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

[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.

[cellio]

I find that a transaction list generally gives me the info I need, especially if it's ordered by date instead of grouped by some other means. (Hmm, what's this mysterious $15 charge on a Sunday? Oh, that's the weekend I was at such-and-such convention; that must be the breakfast buffet!) As you said, $25 at GetGo doesn't tell me whether to file it under gas or food in Quicken anyway.