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Why Stores Want Your Zip Code Stores want your ZIP code because, combined with your name from your credit card, they can use it to find out other information about you from commercial databases, like your full mailing address. They may even sell the information to data brokers, who sell it to other marketers.

Companies use Zip Codes as important data structures that give them a visual representation of their audience. With this information, companies are making major marketing decisions including the closing or opening of stores, launching new products or services and pivoting sales data into regions.

As of 1963, zip codes' numbers are determined by a few factors: the area, the regional postal facility and the local zone.The final two digits signify the local post office of the address. You may have noticed that zip codes often have a hyphenated four-digit number on the back end which is rarely used.

Alone, your ZIP code might not be of much value all by itself, but criminals will take that information and post it on underground sites where they buy, sell and trade bunches of personal information. From those sites, criminals can purchase enough of your personal information to use it for fraud.

ZIP code.Often you have to provide a ZIP code when you use a credit card at an untended machine, such as a gasoline pump. (Making you key it in serves as an added security measure to foil a thief who doesn't know the numbers.) But it's usually unnecessary at brick-and-mortar stores, so just say no.

Don't provide your zip code at the register. "You go to a gas pump, the way it verifies your identity if by asking what's your zip code. If you're talking about a merchant or clerk, that's not a part of the credit card processing methodology," says Foley.

As of 1963, zip codes' numbers are determined by a few factors: the area, the regional postal facility and the local zone. The first number of the five-digit code signifies the region which the address is located in, a number that grows from the east coast to the west.