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Google seems to have signed me up for Google Pay without asking

148 points by caaqil 5y ago

endisneigh 5y ago
I don’t really understand this - is it possible to have a Google account and not have a Google pay account?
- gilrain 5y ago
  Yes.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    If you’ve never used Google pay and go to pay.Google.com it asks you to sign up? I tried just now and I already have a profile with no activity. Looks like the profile can be closed if you like though.
    - Beached 5y ago
      psa? unfortunately it looks like Google pay service is tied to Google domains. they state your Google domains service will be canceled if you close Google pay. don't accidently lose your domains!
version_five 5y ago
"Growth hacking"
- bliteben 5y ago
  Makes me wonder if a large company like Facebook has ever "accidentally" counted their shadow profiles in user growth numbers.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Facebook's initial growth hack was getting contacts in individual universities to send email rosters to them so they could send hand-crafted invites to be in the network.
  - jsemrau 5y ago
    ^ bots. 2 Billion DAUs is an insanely larger number of users and I hardly know anyone who is using Facebook much anymore. Surely that's anecdotal and there are parts of the world where FB is the gateway to the Internet.
izacus 5y ago
Google Pay seems to share its data with payments.google.com and by extension Play Store, Play Movies and other services. I bet that's where his "signup" came from - although every time I want to add a card to Google Pay on phone/watch I need to go through a tedious signup process involving my bank and SMS tokens, so I find this tweet very suspect.
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  Yup. Apple does the same thing.
  - emeraldd 5y ago
    Last I checked, Apple is explicit in saying you must add a payment method to Apple Pay.
    - messe 5y ago
      Yep, I even need to confirm via my bank (online or app) to enable a card with Apple Pay (per-device as well, it's not just added to my Apple ID and then allowed everywhere). I'm in the EU though, I'm not sure what it's like in the US.
- bilekas 5y ago
  This. The issuing bank/institution needs to verify additions to any 3rd party processor like ApplePay, GPay etc The tweet is a little bit weird too because he assumes its because he used a card somewhere and makes it seem like his card was added to Google pay which can't automatically happen..
- xeromal 5y ago
  For most people, it would surely be BS, but I'd be surprised if PG is making this up.
- mynameisvlad 5y ago
  There's multiple forms of "Google Pay" and people seem to be confused about this. You are talking about adding a card to tap-to-pay, and therefore generating a tokenized device account. That requires verification as you are essentially "creating" a "new" card. "Google Pay" is also the name of the peer-to-peer transfer service Google has (had?) which accepts debit and credit cards and allows you to pay others. This only uses standard address verification. "Google Pay" is also the name of the payment processing service Google uses for their own services, like the Play Store. Adding a card here also only uses standard address verification. Data is shared between these three systems. If you have already registered cards with 2/3, they will be pre-populated when you try and add a new tap-to-pay card, and at that point you do the SMS verification.
wintermutestwin 5y ago
They signed my business accounts on to their obnoxious chat without asking. Thankfully, I caught it before some customer tried to chat.
shadowgovt 5y ago
> the old "Don't be evil" Google wouldn't have done this Just so we're on the same page, I have to assume that'd be the Google that predates Buzz auto-populating your contacts from Gmail, which resulted in people being "Buzz friends" with abusive ex's and other folk that people will do business email with but don't want social conversations with. So, pre-2010 Google.
rvz 5y ago
Typical Google, and all their nonsense in everything they touch. They will just never change.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
IMSAI8080 5y ago
Someone on HN complained Google stored their credit card after using it to verify their age for watching a YouTube video.
soared 5y ago
> Uses google product x to store payment information > Surprised when he has an account on google’s payment product y How is this evil? There is literally zero negative outcomes from this.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  Where's the line on this kind of thing? If I type my CC info into a text file using VS Code should I expect Microsoft to add the CC info to my Microsoft account? What about just typing my CC info into any field when using Windows? Edit: > How is this evil? There is literally zero negative outcomes from this. I like to think of every online account as a liability, because any one of them can be compromised and cause me a bunch of headaches. The "level" of headache depends on how much information each service has about me. What gives Google the right to expose me to more risk in this way?
