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Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

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Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#71

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

pointillistic wrote: post #56
earenndil wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use ios or lineageos. You can use an email such as protonmail (although I personally find them just a touch shady, they're no doubt miles better than gmail) or host your own. Don't shop at whole foods. Pay with cash.

Thank you, I am aware of the alternatives but it's an uphill battle to fight a monopoly, i.e. I have only Comcast here as Internet option, etc.

Well, it is somewhat of an uphill battle, sure, but every hill has a top ;-)

As for internet, you can always get yourself a VPS and tunnel everything through that, so your monopoly ISP doesn't get to see anything of what you do.

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#72

Post by ilove_banh_mi »

a3_nm wrote: post #47
mattigames wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure there are a lot of companies that do not offer their hires the option to be paid in cash, its bank account or nothing. Plus some countries are moving to card-only economy where some stores don't take cash.

The best way to encourage shops to accept cash, and generally encourage countries to stick with cash, is to use cash whenever possible.

How long until a big-tech company starts to log, track, and connect banknote serial numbers from ATM to store? I wouldn't be surprised if ATMs already record the serial number of each note they distribute.

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#73

Post by 3pt14159 »

colechristensen wrote: post #20
ilove_banh_mi wrote: post #2

Do I have a choice, other than cancelling all of my MasterCard cards? This business of tracking and profiling is increasingly evil. If I dystopically discovered that someone has been following me around all the time, writing down everything I look at or do or purchase, in public and at home, I could not tolerate it.

You never had a choice. Paying with plastic always meant that you were tracked and that data sold. If you don't like it, use cash.

Cash is tracked by the banks. It's usually pretty easy too, especially with things like coffee shops that take a lot of 20s and give a lot of 5s. Most people take out 20s, so it's pretty easy to know who was likely at some place at some day or week.

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#74

Post by microcolonel »

ilove_banh_mi wrote: post #2

Do I have a choice, other than cancelling all of my MasterCard cards? This business of tracking and profiling is increasingly evil. If I dystopically discovered that someone has been following me around all the time, writing down everything I look at or do or purchase, in public and at home, I could not tolerate it.

MasterCard has also started cracking down on customers whose speech they dislike. A Patreon creator was just a couple weeks ago removed because his content was disliked by MasterCard, who gave Patreon basically no choice in the matter.

I think that if Visa doesn't remain largely neutral (keeping its policies as minimally political as they are currently), there will be a considerable market for a principled creditor (maybe Discover becomes that, or a new player is born).

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#75

Post by tjr225 »

pointillistic wrote: post #56
earenndil wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use ios or lineageos. You can use an email such as protonmail (although I personally find them just a touch shady, they're no doubt miles better than gmail) or host your own. Don't shop at whole foods. Pay with cash.

Thank you, I am aware of the alternatives but it's an uphill battle to fight a monopoly, i.e. I have only Comcast here as Internet option, etc.

Not using google is actually a piece of cake. Ther are reasonable competitors for nearly all of their services, except maybe translate and maps. Though I have been looking at OSM a lot lately.

I, personally, use an DuckDuckGo, an iPhone and Apple mail. Amazon isn't an issue really- just buy whatever you were going to get on amazon somewhere else - it's pretty rare that I find a noticeable price difference (unless we're talking about the cheap off branded stuff on amazon - but I don't want things like that anyway).

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#76

Post by _ks3e »

Credit card data sharing has been around for a while. Fortunately, financial institutions appear to be marginally less pathological about allowing people to control how their personal data is used than certain large social media companies, and there are opt-outs for pretty much all of the major financial institutions.

According to the article, users can also opt out of the tracking on Google's side using Google's privacy controls. However, I think it's probably best to opt out of that data being collected in the first place, since the financial companies are probably selling that data to other companies.

Here's the link for Mastercard: https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/about-mastercard/what-we-do/... (the language is kind of strange - "To opt-out from our anonymization of your personal information to perform data analyses" - I'm hoping it refers to opting out of sharing your anonymized personal info, not opting out of the anonymization so they can sell your un-anonymized personal info, but someone should confirm this by sending them a letter).

Visa users can opt out here: https://usa.visa.com/legal/privacy-policy-opt-out.html (actual opt-out page is https://marketingreportoptout.visa.com/OPTOUT/request.do).

Amex seems to be somewhat better about this, saying "We only share your personal data with third parties where it is necessary to provide you with products or services or as part of the nature of our relationship with you, where we have previously informed or been authorized by you, in connection with our efforts to reduce fraud or criminal activity, or as permitted by law." (source: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/content/customer-privacy-...). Whether anonymized data is considered 'personal data' isn't clear, though - the definition given is "any information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual." Whether the "relates to" property persists after anonymization is not specified.

It's also worth noting that opting out of data sharing by a credit card network does not limit data sharing by the bank that issues the card - for that, you probably have to contact them separately (Chase, for instance, has a privacy number you need to call to opt out of data sharing https://www.chase.com/digital/resources/privacy-security/que...).

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#79

Post by prepend »

ilove_banh_mi wrote: post #2

Do I have a choice, other than cancelling all of my MasterCard cards? This business of tracking and profiling is increasingly evil. If I dystopically discovered that someone has been following me around all the time, writing down everything I look at or do or purchase, in public and at home, I could not tolerate it.

Don’t worry, they only use it anonymously. Until they don’t want to.

Re: Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

#80

Post by chiefalchemist »

ilove_banh_mi wrote: post #2

Do I have a choice, other than cancelling all of my MasterCard cards? This business of tracking and profiling is increasingly evil. If I dystopically discovered that someone has been following me around all the time, writing down everything I look at or do or purchase, in public and at home, I could not tolerate it.

I'm with you. Short answer...pay cash.
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