For instance, it now forces customers to provide a valid email address to enroll in its myWalgreens loyalty program, which tracks all purchases made using your myWalgreens card. Walgreens makes it easy to sign up for all of this, and it’s particularly aggressive when it comes to data demands in general.

Walgreens, for instance, will use your data to target ads to you on its website, on social media, and in marketing emails - as detailed in Walgreens’ own privacy policy: Walgreens will use your data to enhance your experience while enhancing its profits. This doesn’t apply to all the data you provide: Any information you give for the purposes of getting a vaccine at a pharmacy is protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).īut the data that isn’t protected can be valuable to the retail pharmacies you give it to. Oh, and you’re encouraged to join the myWalgreens loyalty program, which gives Walgreens even more data about your purchases and automatically signs you up for even more marketing emails. You’re also automatically signing up to receive marketing emails, which you can only opt out of later through your account settings. And that means giving Walgreens the information it considers necessary to make that account, including your name, date of birth, phone number, address, gender (male or female are the only options), and email address. When you go to the Walgreens vaccine scheduler, you can find out if there are vaccines available in your area, but you can’t see where and when appointments are available - let alone schedule one - without first making a Walgreens account. Sign up to receive our newsletter each Friday. Vox’s German Lopez is here to guide you through the Biden administration’s burst of policymaking. “This enables a safer and more streamlined in-store experience - reducing lines and in-store wait times that can be a by-product of collecting this information at the pharmacy counter.” “To schedule vaccination appointments, we ask people to create a Walgreens account to fulfill data and reporting requirements online before arriving at a store location,” a Walgreens spokesperson told Recode. In some cases, you’re forced to make an account with the store to get a vaccine at all, and deactivating your mandatory account after the fact isn’t easy. If you schedule a Covid-19 vaccine appointment with major pharmacy chains such as Walgreens or CVS, your data may be used to bulk up those companies’ own significant marketing apparatuses, giving them a source of income even beyond what they’re paid for administering the vaccines and whatever you might decide to buy while you’re in the store to get one. The other side of it is, as the Wall Street Journal reported this week, some pharmacies are taking advantage of the program to make some extra money off of their new customers.

Last November, the Trump administration announced a partnership with retail pharmacies to distribute coronavirus vaccines, which would provide people across the country with more places to get vaccines and people to administer them. Love to give my personal data to Walgreens in order to get a potentially life-saving vaccine (and 1% off all in-store purchases!) /7XYU5KDN3u- Sara Morrison February 10, 2021

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