  - masalah 5y ago
    This one is different, you logged into Chrome with your Google account and stored the data of your credit card to the same google account. If you type your cc info into vscode with your msft account logged in and a sync option enabled then you also shouldn't be surprised if you found it into your msft account.
- JohnFen 5y ago
  It isn't for you, me, or Google to determine whether or not there are potential negative outcomes coming from the unexpected use of very sensitive data such as CC #s, or what amount of risk is acceptable. That sort of assessment can only realistically be done by whoever's data it is. That Google appears to be so cavalier about this is a serious, but unsurprising, thing. I don't think I'd call it "evil", though, so much as "abusive".
- kup0 5y ago
  Because in no way should payment product y be able to see, store, access, or otherwise use google product x's sensitive stored information without explicit user consent In storing card data in product x, the assumption of the user would be that that product is storing that card data for future autofill purposes in product x Discovering that this data has somehow been turned into an entire financial account on product y without consent should enrage any reasonable user of product x
Ansil849 5y ago
> Somehow Chrome autopopulating credit card fields got transformed into me having a Google Pay account. If you give a company your information in one department, another department will invariably use it. See also: Facebook using the phone number you put in for 2FA for targeted marketing [1]. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your-2fa-phone-number-to-target-you-with-ads/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your... > The old "don't be evil" Google wouldn't have done this. What's the "old" Google? You mean like Google Latitude, circa 2009? [2] [3] [2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2530951/privacy-group-calls-google-latitude-a--danger--to-security.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2530951/privacy-group-... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/technology/22privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/technology/22privacy.html
- paul7986 5y ago
  lol the old Google and it's mission statement i wonder if it ever followed that vs. it was all PR that many fell under it's spell. I surely did then I was invited to demo my invention/tech to Google ATAP and whoa it was a huge spit in my face type experience and similar to this MIT student's experience https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929. Hers was worse as they blatantly patented her work after her interview without her knowledge and consent. Yet they got caught. I am avid DDG user and advocate ever since realizing wow Google stomps on all the dreamers it inspired.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    Goodness gracious, "I demo'd my work to $BIGCO and they stole it". Imagine my surprise. This has been going on since the start of the PC era. I don't condone it in any way, but trusting $BIGCO is like trusting the mafia; don't do it, or have a private army (lawyers, gunmen, doesn't matter).
    - paul7986 5y ago
      lol i went out there with a provisional patent filed which is a waste of money you later learn cause you need a similar warchest to your opponent. My point is Google's motto/PR was "Don't Be Evil," and that was just a ruse and her experience helps prove that as well prompts users to be disenchanted by them who also were sold and bought that same crap. Further I am more then happy to tell my story and more importantly her story with evidence to warn those who have Google's stars in their eyes to demand millions before taking a meeting!
jyu 5y ago
Does this remind anyone of Google+? They had tremendous fake "engagement" forcing people to sign in to Google+ to use youtube, docs, etc. Google is going back to their old playbook. Hope someone is getting a very nice promotion from this.
alephnan 5y ago
Someone's promotion is probably tied to increasing a related metric.
- skilled 5y ago
  Your comment makes it sound like nobody cares, is that the case in such situations?
exabrial 5y ago
If this is considered an application for credit, you actually can sue them individually and you definitely would be successful.
blindseer 5y ago
On a unrelated note, I can't believe someone using Chrome is surprised by something like this. If I were using Chrome and signed into my google account from there, I'd assume all bets were off.
netsharc 5y ago
Chrome would offer to store passwords, and if you misread, it would offer to store passwords in your Google account so you can use it on any Chrome session as long as you log in. I didn't appreciate finding out that Google had my passwords...
dessant 5y ago
