Now they have the Kroger card (and the purchases you made) associated with that credit card and those discounts & choices will go into a profile of all the things they know about the holder of the credit card. They may not know your name specifically (though they might, if you ever used the credit card online in a way connected to your name) but they know an awful lot about you. A debit card would create a similar profile (and if the debit card and CC were ever linked, the profiles would be as well).
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There’s also Adobe Experience Cloud:
“ Adobe is benefiting from strong demand for its cloud products. The company’s Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud products are helping it drive top-line growth.
Additionally, rising subscription revenues and solid momentum across the mobile apps remain major positives. Further, growth in emerging markets, robust online video creation demand, strong Acrobat adoption and improving average revenue per user remain tailwinds.
The Zacks analyst remains optimistic about Adobe’s market position, compelling product lines, persistent innovation and solid adoption of Creative Cloud and Adobe marketing cloud. Further, the company’s strong balance sheet remains another positive.”
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/top-analyst-reports-for-unitedhealth-adobe-the-charles-schwab
Here’s a list of all the companies that the Kroger Company owns, complements of the US SEC. There are literally hundreds of them. I’ll bet the farm that all the data the company owns from all its stores is mixed in with data from Mastercard as well as other credit service companies:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/56873/000095010902002476/dex211.htm
If you want the loyalty-card discounts but don’t want to be tracked, I’ve found that paying cash and using <local area code>-867-5309 often works. (Think “Jenny”).
I realize it’s not free, but you can dump Google Mail (they’ve been stealing people’s information from that for decades, it seems!) and go with Fastmail. They’re a company from Down Under, and they are also inventing improvements to email (new protocols) to help fight spam. I’ve been using them for 20 years and if it weren’t for data breaches—especially by the several data theft companies (called “data brokers” officially) a few years ago—my inbox would be even cleaner than it already is.
Keep fighting, and don’t give up.
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I’ve never really understood why people don’t do this… I’ve been doing this for ~25years… buy your own domain for ~$10-20 pa, from a reputable company and use any Mail app you want.