Many fliers are also angry that they have been misled by shop assistants in the past, who have told them that scanning their boarding pass is necessary in order to complete a sale.
Ana Silva O'Reilly, a travel blogger at Mrs O Around the World, will now refuse to show her pass after becoming increasingly annoyed with the stance taken by retailers like Boots and WHSmith.
"I personally felt I was providing too much information for no reason whatsoever," she said. "I find it very uncomfortable to be queuing for 10 minutes holding 5 kgs of magazines and books and then when finally served (service has become quite awful at WHSmiths), having to find my boarding pass somewhere.
"Nowadays, with mobile boarding passes, I feel even more annoyed to have to hand over my phone. On a recent trip, I had finally had enough and asked the gentlemen manning the till why did he have to know where I was travelling when he was selling me a copy of Vanity Fair and Tatler. He said he needed it to be able to process the item as a sale and I simply refused to go ahead with the purchase."
Information on a boarding pass covers a passenger's entire itinerary, making fears over data protection another legitimate reason to refuse to show it.
For the time being, stores such as WHSmith say they don't hold onto data such as flight bookings when scanning passes.
A spokesman told Telegraph Travel that the destination data from a boarding pass allows WHSmith to analyse the purchasing trends by time of day and by product category for customers travelling to different locations.
"This information is limited to the IATA three digit destination airport codes, which form the basis of IATA's worldwide airport database and does not give access to any personal data of WHSmith customers," the spokesman said.
"While much of what we sell, eg. newspapers, magazines and books, does not attract VAT, any VAT relief associated with the identification of customers travelling outside of the EU is reported in accordance with UK legislation, and any relief obtained is reflected in our single price and extensive promotional offers provided to all of our customers."
Boots said that, despite reaction from the public, it would not be changing its policy to ask passengers to show passes, even though many now say that they will refuse to do so.
This is because it is following rules on VAT set by HM Revenue and Customs.
A spokesman said that it is "claiming back VAT on a proportion of purchases made by customers flying to non EU destinations in accordance with current VAT rules set by the HMRC.
"However, showing a boarding card is not compulsory and any of our customers that do not wish to share this information can shop with us without the boarding card being scanned."