Google has set up a payment profile without my consent after they've asked to verify my account with a credit card. These [1] are some previous comments with the details: > A month ago I was asked in a surprise email to verify my age for YouTube with a credit card, which I did to avoid landing in support hell later on, because I publish browser extensions with the Google account. > I rarely log in, and I wasn't using the Google account at the time the email was sent, nor do I ever use the attached YouTube account. The card was saved in Google Payments without my consent. > I live in the EU. Their support page mentions that they will ask for age verification when you attempt to watch a restricted video, but I was not using the YouTube account. > https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10070779 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10070779 > Then there's also the question of creating a payment profile for the user without consent. > > If you enter your credit card info for age verification, Google will retain this data as necessary to meet legal and regulatory requirements. > https://support.google.com/accounts?p=age-verify https://support.google.com/accounts?p=age-verify > Meeting legal requirements is very different from saving your card in Google Payments, which then you can readily use to buy products in any Google service. They are hopelessly deceptive, and will not shy away from breaking the law every step of the way just to prop up other Google services. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30305345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30305345
exabrial 5y ago
Single? Signing you up for Google Meet! Oh wait, that one is taken...
throwawayboise 5y ago
I disable all these sorts of "save my information" features in any browser I use, but there's really nothing stopping the browser from collecting that anyway. I just trust that the config settings do what they say they do.
s_dev 5y ago
Paul Buchheit; ex Google, ex Facebook & ex YCombinator was the one to suggest 'Don't be evil'. He left Google in 2006 to join Facebook.
ehnto 5y ago
This flag in chrome://flags might be relevant. chrome://flags/#enable-autofill-credit-card-upload "Enables a new option to upload credit cards to Google Payments for sync to all Chrome devices. – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android, Fuchsia" They've really ramped up the "Google" in Google Chrome these last few years. The "save payment" nag box was annoying before, now I'd move it firmly into the dark pattern region, as it attempts to convince you to move your payment into their payment services not just saved locally. The fact that there is no "never ask me again" option for that save payment dialog seems like nefarious UI 101. How could a billion dollar company make such a rudimentary UI mistake in a flagship product? Well, they probably didn't make a mistake, they're just getting worse as a company. Meanwhile, I am blocked from reading any more of that twitter thread by the uncloseable twitter sign up nag screen. What an antagonistic web!
- samb1729 5y ago
  Replace twitter.com with nitter.net to view Twitter without the nagging
  - InCityDreams 5y ago
    Done, but it's the actual content of the site that is awful. So, undone.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  As another example of increased Google services integration in Chrome whether you like it or not -- I have been trying to figure out how to turn off the "login with google" prompts everywhere -- the relevant flag in Chrome has not done it. Ironically, this may be what finally drives me back to Firefox!
  - buggeryorkshire 5y ago
    I don't think that will help, I get it in Firefox in both Android and OSX.
    - 5y ago
hogrider 5y ago
Slightly off topic but I would love it if HN just banned twitter links and mandated nitter links or something.
mijoharas 5y ago
I found this very annoying the other way. I have added my card via the play store, but now my chrome tries to auto-populate the credit card number. I'm pretty unhappy with it, since I don't want that information in google chrome. (Sounds like the same thing, they share the data between all of the services, which doesn't feel great when the data they're freely sharing is credit card info.)
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Actually Google Pay is broken in the other direction: it does not sync between devices, while Chrome's credit card autofill does sync. So I have my main credit card in Chrome on all signed-in browsers but if I try to use the Google Pay button on a merchant's site it will only offer cards that I've manually entered in Google Pay on that device before. It's shipping the org chart in the worst way.
kyrra 5y ago
