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Credit cards have a privacy problem

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Credit cards have a privacy problem

#61

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

mehrdadn wrote: post #38
porpoisemonkey wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like most 5% cash back cards have a hard limit ($1500/quarter seems to be common limit) to the amount you can get back and offer an "unlimited" cash back at a rate at or lower than 2%. https://www.magnifymoney.com/blog/best-of/10-best-5-cash-bac... This way they'll make money after the limit takes effect. My assumption is that they are hoping the consumer will forget there's a hard limit to the amount they c…

> This way they'll make money after the limit takes effect. My assumption is that they are hoping the consumer will forget there's a hard limit to the amount they can save and always go with their "5% cash back card" when making purchases. And that assumption is exactly what I'm saying isn't universally true. My entire point is there are customers who just rotate cards instead of still using it for lower cash back. W…

What I was saying above is that I wouldn't be surprised if a high enough percentage of even the customers who "beat the system" so to speak for many years eventually slip up that it makes up for the rest.

If that's the case, and you can't predict who exactly that subset is going to be, you keep all of them around.

Re: Credit cards have a privacy problem

#62

Post by larrybud »

kccqzy wrote: post #44

I've discovered this problem by finding out that you can sign up for additional cash back on apps like Yelp and Dosh. When you make a purchase these companies will automatically determine whether this purchase is eligible for cash back. I'm guessing they must be buying the data for all my transactions for the purpose of figuring out whether they would give me cash back. It immediately made me suspicious since I'm get…

+1. I’ve often wondered how these cashback services like the ones you mentioned, or, for example, the restaurant ones like aadvantage dining work. Do the affiliates get all your transactions? (I really hope not). Or, do the affiliates have agreements with the cc processors to flag transactions on their side?

Re: Credit cards have a privacy problem

#63

Post by mehrdadn »

ceejayoz wrote: post #59
mehrdadn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same data? Mint doesn't know where you made each purchase and for how much.

The only thing Mint's lacking is the geolocation of the individual merchants - something they can garner in a lot of cases from the merchant name. The grocery store I frequent includes a store number in the transaction name, for example. (Mint definitely has the "how much" bit - they've got each transaction individually, including the amount.) On the flip side, Mint has all the rest of the credit card data for the pe…

Ohh, sorry, you're talking about Mint -- somehow I confused it with Credit Karma. Yes, they have transaction history and all that from across cards. I agree, it should be pretty valuable for Intuit. What indicates to you that it's not (or not as much as you expect)?

Re: Credit cards have a privacy problem

#64

Post by kube-system »

tzs wrote: post #60
ceejayoz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough of them wind up over-extending and paying interest to make it lucrative. I'm also not aware of any across-the-board 5% rewards cards, and most have an "up to $x,000 annual spend" on the categories that are that high.

A neat little hack with some cards can make it effectively almost across-the-board. Some rewards cards let you select "online shopping" as your high rewards category. You can extend that to in-store shopping at Walmart by enrolling that card in Walmart Pay and then paying in-store via that. For a lot of people, "online shopping" and Walmart together will cover 95+% of their credit card use.

Are there any of those that are 5%? If so I’m very interested.

Re: Credit cards have a privacy problem

#67

Post by olefoo »

mLuby wrote: post #20

>"We don't sell your data, we share it." -all the companies involved Am I the only one thinking there might be some Clapper-level double-speak going on here? Why would these company share admittedly valuable data without being compensated? A question for contract lawyers: can I sell something (say an API or quarterly report) that "incidentally" includes customer data and get away with saying I'm not "selling customer…

Your transaction data is never exposed to anyone outside of $corp.

$corp provides it's marketing partners with insights gleaned from aggregated transaction data. And allows select partners to query an api for derived information about $corp's cardholders using a marketing identifier that tracks across multiple agencies including credit reporting, social media monitoring and customer intelligence analytics.

Additionally $corp uses it's transaction stream to feed information about aggregated spending per retailer to both their internal trading desk and to select financial markets partner firms.

Your personal transaction information is never exposed to anyone outside of $corp.

Re: Credit cards have a privacy problem

#68

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

mLuby wrote: post #20

>"We don't sell your data, we share it." -all the companies involved Am I the only one thinking there might be some Clapper-level double-speak going on here? Why would these company share admittedly valuable data without being compensated? A question for contract lawyers: can I sell something (say an API or quarterly report) that "incidentally" includes customer data and get away with saying I'm not "selling customer…

They need info from data brokers for their risk and fraud analysis. Handing over their goods for free can net them a discount.

Re: Credit cards have a privacy problem

#69

Post by skybrian »

Headline not proven. He claimed to do an experiment and didn't find any security hole or any real results, but then blathered on about what might have happened. I can read privacy policies and make up scenarios and so can you, but so what?

And more generally, credit cards have been around a long time. Shouldn't there be more evidence by now if anyone is being harmed by sharing data about consumer purchases?

Re: Credit cards have a privacy problem

#70

Post by bsder »

mehrdadn wrote: post #7
TylerE wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. They make money on the swipe, and more money on the interest, if people don’t pay them off every month, and most don’t.

But that's only like 2%. Why still keep around people who are clearly taking advantage of higher rates of cash back like 5% and not paying anything in interest though? What's the benefit of keeping them as customers?

The merchants have to pay a percentage.

So, by encouraging the use of credit cards for smaller and smaller transactions, the credit card companies take a bigger and bigger bite from the merchant.

That's all on top of any annual fees and interest charges that the credit card companies hit the customer with.

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