Australian Bank Anonymizes and Releases Billions of Records

The last thing they ask you to enter is your postcode, which if you did enter it, vastly reduces the number of people that you are being compared with. That, and most people here would be on a high income for their age compared to the rest of the population.

I punched in my details and there are approximately 100 people like me. What has occurred to me is that people like me (20's, single) that live in rich mobile areas of Sydney spend less than the national average across most things, and overall. But also, compared to people like me, I get away with about 1/8th of what everybody else spends, and do not feel poor. To the contrary in fact.

What is going on here? I am inclined to believe the data.

What this has really reinforced for me is the extent to which other people must spend their income as it comes in. It has also reinforced the importance of my friends, connections, values & personal knowledge. My friends who enable me to live a life that feels rich whilst, apparently, spending about 1/8th of what everybody else does.

I really am surprised. I was not raised frugally and if I want something and have the money, I generally buy it & I don't need more than I have.

Interesting, as a customer of ubank I was concerned with the concept, especially after the data deanonymization techniques developed post AOL and Netflix.

However after using the site and entering my demographics (all public properties) I could see that I was like 56 people in area; their base spending patterns did not reflect me at all and I felt like a snowflake. Sometimes big data makes you feel special.

At no time was I shown transactions, merely aggrigate figures in categories. No privacy issue here, keep being decent and ethical national bank!

I put in my numbers to see what it would be like living on the other side of the world (I'm in Dublin, Ireland - it is currently 9C and raining) using the Sydney postcode 2000.

It says my expected house & home costs are $2000, which seems rather high for me. In London and here in Dublin, pretty much everyone my age (mid twenties) is in a houseshare, so we would pay that for the whole property, but split it three ways or so. Is housing just that much more expensive, or what?

You can see where rich people eat.