Greed knows no bounds.
Credit card companies are sitting on a wealth of information about their clients — they have a running record of everything they buy. Due to strict rules entitling consumers to financial privacy, though, banks are limited in the secondary use of that data. However, they’ve happened upon a rather ingenious way to work around that restriction.
The Chicago Tribune reports on banks’ “billion dollar plan” to “sell your shopping data.” The story starts off (rather salaciously):
Many of the nation’s leading banks and card issuers, including Wells Fargo, Citi, USAA,* Sovereign Bank and Discover, are selling information about consumers’ shopping habits — how much they spend, where they shop and what they buy — to retailers.
That’s a misleading description (and CNN Money later revised that article). Banks don’t actually hand any information about their users over to retailers. They’re “selling” shopping habits the same way Facebook “sells” personal data about its users: in-network.
It’s a clever privacy work-around. Just as Facebook allows advertisers to specifically target certain kinds of users based on their profile information (without actually providing that profile information to the advertisers), banks plan to allow advertisers to send deals and coupons to their customers based on what they’ve bought before. That way, no user data actually leaves the network — instead, deals just enter the network. Each time a customer cashes in on one of those deals, the bank gets a commission.
Clever
Not a problem for me. Anyone who sees my credit card histories will see a jetsetter with a nice TV and a comfie recliner. I only use my cards for airline reservations and big ticket items. Cash is great and I can usually get a discount, too.
When I was young and needed credit cards, I couldn’t get any, now that I’m old and want or need any, they’re slaughtering forests stuffing envelopes with these Low A.P.R. offers, which are bullshit for the first six months and after that rise to heights that make loan sharks look good.
There is no depth that a bank, a lawyer or a somali pirate will not sink to.
They’re all fucking scum.
The first credit card I ever got, back when I was in college in the early 1980s, from First Interstate Bank, arrived with my first name (David) misspelled. My somewhat tricky last name was fine.
I got on the phone with them that very afternoon to correct the error, and they replaced the card with a corrected one and things went along okay until they pissed me off on some other issue several years later.
But, it was too late. In the time between them getting my name wrong and me correcting it, they had sold me out. For at least 25 years I would get solicitations by mail with the misspelled name. Through 2 changes of address. I finally started to write “deceased” on them and sent them back. I don’t know if that was the cure, but it has finally stopped.
Now, if the greedy bastards can get a few bucks from the greedy bastard retailers and I get a discount as a result, why should I care? The cat has been out of the bag for decades, and it can’t be stopped until it dies of old age.
spsffan IS a difficult last name in Merica. It seems to be missing a vowel or two near the beginning. But David? They must have been outsourcing the card processing to the Asian Tigers even then.
Ha, ha.
It is called pimping. Selling other people’s asses.
In #4 spsffan said: I finally started to write “deceased” on them and sent them back.
Bad Idea! Bad Idea!
You don’t want to give the impression that you’re deceased.
That can cause a hell of a lot of problems later on.
I’d rather put a return address of a Federal Prison (that pretty much insures you’ll be left alone by credit card companies.)
#7 “Bad Idea! Bad Idea!
You don’t want to give the impression that you’re deceased.”
I wasn’t giving anyone the impression that I, David was deceased. I was giving the impression that “Daid” was deceased.
I always thought that Daid should have some fun and accept one of the obviously bogus credit offers and have say a week in Paris at Citibank’s expense. In those days, the name on the passport and tickets weren’t matched up quite like today.
I didn’t want to use a phony address, since who knows the idiots might change my actual accounts to that address and start sending my mail there. The thing about a misspelled name is that anything with that name on it isn’t me.
msbpodcast – One can opt out of advertisements being inserted into one’s monthly utility bills. Maybe, it is possible to opt out of third-party advertisements on credit card bills, too.