This Cafe Accepts Your Personal Data As Money

Sick of paying money for coffee at your favorite chain? Well, this Japanese cafe offers free coffee, but for a different currency.

At Japanese chain Shiru Cafe, you pay with your personal information, instead of money. Students and faculty members give away their ID which includes personal information like names, dates of birth and work experience. Afterward, they go through an online registration process. On successful registration, consumers can order coffee and a few other drinks for free.

The Japanese cafe chain has over 28 stores all over the world, mostly located in reputed universities. Upon giving away private information, Shiru Cafe bombards corporate sponsors information to the students. Adverts can include logos, apps, digital ads on mobile devices, signs, surveys and much more.

“Through a free drink we try to give students some information which sponsors company would like to inform exclusively for university students to diverse the choices of their future career,” says the official company website.

According to the NPR report, customers don’t seem to mind giving away their private data, for free coffee drinks. Nina Wolff Landau, a junior at Brown University, says the data is already available on other accounts like Linkedin and can come up with a single search on Google.

“Maybe I should have been more apprehensive, but everyone has your information at this point anyway, to give out my name and email and what I study does not seem so risky to me,” says Nina to npr.org.

It appears like all comes down to the privacy paradox. In a world, where people are concerned about their data misused by companies and tech giants. However, they don’t want to lose the perks right away.

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