Banks start using purchase history for targeted ads [video] | Hacker News Reader

Banks start using purchase history for targeted ads [video]

youtube.com

87 pointswalterbell45 comments

This is unbelievably unethical and should be made illegal, with retroactive fines. I’ll be writing my city and state attorneys and legislators about this tonight. I’ll ask that all banks with this practice have their physical locations closed.

Good for you, honestly. As a side note, computer science forums are one of the few places where you get posts like this. I like hanging out on HackerNews because I can talk to people like you.

We've had this before: a very long time ago the banks tried to do the same thing, and there was uproar and legislation. If I can find out the name for it I will post here.

Visa, Mastercard, etc power the debit card APIs every bank uses. They and every internet enabled cash register and middle-man like Square and Stripe sell all that data already.

The banks were just feeling left out.

If you think privacy is a human right, then help preserve it by using cash everywhere possible.

Getting harder to use cash. Fewer places accept it at all since COVID, and even some consumer purchases trigger SAR review when I withdraw the cash. (e.g. buying a whole rig's worth of expensive computer parts from Microcenter, a car, or even some TV's can all approach that $8,000 limit where banks consider it close enough to the $10,000 rule)

For the few places that do not accept cash, I purchase prepaid debit cards with cash. Still deprives vendors and my bank of my identity-linked buying behavior.

>and even some consumer purchases trigger SAR review when I withdraw the cash

If what you're doing is legal, so what? If anything, a sort of social protest in favor of cash and against pervasive, parasitic transaction monitoring should arise to saturate such systems with bullshit SAR reviews. In effect, people should decide to deliberately go cash-heavy for transactions that arbitrarily trigger these idiocies.

The bean-counter bureaucrats want to watch how we spend every penny of paper and coin? Make them suffer the burden of it.

And that's why I use cash everywhere I can, even when it's not as convenient.

Yep. But for me I started using cash when I noticed my local stores were trying to transition away from cash. They would have one aisle that would accept cash. As soon as I noticed the transition away from cash at my daily stores, I started using cash way more often and I was a prick about it. For example at a drag race, I couldn't use a card. I'd select some items I wanted to buy, get into line, then be like oh can I pay in cash? No? And then leave the item that the register. Sure cards are convenient, but this world will become so much more oppressive if we lose the ability to spend with cash.

Buy a $1000 tablet, lol here's 50 $20.

You'll also notice the clerk's attitude change. The money I'm spending becomes real to them. It's no longer just a number on a screen. They recognize how long it takes to earn that $20.

There's a store with lots of self-checkout machines and one human cashier, who is trained to ask "Are you paying with cash?" then direct you to machines otherwise. Sometimes they look disappointed when I confirm cash payment. I should ask, "Do you prefer digital payment?" and follow up with, "If everyone pays digitally, what will you do?"

What does it achieve to be snarky to someone who can do nothing about it?

That lone human cashier can say, "Are you paying with cash? I'm happy to help you!"

Seen at independent shops, sometimes with a discount for cash payment.

Small businesses I regular almost always give me a discount for using cash. Even when I make several hundred dollar purchases they extra appreciate it. They avoid the visa/stripe fees and I avoid my purchasing data being sold to advertisers. Everyone wins.

Brave and strong people with morals will quit working for the company. Customer service will worsen. People will start taking their money elsewhere.

Most people want to improve society; however, if every day it becomes clear to an employee that they are helping an evil megacorp some employees will try to do something about it. Example: Inform management how their policy is turning customers away. That it happens multiple times a day. That Sherry got a new job because she got tired following management's evil policies.

In closing they can do something about it. If enough of them push it up to their leadership, leadership will make changes. Come on bro you know this.

And in the meantime all those brave and strong people will be homeless just to make a point because they are brave and strong.

