141–150 of 178 posts
I know, I know, the editorial staff is separate from the advertising/sales staff etc, but still find it funny that when I try to access the article in incognito mode, as I habitually do (for privacy), I get > We noticed you’re browsing in private mode. Private browsing is permitted exclusively for our subscribers. Turn off private browsing to keep reading this story, or subscribe to use this feature, plus get unlimit…
Beyond annoying. Disabling JS bypasses for now.
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Disgusting. I avoid those kind of places like plague.
Yes, isn't it revolting that they try and get people to pay for the content they spend money to produce? How dare they.
But what they're saying is: We won't let you read our stuff unless we can track you (and see exactly what you read how long from where using which device, etc.)
Yup, do-no-evil Google buys your credit card data for advertising purposes: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an... Companies need to start thinking of this less in the lens of "evil" and more principle of least astonishment. Would users be surprised and angry to learn you do this? Then don't.
> Google buys your credit card data for advertising purposes How do they connect my credit card data to my Google activity? My Google account isn't connected to my personally identifiable information in any way. I.e. they don't have my phone number, nor do I use Google Pay.
Which personally identifiable information?
The time of day you use your devices? Which languages you use? Which websites you visit? The type of medical conditions you search for?
Information being PII or non PII isn't binary. It's relative shades of how shannon entropic it is. You need about 33 bits to identify someone, you likely have leaked 33 bits of entropy.
EFF's Panopticlick help show this: https://panopticlick.eff.org/
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Yes, isn't it revolting that they try and get people to pay for the content they spend money to produce? How dare they.
Oh, I wouldn't even mind if they served me ads. But what they're saying is: We won't let you read our stuff unless we can track you (and see exactly what you read how long from where using which device, etc.)
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>Would users be surprised and angry to learn you do this? Then don't. Doesn't this already exist since nobody wants to piss off shareholders?
Shareholders don't get annoyed when you're evil, they get ($)_($) eyes.
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Every single purchase line by line is recorded by many companies. And the security is absolutely terrible over all. If you don't care if your spending habits are shared that is fine. I don't want my data hacked further
Then use cash?
This is typically infeasible for online transactions.
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?
Banks and lenders are heavily regulated in this area and often times the financial institution has absolutely no insight into the line-item level of the purchase. That data is at the prerogative of the merchant to disclose.
If $RESTAURANT offers cash back on certain purchases made with them on a certain card, the merchant already has the data of the purchase and can determine if purchase qualifies for some cash back and notify the lender (at the expense of $RESTAURANT). Cards also follow patterns in the number scheme which would allow a merchant to determine card type and map that to current incentive offerings. By card type I mean more than just credit provider, down to the specific type of card (i.e. Sapphire Reserved vs Sapphire Preferred, etc).
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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)?
Intuit's a public company, making both their revenue and the number of Mint users publicly available. They're not making anywhere near what they'd need to make off their extensive data holdings to make your theory work.
Yup, do-no-evil Google buys your credit card data for advertising purposes: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an... Companies need to start thinking of this less in the lens of "evil" and more principle of least astonishment. Would users be surprised and angry to learn you do this? Then don't.
> Google buys your credit card data for advertising purposes How do they connect my credit card data to my Google activity? My Google account isn't connected to my personally identifiable information in any way. I.e. they don't have my phone number, nor do I use Google Pay.
I'm pretty sure they use that to feed their models.