(Googler, opinions are my own). I work on payments, but I don't have intricate knowledge about how autofill and "google pay" accounts work. I think the confusion here is around having a payments profiles and Google Pay. Looks like we started calling your payments profile now having a "Google Pay account". There is Google Pay (the app for tap-and-pay, along with P2P payments), then there is having a Payments Profile (which apparently we're now calling Google Pay, because that's not confusing), which you use for buying things on Google's properties. There used to be a https://payments.google.com https://payments.google.com but that just redirects to https://pay.google.com/ https://pay.google.com/. This is your payments profile. As far as I understand, when you added a card for chrome autofill, it would create a payments profile, as the card was stored as part of that system. The support docs say something like this: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/142893?hl=en https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/142893?hl=en > When you’re signed in to Chrome and you enter your payment method into an online form, Chrome may ask if you want to save your payment info in Google Pay. If you accept, your payment information is saved in Google Pay. If Google Pay doesn’t support your payment method, Chrome may offer to save it locally on your device. The Google Pay app (used for Tap-And-Pay) has its own activation process for being able to use a card, as it requires a 2FA process (depending on your bank).
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Interesting now I will make sure never to use my smartphone for payments.
- JeremyNT 5y ago
  I got bitten by a strange variant of this the other day. I tried using Lyft (which I'd done in the past on other phones), and on Android it uses "google pay" with seemingly no other option. Even though I had (somewhere, somehow) entered multiple cards into one of these google payment systems previously, none of them were actually usable for "tap to pay" purposes. I never cared about this fact because I have a Garmin watch which implements its own tap to pay. It turns out that Lyft required that I have a "tap to pay" account set up. Upon requesting a ride, I received an error stating that none of my existing Google Pay methods were valid. The only thing I could do at that point was to register one of the cards that Google already had on file for "tap to pay," which in turn required that I complete the provider MFA enrollment process. This meant that I had to sit on hold for 10 minutes and give them some personal information before I was even able to request a ride with Lyft. Which sucked, because I was tired and wanted to get home. The UX was completely terrible here. I don't know if Uber would've been the same way, but I want to nope right out of this entire stupid ecosystem.
masalah 5y ago
I really don't get the surprise. Data saved in chrome is saved into your Google account, whether they label this data under pay doesn't seem to be of a surprise to me at all.
tschesnok 5y ago
Just checked. I too have a Google Pay account. (with zero activity). I never signed up for it. I never used it. I'm simply a google customer (email, youtube). You may argue that this is a unified payment service but none of these payments show up in google pay. So youtube does not use google pay to pay for it. It means that google pay just got the data from my account and get setup automatically. Google sucks. So if I had an Android phone would it be active now without my knowledge?
citizenpaul 5y ago
When I see things like this from a company like google it tells me the company knows its dominance is coming to an end and its leadership is afraid and panicking.
user3939382 5y ago
On a related note, I signed up for an Amazon Store Card and without my permission, Amazon assigned it as the default payment method for every (~15) addresses on my account. I used the card by accident before I realized it. I wonder how much they’ve made in finance charges from customers who were tricked into using this card this way.
ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
Google is losing on being the best search engine. Mozilla is no longer making a great browser. I am actually very hopeful for the next generation of hackers building things. Cracks are starting to show in the massive walls of these large organizations. I have a feeling soon we are going to have the next generation of wonderful companies and technologies and they won't be Google et al. Apple still seem to be able to pull of great things such as the M1 but I wonder how much of that is TMSC. Great time to be a venture capitalist who understands hackers.
cmurf 5y ago
All the payment systems we have suck. Especially for aging parents, it's seriously like paper checks are way safer and easier, for them. How appalling is that? I like the idea of Zelle, owned by the banks, no fees, no spam, instant - but ripe with fraud, so I don't feel fully comfortable having aging family members enable it. You cannot increase or decrease your send limit either. Complete shit. It's all automated, of course it should be possible to set a limit. Google Pay keeps changing. I hate it because it's inconsistent and thus not trustworthy that I'll have anything like the same functionality today, tomorrow. Paypal and Venmo are really the same company, and I long ago lost respect for Paypal. Venmo is worse because it adds social media on top of Paypal. So those are out. Apple might have the best pay app now except it's iOS only and thus I think it's shit, because I value interoperability.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

