[1] "It turns out that Facebook also buys data about your offline purchases. The next time you pay for a burrito with your credit card, Facebook will learn about this transaction and match this credit card number with the one you added in Messenger.
In other words, Messenger is a great Trojan horse designed to learn everything about you."
[2] "Google now knows when its users go to the store and buy stuff.
Google has begun using billions of credit-card transaction records to prove that its online ads are prompting people to make purchases – even when they happen offline in brick-and-mortar stores [...] Privacy advocates said few people understand that their purchases are being analyzed in this way"
>"It turns out that Facebook also buys data about your offline purchases. The next time you pay for a burrito with your credit card, Facebook will learn about this transaction and match this credit card number with the one you added in Messenger.
Something else to keep in mind next time you hear the push for a "cashless" economy.
I don't think a cash economy will help.
Pretty soon, maybe sooner if a cashless economy doesn't take hold, they'll use facial recognition to track who purchases what to bypass any cash transactions.
The solution has to be a strangthening (new) right not to be tracked which should be on by default.
This may then be traded away by free services (gmail, facebook, etc..) but it would be a step in the right direction.
There's also whole-sale auctions for banking transaction data, insurance, stock holdings and, generally, anything with digital money, which is most money today, CC-related or not.
And many consumers that operate with cash use merchant bonus cards or coupons that link back to their PID.
This is where the US is heading if we continue our down our current path. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft started sending data from linkdin to the credit agencies.
Lenders can and do buy this kind of data to underwrite their borrowers (credit cards, BNPL, student loans, mortgages, etc.). They don't need to get it from credit bureaus. Anyone who is underwriting off of bureau data alone is a decade (or more) behind state of the art at this point.
I think we’re nearing a fork in the road moment here. Down one path is a continuation of the burgeoning social media landscape: people stop caring about their privacy altogether in pursuit of that next narcissistic hit. Down another, after all this crap is used to regularly humiliate people and control their public presence, there is a backlash and a push for more control over data (from the masses, not tech insiders who the masses don’t even really know about).
Personally: I think society will take the first one. If it ever decides to backtrack or shift, it will be long after my kids (currently small children) are adults or dead.
[1] "It turns out that Facebook also buys data about your offline purchases. The next time you pay for a burrito with your credit card, Facebook will learn about this transaction and match this credit card number with the one you added in Messenger.
In other words, Messenger is a great Trojan horse designed to learn everything about you."
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/facebook-knows-literally-e... From 2018!
[2] "Google now knows when its users go to the store and buy stuff.
Google has begun using billions of credit-card transaction records to prove that its online ads are prompting people to make purchases – even when they happen offline in brick-and-mortar stores [...] Privacy advocates said few people understand that their purchases are being analyzed in this way"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/05/23... From 2017!
Consumer data is the gold the consumer appears to be giving away, unwittingly or carelessly, regardless of the regime or geographic location.