How to order food

1  min  watch  •  5  min  read

Play Video

It’s snowing, you’re hungry, and the game is in overtime. You reach for your phone and scroll through the food delivery apps. You haven’t used one before, but there’s no way you’re going out tonight.

You choose DoorDash (or Uber Eats, or Grubhub, or Postmates – most any food delivery service will work for this example), and download the app.

The app asks for some personal info to register your new account. It wants to know:

Your first name
Your last name
Your email
Your phone number
Password
Payment method details
Residential address
Notifications permissions

All of this account set-up information seems reasonable enough since you’ve been asked for it before—by just about every app and service you sign up for. But look closer: That’s a lot of private detail in exchange for a simple pizza, isn’t it?

Yes, it is—and that’s exactly where data privacy and security problems begin—with the overcollection, storage, sharing and potential theft of consumers’ personal data.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. As the consumer, you can be in complete control of who sees your personal information on the internet and in real life. The fix is to use MySudo. Here’s how:

1. Set up your Sudos to suit your real life privacy and safety needs.

2. Dedicate one Sudo to food delivery services and assign it:

  • A purpose (e.g. Food Delivery Sudo)

  • A name (this can be a nickname)

  • A custom Sudo email address

  • A phone number (available with a paid plan)

  • A virtual card* (available with a paid plan).

3. If you are signing up for a food delivery service using a desktop browser, you can also download the MySudo Browser Extension (once you’ve set up the app) so you can easily autofill your Sudo details.

4. Every time hunger hits, use your Sudo details for your food delivery services instead of your personal details.

Obviously the delivery service is coming to your home so they need your actual residential address, but otherwise you can disassociate yourself from their data collection by using your Sudo information for everything else, plus a virtual card to pay.

There is nothing else in the list of personal information above that a food delivery service really needs to know, is there?

And take a moment to think about every other service and retailer you interact with every day. How many of those organizations really need your personally identifiable information to sign you up or sell you something? The risks of having your data sold or stolen are incredibly high, but you take back control with MySudo.

*US only. More locations coming soon

For more on MySudo, head to our blog or our popular podcast, Privacy Files.