148 points by caaqil 5y ago

endisneigh 5y ago

I don’t really understand this - is it possible to have a Google account and not have a Google pay account?

gilrain 5y ago
Yes.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  If you’ve never used Google pay and go to pay.Google.com it asks you to sign up? I tried just now and I already have a profile with no activity. Looks like the profile can be closed if you like though.
  - Beached 5y ago
    psa? unfortunately it looks like Google pay service is tied to Google domains. they state your Google domains service will be canceled if you close Google pay. don't accidently lose your domains!

version_five 5y ago

"Growth hacking"

bliteben 5y ago
Makes me wonder if a large company like Facebook has ever "accidentally" counted their shadow profiles in user growth numbers.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Facebook's initial growth hack was getting contacts in individual universities to send email rosters to them so they could send hand-crafted invites to be in the network.
- jsemrau 5y ago
  ^ bots. 2 Billion DAUs is an insanely larger number of users and I hardly know anyone who is using Facebook much anymore. Surely that's anecdotal and there are parts of the world where FB is the gateway to the Internet.

izacus 5y ago

Google Pay seems to share its data with payments.google.com and by extension Play Store, Play Movies and other services. I bet that's where his "signup" came from - although every time I want to add a card to Google Pay on phone/watch I need to go through a tedious signup process involving my bank and SMS tokens, so I find this tweet very suspect.

Mindwipe 5y ago
Yup. Apple does the same thing.
- emeraldd 5y ago
  Last I checked, Apple is explicit in saying you must add a payment method to Apple Pay.
  - messe 5y ago
    Yep, I even need to confirm via my bank (online or app) to enable a card with Apple Pay (per-device as well, it's not just added to my Apple ID and then allowed everywhere). I'm in the EU though, I'm not sure what it's like in the US.
bilekas 5y ago
This. The issuing bank/institution needs to verify additions to any 3rd party processor like ApplePay, GPay etc The tweet is a little bit weird too because he assumes its because he used a card somewhere and makes it seem like his card was added to Google pay which can't automatically happen..
xeromal 5y ago
For most people, it would surely be BS, but I'd be surprised if PG is making this up.
mynameisvlad 5y ago
There's multiple forms of "Google Pay" and people seem to be confused about this. You are talking about adding a card to tap-to-pay, and therefore generating a tokenized device account. That requires verification as you are essentially "creating" a "new" card. "Google Pay" is also the name of the peer-to-peer transfer service Google has (had?) which accepts debit and credit cards and allows you to pay others. This only uses standard address verification. "Google Pay" is also the name of the payment processing service Google uses for their own services, like the Play Store. Adding a card here also only uses standard address verification. Data is shared between these three systems. If you have already registered cards with 2/3, they will be pre-populated when you try and add a new tap-to-pay card, and at that point you do the SMS verification.

wintermutestwin 5y ago

They signed my business accounts on to their obnoxious chat without asking. Thankfully, I caught it before some customer tried to chat.

shadowgovt 5y ago

> the old "Don't be evil" Google wouldn't have done this Just so we're on the same page, I have to assume that'd be the Google that predates Buzz auto-populating your contacts from Gmail, which resulted in people being "Buzz friends" with abusive ex's and other folk that people will do business email with but don't want social conversations with. So, pre-2010 Google.

rvz 5y ago

Typical Google, and all their nonsense in everything they touch. They will just never change.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

IMSAI8080 5y ago

Someone on HN complained Google stored their credit card after using it to verify their age for watching a YouTube video.

soared 5y ago

> Uses google product x to store payment information > Surprised when he has an account on google’s payment product y How is this evil? There is literally zero negative outcomes from this.

