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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
Yes, it sounds like that's what they do. Specific, point-of-sale, determination is the scenario I had wondered about; it sounds like that's not happening.
The affinity cards are different because I can use them or not, without changing how I conduct the transaction. If, however, using a credit card to make the payment were to cause the same data to be tracked, regardless of my intentions, that would be annoying. A database with all of my specific purchases would probably be valuable to someone; I've decided that a database of (some of) my grocery purchases in the hands of the grocery store doesn't bother me.