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the walls have ears
Yesterday I got a statement from my credit-card company. It was a transaction summary for 2005; I've never seen this sort of thing before. The front page informed me that last year I spent $X on food, $Y on entertainment, $Z on professional services, and so on for about 15 broad categories. That's the sort of thing that could be useful if you don't think about it -- but I'm the kind of person who thinks about it.
I'm not sure which possibility is more disturbing: that they are making inferences based on who the payee is (Giant Eagle sounds like groceries, etc), or that the merchants are providing the credit-card companies with categories for the transactions.
My record-keeping is not thorough enough for me to figure out which is more likely on my own. Perhaps I will ask them.
When I use a credit card I fully expect that the particulars of the transaction -- date, amount, and merchant -- are not private and might be mined. If it's really important to me, I pay cash. But I do not expect a description, even a high-level one, of the goods or services purchased to be part of that record.
I'm not sure which possibility is more disturbing: that they are making inferences based on who the payee is (Giant Eagle sounds like groceries, etc), or that the merchants are providing the credit-card companies with categories for the transactions.
My record-keeping is not thorough enough for me to figure out which is more likely on my own. Perhaps I will ask them.
When I use a credit card I fully expect that the particulars of the transaction -- date, amount, and merchant -- are not private and might be mined. If it's really important to me, I pay cash. But I do not expect a description, even a high-level one, of the goods or services purchased to be part of that record.
no subject
Some merchants are just assigned a category. Some have multiple categories -- the pumps at a rest stop are treated differently than the in-store purchases. Some merchants sell information including, e.g., product-by-product data to credit card companies. Some of this depends on which CC company you have, of course. I think one of my friends, an ex-employee of a cc data mining company, has more details...I'll go bug her.
The credit card companies sell this extremely valuable data to everyone, making lots of money in the process. This is one reason why our privacy is eroding; the cc companies, who are among the largest lobby in Congress, have a business model that depend on spying on you and selling the results.
Really, the main thing that's astonishing to me right now is how BAD they are at using it! I know it's hard to draw conclusions in oblique data like purchase patterns -- heck, it's what I theorize about for fun -- but it's not impossible, and they've had at least fifteen years to come up with better ways to use this data than simply sending me Ivory coupons when I buy Dove.
no subject
If you do it with a credit card, what you got, where you got it, and what your demographics are goes into a db someplace.
I'm going to kick the soapbox under the table for a while, because I feel a rant coming on. Sorry.