AlexandrB 5y ago
Where's the line on this kind of thing? If I type my CC info into a text file using VS Code should I expect Microsoft to add the CC info to my Microsoft account? What about just typing my CC info into any field when using Windows? Edit: > How is this evil? There is literally zero negative outcomes from this. I like to think of every online account as a liability, because any one of them can be compromised and cause me a bunch of headaches. The "level" of headache depends on how much information each service has about me. What gives Google the right to expose me to more risk in this way?
- masalah 5y ago
  This one is different, you logged into Chrome with your Google account and stored the data of your credit card to the same google account. If you type your cc info into vscode with your msft account logged in and a sync option enabled then you also shouldn't be surprised if you found it into your msft account.
JohnFen 5y ago
It isn't for you, me, or Google to determine whether or not there are potential negative outcomes coming from the unexpected use of very sensitive data such as CC #s, or what amount of risk is acceptable. That sort of assessment can only realistically be done by whoever's data it is. That Google appears to be so cavalier about this is a serious, but unsurprising, thing. I don't think I'd call it "evil", though, so much as "abusive".
kup0 5y ago
Because in no way should payment product y be able to see, store, access, or otherwise use google product x's sensitive stored information without explicit user consent In storing card data in product x, the assumption of the user would be that that product is storing that card data for future autofill purposes in product x Discovering that this data has somehow been turned into an entire financial account on product y without consent should enrage any reasonable user of product x

Ansil849 5y ago

> Somehow Chrome autopopulating credit card fields got transformed into me having a Google Pay account. If you give a company your information in one department, another department will invariably use it. See also: Facebook using the phone number you put in for 2FA for targeted marketing [1]. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your-2fa-phone-number-to-target-you-with-ads/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your... > The old "don't be evil" Google wouldn't have done this. What's the "old" Google? You mean like Google Latitude, circa 2009? [2] [3] [2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2530951/privacy-group-calls-google-latitude-a--danger--to-security.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2530951/privacy-group-... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/technology/22privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/technology/22privacy.html

paul7986 5y ago
lol the old Google and it's mission statement i wonder if it ever followed that vs. it was all PR that many fell under it's spell. I surely did then I was invited to demo my invention/tech to Google ATAP and whoa it was a huge spit in my face type experience and similar to this MIT student's experience https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929. Hers was worse as they blatantly patented her work after her interview without her knowledge and consent. Yet they got caught. I am avid DDG user and advocate ever since realizing wow Google stomps on all the dreamers it inspired.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Goodness gracious, "I demo'd my work to $BIGCO and they stole it". Imagine my surprise. This has been going on since the start of the PC era. I don't condone it in any way, but trusting $BIGCO is like trusting the mafia; don't do it, or have a private army (lawyers, gunmen, doesn't matter).
  - paul7986 5y ago
    lol i went out there with a provisional patent filed which is a waste of money you later learn cause you need a similar warchest to your opponent. My point is Google's motto/PR was "Don't Be Evil," and that was just a ruse and her experience helps prove that as well prompts users to be disenchanted by them who also were sold and bought that same crap. Further I am more then happy to tell my story and more importantly her story with evidence to warn those who have Google's stars in their eyes to demand millions before taking a meeting!

jyu 5y ago

Does this remind anyone of Google+? They had tremendous fake "engagement" forcing people to sign in to Google+ to use youtube, docs, etc. Google is going back to their old playbook. Hope someone is getting a very nice promotion from this.

alephnan 5y ago

Someone's promotion is probably tied to increasing a related metric.

skilled 5y ago
Your comment makes it sound like nobody cares, is that the case in such situations?

exabrial 5y ago

If this is considered an application for credit, you actually can sue them individually and you definitely would be successful.

blindseer 5y ago

On a unrelated note, I can't believe someone using Chrome is surprised by something like this. If I were using Chrome and signed into my google account from there, I'd assume all bets were off.

netsharc 5y ago

Chrome would offer to store passwords, and if you misread, it would offer to store passwords in your Google account so you can use it on any Chrome session as long as you log in. I didn't appreciate finding out that Google had my passwords...

