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Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

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Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#31

Post by doctorpangloss »

gruez wrote: post #20
doctorpangloss wrote: post #4

This comment is meant to get an interesting conversation instead of "mastercard bad" or whatever. Would the EFF feel any differently if the data were pseudo-anonymous and open to everyone? You can go to SteamDB.info and learn a lot about millions of people based on what games they buy. It's a psuedo-anonymous per-user purchase history. Here's mine: https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561197975362423/?cc=us . You can lo…

>You can go to SteamDB.info and learn a lot about millions of people based on what games they buy. It's a psuedo-anonymous per-user purchase history. Here's mine: https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561197975362423/?cc=us . You can look up basically anyone on Steam, and even do advanced math on all of it. It's been going on for at least a decade. can't you opt out by making your profile private?

Sure, but if you game this out, it still comes down to whether or not your opinion is that this data should be public. That Steam's methodology happens to be opt-out sharing - in other words their opinion is it should be shared, because people don't change defaults - doesn't change that there haven't been any known major harms and many major benefits, especially in the opinions of game developers.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#33

Post by mminer237 »

wkat4242 wrote: post #7
doctorpangloss wrote: post #4

This comment is meant to get an interesting conversation instead of "mastercard bad" or whatever. Would the EFF feel any differently if the data were pseudo-anonymous and open to everyone? You can go to SteamDB.info and learn a lot about millions of people based on what games they buy. It's a psuedo-anonymous per-user purchase history. Here's mine: https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561197975362423/?cc=us . You can lo…

Absolutely not. Pseudo-anoymous can still be traced back with the right correlations. It should just be illegal to use customer data unless they explicitly agree. It's not even about harm. It's about having a right to privacy. And this is not some computer games we're talking about. It's our whole lives.

Not every anonymization can be undone. It depends on how it's done.

And customers already explicitly agree. They just don't read the terms when they sign up or value having a credit card more than that level of privacy.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#34

Post by jowea »

gruez wrote: post #20
doctorpangloss wrote: post #4

This comment is meant to get an interesting conversation instead of "mastercard bad" or whatever. Would the EFF feel any differently if the data were pseudo-anonymous and open to everyone? You can go to SteamDB.info and learn a lot about millions of people based on what games they buy. It's a psuedo-anonymous per-user purchase history. Here's mine: https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561197975362423/?cc=us . You can lo…

>You can go to SteamDB.info and learn a lot about millions of people based on what games they buy. It's a psuedo-anonymous per-user purchase history. Here's mine: https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561197975362423/?cc=us . You can look up basically anyone on Steam, and even do advanced math on all of it. It's been going on for at least a decade. can't you opt out by making your profile private?

Yes you can. This is just steamdb processing data that is already public.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#35

Post by c0pium »

reactordev wrote: post #15
wkat4242 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the whole credit/lending part isn't even needed. In Europe this is only a marginal thing and most people just have debit cards.

You need capital to lend though or you need lender groups you can securitize. That’s the “credit” part of Visa/Mastercard. The concept can easily be done all digital. IANAE on payments but pretty sure if you build it (and connect it), it would work.

What you wrote is not responsive to the comment you are replying to. Whether it would work is irrelevant if it’s bad product market fit.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#36

Post by zeristor »

anotherhue wrote: post #24
reactordev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You start an EU competing service with the top EU banks and money lenders. You build a bunch of credit card infrastructure. You tie your infrastructure to the merchant systems and get gateways to implement your protocol. Not exactly easy but it’s not impossible. An app based system could probably do it and force ApplePay and GooglePay to use it in those areas. They will if it’s in place.

It has been tried * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_(debit_card) * https://www.reuters.com/technology/europes-planned-rival-vis... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocard_(credit_card)

You forgot the Access Credit card:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_(credit_card)

They spent all that money on advertising, I still remember it, but for what?

This and Harding and Hobbs

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#37

Post by tflinton »

reactordev wrote: post #11
wkat4242 wrote: post #5

We should have a payment system that isn't held hostage by two providers anyway. At least here in Europe MasterCard and visa are the only options. Amex and Discovery are really unusable here. Besides selling our data this also means we get American morals pushed on us, eg they won't provide payments for some websites they don't like. But how do you break up such a duopoly?

You start an EU competing service with the top EU banks and money lenders. You build a bunch of credit card infrastructure. You tie your infrastructure to the merchant systems and get gateways to implement your protocol. Not exactly easy but it’s not impossible. An app based system could probably do it and force ApplePay and GooglePay to use it in those areas. They will if it’s in place.

That takes an enormous amount of frozen capital. For regulation reasons MasterCard (and other networks) need to keep huge cash on hand to cover stand-ins and other network blips.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#38

Post by causality0 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #23
wkat4242 wrote: post #5

We should have a payment system that isn't held hostage by two providers anyway. At least here in Europe MasterCard and visa are the only options. Amex and Discovery are really unusable here. Besides selling our data this also means we get American morals pushed on us, eg they won't provide payments for some websites they don't like. But how do you break up such a duopoly?

FedNow instant payments in the US. Already live, just taking time to ramp (already plugged into 108 banks and financial services providers, including JPMC and the US Treasury). What it could look like is India’s UPI. UPI is so detrimental to Mastercard’s India business it complains about it publicly. In Europe, more aggressive adoption of SEPA instant payments. TLDR utility priced payment rails provided by a central…

FedNow is a great step but most of the people I've asked tell me it isn't going to do anything to stop people from being debanked for "morality" reasons like sex work.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#39

Post by saghm »

wkat4242 wrote: post #5

We should have a payment system that isn't held hostage by two providers anyway. At least here in Europe MasterCard and visa are the only options. Amex and Discovery are really unusable here. Besides selling our data this also means we get American morals pushed on us, eg they won't provide payments for some websites they don't like. But how do you break up such a duopoly?

> At least here in Europe MasterCard and visa are the only options. Amex and Discovery are really unusable here

Growing up, my parents had a Discover card (among others) and everywhere we went, I remember them asking if they took Discover because so many places didn't. It wasn't until years later when I saw the joke about this on Futurama that I realized this wasn't a unique experience:

> Fry: Do you take Mastercard? > Employee: Mastercard has been out of business for 100 years. > Fry: Okay, do you take Visa? > Employee: Visa has been out of business for 200 years. > Fry: Hmm, do you take Discover? > Employee: Sorry, no, we don't take Discover.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#40

Post by makeitdouble »

BrandonS113 wrote: post #30
wkat4242 wrote: post #5

We should have a payment system that isn't held hostage by two providers anyway. At least here in Europe MasterCard and visa are the only options. Amex and Discovery are really unusable here. Besides selling our data this also means we get American morals pushed on us, eg they won't provide payments for some websites they don't like. But how do you break up such a duopoly?

AMEX unusable in Europe? Hardly. I payed for my dentist Friday with it, both supermarket and lunch today, and all Amazon, etc. Some vendors dont take it, but in my European country most places

From the other side of the table, I've worked in companies avoiding Amex support as long as they could, and even after actively obfuscating the support to push the user to use another card.

For smaller entities it's a PITA to have to manage a separate additinal contract, and it costs a lot more for the merchant, when virtually nobody only owns an Amex.

If you're in europe there are probably other payment means that don't rely on Visa/Mastercard thay will be much more welcome.

Funny thing to me was the store credit cards that are processed internallu without hitting the network (e.g. Carrefour cards, AlbertHein as well I think ?)

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