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PayPal plans an ad network built off your purchase history (www.theregister.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Did you not know they're already selling your purchase data? All the card networks do it.

That's why you need to use cash to buy anything you don't want logged to create a data point about you to be sold

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

For items or just the shop? Because I write EPOS systems for a living, and as far as I can tell, we pass no item data to the credit card merchants.

The shop is obviously passed to them. So maybe don't buy from Dave's Enormous Dildo Emporium.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The card companies can get data from the Merchant Category Code to infer the nature of purchases, without specifics. The stores also have a record of what items you bought, which could also be sold unless you have a contract with the store that guarantees they won't sell your purchase history (at least in the countries without strong privacy laws)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's per store though, presumably when they sign up with a payment provider (because there's a lot of rules about e.g. using credit cards to gamble with).

If I buy sex toys from Tesco, it's still showing up as "groceries". If I buy from a sex shop, it's going to be more clear cut.

I can see from my emails that PayPal send out itemised receipts on behalf of their customers, so they're definitely collecting more data than the big two.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

If I buy from a sex shop, it’s going to be more clear cut.

Life pro tip: Open a sex shop that sells groceries, to devalue the data analysis ^^

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Surprise! You've been acquired by Amazon!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

You mean DEDE? I love that place.