dessant 5y ago

Google has set up a payment profile without my consent after they've asked to verify my account with a credit card. These [1] are some previous comments with the details: > A month ago I was asked in a surprise email to verify my age for YouTube with a credit card, which I did to avoid landing in support hell later on, because I publish browser extensions with the Google account. > I rarely log in, and I wasn't using the Google account at the time the email was sent, nor do I ever use the attached YouTube account. The card was saved in Google Payments without my consent. > I live in the EU. Their support page mentions that they will ask for age verification when you attempt to watch a restricted video, but I was not using the YouTube account. > https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10070779 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10070779 > Then there's also the question of creating a payment profile for the user without consent. > > If you enter your credit card info for age verification, Google will retain this data as necessary to meet legal and regulatory requirements. > https://support.google.com/accounts?p=age-verify https://support.google.com/accounts?p=age-verify > Meeting legal requirements is very different from saving your card in Google Payments, which then you can readily use to buy products in any Google service. They are hopelessly deceptive, and will not shy away from breaking the law every step of the way just to prop up other Google services. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30305345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30305345

exabrial 5y ago

Single? Signing you up for Google Meet! Oh wait, that one is taken...

throwawayboise 5y ago

I disable all these sorts of "save my information" features in any browser I use, but there's really nothing stopping the browser from collecting that anyway. I just trust that the config settings do what they say they do.

s_dev 5y ago

Paul Buchheit; ex Google, ex Facebook & ex YCombinator was the one to suggest 'Don't be evil'. He left Google in 2006 to join Facebook.

ehnto 5y ago

This flag in chrome://flags might be relevant. chrome://flags/#enable-autofill-credit-card-upload "Enables a new option to upload credit cards to Google Payments for sync to all Chrome devices. – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android, Fuchsia" They've really ramped up the "Google" in Google Chrome these last few years. The "save payment" nag box was annoying before, now I'd move it firmly into the dark pattern region, as it attempts to convince you to move your payment into their payment services not just saved locally. The fact that there is no "never ask me again" option for that save payment dialog seems like nefarious UI 101. How could a billion dollar company make such a rudimentary UI mistake in a flagship product? Well, they probably didn't make a mistake, they're just getting worse as a company. Meanwhile, I am blocked from reading any more of that twitter thread by the uncloseable twitter sign up nag screen. What an antagonistic web!

samb1729 5y ago
Replace twitter.com with nitter.net to view Twitter without the nagging
- InCityDreams 5y ago
  Done, but it's the actual content of the site that is awful. So, undone.
jrochkind1 5y ago
As another example of increased Google services integration in Chrome whether you like it or not -- I have been trying to figure out how to turn off the "login with google" prompts everywhere -- the relevant flag in Chrome has not done it. Ironically, this may be what finally drives me back to Firefox!
- buggeryorkshire 5y ago
  I don't think that will help, I get it in Firefox in both Android and OSX.
  - 5y ago

hogrider 5y ago

Slightly off topic but I would love it if HN just banned twitter links and mandated nitter links or something.

mijoharas 5y ago

I found this very annoying the other way. I have added my card via the play store, but now my chrome tries to auto-populate the credit card number. I'm pretty unhappy with it, since I don't want that information in google chrome. (Sounds like the same thing, they share the data between all of the services, which doesn't feel great when the data they're freely sharing is credit card info.)

jeffbee 5y ago
Actually Google Pay is broken in the other direction: it does not sync between devices, while Chrome's credit card autofill does sync. So I have my main credit card in Chrome on all signed-in browsers but if I try to use the Google Pay button on a merchant's site it will only offer cards that I've manually entered in Google Pay on that device before. It's shipping the org chart in the worst way.