Been there done that. In some ways the best time of my life, and another ways the worst time of my life. However momentary homelessness does put things into perspective for a person. What's important? Having that flashy new car or driving that junker that I must work on every two months. Keeping up with the Joneses or living frugally? There's a big difference between needs and wants. Making smart financial choices so that I can have a spine when speaking to my boss? Yes.

Post script: People can get a new job before quitting their current job... Post script two: People can also bring issues up to leadership in a respectful way that doesn't risk unemployment. If someone's leadership is a tyrannical, it's probably best to get fired anyhow. Oppression is never a good feeling; be it from a boss or a government.

It's pretty obvious when you meet someone who's never worked retail.

Apparently not because you just got that wrong bucko.

The store that I worked at liked earning money. We didn't turn customers away because they wanted to pay in cash.

Really? There are plenty of digital payment only stores in my country.

Some US cities mandate cash acceptance by law, e.g. San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York City.

There is also a pending US federal lawsuit which attempts to require that all federal lands [e.g. NPS] requiring paid admission to accept cash for entry.

I think this will help establish "cash allowed" precedent. I don't even use email, so this will be really helpful (since you cannot receive the entry pass without email and CC).

Do they validate that email? Strange to come across someone with no email address, not even an anonymous one.

I don't believe they directly "validate" that email, but they do send the admission pass there. So without providing the email address [it won't even process the CC transaction] you wouldn't be able to receive a printout of the permitted entry [again, presuming it would still transact without providing email].

>no email address

I only use temporary burners, nothing longer-term storage than ten minutes. At a chancery court action about a year ago, judge made me sign a statement attesting to not using email.

i expect the opposite soon.

want anything from federal gov? you better have a id.me account with a verified secure device owned by google or apple, or else.

I worked retail for years and I still insist on using cash everywhere.

What's your point?

Most of the time the card people go to the automated check-outs and I have to flag down an actual human to pay cash which helps keep them employed

Ironically the video is hosted by the worst targeted advertising company. So I did not watch it, try to avoid them as much as I can.

Use ad-free tracking-free mirrors like https://yewtu.be

If you got blocked like I did for some reason here is the working Invidious link

https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=VCiXu6S6vEw

Seems to be buffering more than other videos on same site do on my end on the original link, but it does eventually load.

Google is trying to block invidious. Try different instances.

So I hear. I was referring to accessing the YouTube url directly. I think that may have been unclear from my phrasing in context.

Pretty sure this can't fly under UK data protection law - you can't just take data that you have for our purpose and use it for something else.

If we’re talking about UK data protection law then Facebook can’t fly either and yet it’s still around?

UK is a corporatocracy and is even less interested in enforcing data protection regulations than the EU (which is itself terrible at it).

I love this man. Thank you for posting. This is an outright immoral act and should be illegal.

Privacy.com lets you beat this.

All you're doing is shifting the burden, there's no guarantee they won't (or already are) doing something similar

Not looking for a guarantee, selling your info will defeat the entire purpose of their business, that's good enough for me. And by law, if they do so, they have to disclose it.

-They- may not sell the data but the Visa API services they use under the hood sure do, so it is a bit moot.

It's not moot because they anonymize the merchant and payment information prior to that api (mastercard not visa).

Timing and location data combined with data from various "data enrichment" firms make short work of de-anonymizing this in most cases I am sure.

You can create burner cards that are single use or cards dedicated to a merchant. As far as timing and location data you don' need visa or mastercard for that, but any information visa or master card can share with third parties would be specific to a merchant.

"Just buy a lock" isn't the solution to people stealing cars. The onus isn't on innocent people to protect themselves from thieves. The onus is on the group with a monopoly on force, i.e. the government, to stop them.

Except the government is people. Each person has to make their voice heard or the odds of the government doing anything are zero.

That process tends to take decades so until things change, yeah, buy locks.

Yes, but until that happens a nice car lock and alarm system would be great.

Caveat, you are being paid for this. The points you get back on you card come from somewhere

You can use privacy dot com or something if this matters to you but it doesn’t matter to most people

Reply on news.ycombinator.com