--- title: "McDonald’s Has Hundreds of Pages of Intel on Its Repeat Customers, and You Can Get a Copy of Yours" description: "McDonald's has been hoovering up data on loyal customers, in one case resulting in a 515 page dossier on a single person." date: "2026-08-15" modified: "2026-08-15" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/mcdonalds-surveillance-intel-repeat-customers-privacy" categories: - "Cybersecurity" - "Data Privacy" - "Future Society" - "Privacy" --- # McDonald’s Has Hundreds of Pages of Intel on Its Repeat Customers, and You Can Get a Copy of Yours ![A photo of a woman eating a McDonald's meal.]() *Shutterstock / Futurism* For most people, the mental calculation to grab a meal from McDonald's is pretty simple: it's relatively cheap, fast, and goes down easy, even if it doesn't always feel so good afterward. For McDonald's, however, the question of how to keep a customer coming back is far more complicated — apparently requiring an expansive web of corporate surveillance. That's the stunning revelation [from *Wired* reporter Reece Rogers](), who recently uncovered a Supersize McDossier detailing everything from past orders to loyalty points, and even the codes he scanned from the fast food chain's Monopoly sweepstakes. Evidently, McDonald's has been plugging this enormous ream of data into its own predictive algorithms, in order to estimate various customer metrics, like how many times Rogers is expected to stop by in the next few weeks to his total predicted dollar value as a customer. Because he's a California resident, Rogers has a [legal right]() to access data compiled on him by a private company. To better understand what kind of data McDonald's had on him, Rogers requested a copy of his report from the company's [Privacy Rights Center](), which contains a form customers can theoretically use to "exercise your privacy rights at any time." The result is the 515-page file, which contains "specific pieces of personal information about you that were identified by searching McDonald's systems which contain information about our customers," per the company. For context, 515 pages is right at the [threshold]() for a "large" FBI dossier. A file of that size is comparable to the Bureau's profile on [John Lennon](), whose outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War made him a [prominent target]() for deportation by the Nixon administration. In other words, we're now living in a world where fast food chains conduct the type of surveillance on customers that Cold War-obsessed spy agencies once carried out on high-profile political dissidents. As Jeff Chester, executive director at the Center for Digital Democracy told *Wired*, "McDonald's secret sauce is really commercial surveillance." The discovery comes a year after McDonald's virtual hiring assistant experienced a massive data leak exposing the personal details of some [64 million job applicants](). That dynamic — in which private companies compile vast troves of personal data on people, yet fail to protect it — is both familiar and new. While we've grown to expect this kind of data vampirism from platform companies like [Google]() or [Meta](), we're also witnessing a notable rise in digital surveillance conducted by non-platform companies like [Target]() and McDonald's, and even some privately-owned buildings like [Madison Square Garden](). Never before have profit seekers held so much personal data on private citizens. It's a practice companies are unlikely to stop on their own: as long as data harvesting continues to pay dividends, they'll never hold so little on us ever again. **More on fast food:** *[Burger King Adding AI to Employees' Headsets to Constantly Monitor Whether They're Being Friendly Enough]()* ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()