This includes the “receipts for schools” kind of programs. You are handing them your complete purchase history, which is raw data of almost incalculable value.
Not a one of these programs is for consumer benefit, no matter how much they dress it up and tie it to prizes, cashback, discounts and ‘special privileges’.
So bringing it into your personal identity device and telling it, sure, go ahead and mine my phone and email contacts, note my social media names and riffle through my location and purchase data is probably more than even the blithe and jaded would prefer.
An app or approach like that would be benign - at least, it wouldn’t compound the basic problem of using loyalty cards.
I suspect nothing like it exists, because the app makers and those behind them (like the aggregators) are basically running around waving champagne bottles, yelling “Whee!” and making sure every such app has the biggest ten-ton data miner built in - a case of getting’ while the gettin’s good.
Users will wise up (a little), and backlash and regulation will limit these activities (a little) in the future… but there’s no reward in a simple “organizer” app right now. I’d be surprised if any such thing exists, without the “extras.”
I’m not sure what you’re getting at in this case. The app I linked to does exactly that (with a cheap, crappy interface) without requiring any permissions – internet, location, accounts, posts, anything.
I tried it out and it’s barebones but it works just like a photo album of barcodes. There are probably others like it if you search hard enough. Android’s full of strings-free software made by bored developers or open source groups.
Well I’ll freakin’ be. I searched. Searched Google in general, Bing even, and both the Amazon and Google app stores. I searched a while ago; I searched a little bit ago, and I searched recently. I even asked on /r/AndroidApps. Nothing but spyware-choked apps.
But that’s pretty much exactly what I’m looking for (assuming it works as it’s described).
I don’t want the pictures in an album under my assumption that it would be a bit cumbersome to use. Plus, I imagine that a picture of a barcode would be harder to read than a clean rendering of it generated on the screen.
This one is free; there were to others with similarly small footprints linked on that page. Those are paid, and for a buck I’m willing to buy out of the data mining process.
So thanks. This is like the third time in short order you’ve had an instant answer to a long-vexing question.
Well, try it out first… it may or may not do what you need it to. It’s a very barebones app. There’s not even a list view that I can see, and you have to swipe through the cards one by one like you had them all stacked in your wallet. It worked on the QR code and UPC I tested it with, but it may not worth with less-popular encoding schemes (wouldn’t display my library card correct). So YMMV.
The app world is friendly to the garage developer. Too bad they get overshadowed by the bloatware/junkware purveyors too much of the time.
I’d fiddle with this app to see how it works, but I have only one such card (only one grocery store in a 10-mile radius, and it’s structured to make the card essential). But it meets the OP’s needs and possibly many more folks’.