kyrra 5y ago

(Googler, opinions are my own). I work on payments, but I don't have intricate knowledge about how autofill and "google pay" accounts work. I think the confusion here is around having a payments profiles and Google Pay. Looks like we started calling your payments profile now having a "Google Pay account". There is Google Pay (the app for tap-and-pay, along with P2P payments), then there is having a Payments Profile (which apparently we're now calling Google Pay, because that's not confusing), which you use for buying things on Google's properties. There used to be a https://payments.google.com https://payments.google.com but that just redirects to https://pay.google.com/ https://pay.google.com/. This is your payments profile. As far as I understand, when you added a card for chrome autofill, it would create a payments profile, as the card was stored as part of that system. The support docs say something like this: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/142893?hl=en https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/142893?hl=en > When you’re signed in to Chrome and you enter your payment method into an online form, Chrome may ask if you want to save your payment info in Google Pay. If you accept, your payment information is saved in Google Pay. If Google Pay doesn’t support your payment method, Chrome may offer to save it locally on your device. The Google Pay app (used for Tap-And-Pay) has its own activation process for being able to use a card, as it requires a 2FA process (depending on your bank).

MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Interesting now I will make sure never to use my smartphone for payments.
JeremyNT 5y ago
I got bitten by a strange variant of this the other day. I tried using Lyft (which I'd done in the past on other phones), and on Android it uses "google pay" with seemingly no other option. Even though I had (somewhere, somehow) entered multiple cards into one of these google payment systems previously, none of them were actually usable for "tap to pay" purposes. I never cared about this fact because I have a Garmin watch which implements its own tap to pay. It turns out that Lyft required that I have a "tap to pay" account set up. Upon requesting a ride, I received an error stating that none of my existing Google Pay methods were valid. The only thing I could do at that point was to register one of the cards that Google already had on file for "tap to pay," which in turn required that I complete the provider MFA enrollment process. This meant that I had to sit on hold for 10 minutes and give them some personal information before I was even able to request a ride with Lyft. Which sucked, because I was tired and wanted to get home. The UX was completely terrible here. I don't know if Uber would've been the same way, but I want to nope right out of this entire stupid ecosystem.

masalah 5y ago

I really don't get the surprise. Data saved in chrome is saved into your Google account, whether they label this data under pay doesn't seem to be of a surprise to me at all.

tschesnok 5y ago

Just checked. I too have a Google Pay account. (with zero activity). I never signed up for it. I never used it. I'm simply a google customer (email, youtube). You may argue that this is a unified payment service but none of these payments show up in google pay. So youtube does not use google pay to pay for it. It means that google pay just got the data from my account and get setup automatically. Google sucks. So if I had an Android phone would it be active now without my knowledge?

citizenpaul 5y ago

When I see things like this from a company like google it tells me the company knows its dominance is coming to an end and its leadership is afraid and panicking.

user3939382 5y ago

On a related note, I signed up for an Amazon Store Card and without my permission, Amazon assigned it as the default payment method for every (~15) addresses on my account. I used the card by accident before I realized it. I wonder how much they’ve made in finance charges from customers who were tricked into using this card this way.

ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago

Google is losing on being the best search engine. Mozilla is no longer making a great browser. I am actually very hopeful for the next generation of hackers building things. Cracks are starting to show in the massive walls of these large organizations. I have a feeling soon we are going to have the next generation of wonderful companies and technologies and they won't be Google et al. Apple still seem to be able to pull of great things such as the M1 but I wonder how much of that is TMSC. Great time to be a venture capitalist who understands hackers.

cmurf 5y ago

All the payment systems we have suck. Especially for aging parents, it's seriously like paper checks are way safer and easier, for them. How appalling is that? I like the idea of Zelle, owned by the banks, no fees, no spam, instant - but ripe with fraud, so I don't feel fully comfortable having aging family members enable it. You cannot increase or decrease your send limit either. Complete shit. It's all automated, of course it should be possible to set a limit. Google Pay keeps changing. I hate it because it's inconsistent and thus not trustworthy that I'll have anything like the same functionality today, tomorrow. Paypal and Venmo are really the same company, and I long ago lost respect for Paypal. Venmo is worse because it adds social media on top of Paypal. So those are out. Apple might have the best pay app now except it's iOS only and thus I think it's shit, because I value interoperability.

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