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Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

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Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#61

Post by HenryBemis »

nicoburns wrote: post #50
saghm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?…

Huh. I hadn't even heard of Discover.

Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, JCB are the five that started PCI-DSS

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Card_Industry_Data_Sec... [2]: https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#62

Post by hrudham »

gruez wrote: post #21

There's an opt-out here: https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/vision/corp-responsibility/c...

> To opt-out from our anonymization of your personal information to perform data analyses, please provide your Mastercard or Maestro payment card number

Does this mean you're opting out of the anonymization, but not the collection of personal information?

The wording here could definitely be improved.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#63

Post by lmm »

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…

> Would the EFF feel any differently if the data were pseudo-anonymous and open to everyone?

I think having data visibly public and open to everyone is a lot better than having it seemingly private and quietly selling it.

> Have there been consequences or harms? I mean maybe in some isolated case I can imagine it.

There have definitely been people getting outed against their will because they didn't realise their play history was visible. I'd be amazed if there wasn't at least one case where someone has been attacked as a result.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#64

Post by quicklime »

wolverine876 wrote: post #54
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.

There are advantages to credit. For example, the money remains in your hands until you pay your credit card bill, so if there is a dispute, fraud, or overcharge, you don't have to fight and wait to get your money back. Also, some businesses, such as car rental companies, won't provide services to debit card holders. Also, it's a free [edit: zero-interest, not free] loan (if you pay credit card bills in full); you get…

There are some benefits, but it does complicate the transaction significantly. It's no longer between two parties (a consumer and a merchant), there are now at least two more: a lender and a credit bureau.

And that's why we're in this mess to begin with. Credit card transactions are reported to credit bureaus (from a quick web search, it looks like debit card transactions aren't) and this normalizes the idea that your financial data should be shared freely amongst finance companies.

There's really no such thing as a free lunch, or a free loan. When someone offers you one, it's good to understand how you're going to be paying for it.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#65

Post by smsm42 »

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.

All transactions on most crypto networks are pseudo anonymous and publicly accessible.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#66

Post by Terretta »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #8

Any idea if Mastercard is worse than Visa/Discover? It's not a healthy competitive market, but there are options, I'm curious if I should be making an effort to use one.

Bloomberg reporting, circa 2018:

“For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for...”

“But most of the two billion Mastercard holders aren’t aware of this behind-the-scenes tracking. That’s because the companies never told the public about the arrangement. .... But the deal, which has not been previously reported, could raise broader privacy concerns about how much consumer data technology companies like Google quietly absorb.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an...

https://archive.vn/SLmFw

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#67

Post by standardUser »

13of40 wrote: post #17
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?

> American morals...they won't provide payments for some websites... Never heard of that. What are some examples?

To be clear, it is not finance companies that have morals (which seems silly to even have to say) but rather government, specifically conservative state governments, that go on moral crusades of varying degrees of earnestness to shut down sex stuff they don't like.

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#68

Post by Terretta »

helph67 wrote: post #3

Greatly appreciate this post! Have a Mastercard issued by my bank and have now requested them to investigate or else!

Your bank knows. If they're big enough, they will have known for a while as Google and/or MC will have told them during a sales pitch.

See the Bloomberg reporting from 2018: https://archive.vn/SLmFw

Re: Mastercard Should Stop Selling Our Data

#69

Post by jimbob45 »

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?

But how do you break up such a duopoly?

You create a publicly-funded option.

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