the walls have ears

[cellio]

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.

Comments

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

It is my impression that particular vendors are in particular categories.

category based on type of merchant, I think

[brokengoose.livejournal.com]

Back when I had an American Express card (5-10 years ago), they provided "category" information for each transaction, and it seemed to be location specific. If I bought some medicine from the grocery store, it was listed as "groceries". If I bought stationary and candy from the drug store, it was listed as "medicine".

I do know that some of the credit processing companies (Amex, Visa, etc.) charge different rates based on the type of business. Presumably, that data is available to the bank, as well. I'm guessing that they're using that data.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

It's worse than that, and has been for a long time.

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.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

It was a transaction summary for 2005; I've never seen this sort of thing before.

My credit union has provided that sort of statement for at least the past 5 years, so however its powered its not 'new' technology.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

When I got one in the late 90s, it included a list of all the transactions broken down by category, with only one category per transaction. So to generalize from that, I would suspect that they're inferring based on payee.

[mbarr.livejournal.com]

I think each credit card account is linked to a specific category. I don't think the drug store/ retail distinction is made- AMEX def. doesn't do it- they just list under general retail/merchandaise, and include grocery stores in with department stores or drug stores.

Not sure how the VISA system does it or Mastercard. It's all about the classification on the store, not the purchase. They use it to determine the rate involved to the store, and other things..

*THIS* one I don't mind them having so much. I don't think they get anything past what's reported on the statement, though, which isn't so bad.

However, Amex gets more details on plane trips and such from some vendors.. which is just a bit weird to see on my statement- it says flight to XYZ Place on it :_)


I do find these annual statements handy, for taxes. It's also really strange to see how *much* we spend!

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

For Discover, the monthly statements divide up by types of establishment. But they have no way to know what you spent your money on. $25 at the gas station could be for gas or it could be for quickie groceries. I don't think there's much useful data to be mined there by a third party, except that it makes it easier for me to categorize when I'm tracking my spending.

[siderea]

My cc does this, and it clearly infers from the vendor, because the categories are stunningly poor and completely useless. I think, for instance, they label everything from amazon.com as "books".