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Given the massive, long-term and apparently ongoing breaches at major data collection agencies, a complete leak (to the public) of non-pseudonymous transaction
by bcoates 13y ago
Given the massive, long-term and apparently ongoing breaches at major data collection agencies, a complete leak (to the public) of non-pseudonymous transaction history for any given credit card has probably either already happened or it's just a matter of time. You probably shouldn't use a credit card or checking account to do anything you wouldn't put a picture of on Twitter.
There seem to be a lot of forces that make it impractical for institutions to keep secrets of any kind secret. This does not seem to be stopping said institutions from acquiring vast volumes of sensitive data. The volume of data used to be a practical limit on it becoming public, but that's fading fast too. This is going to get weird before it gets better.
- hendzen 13y agoI would be more concerned about CC agencies selling the data. I'd rather have the data public than only available to large corporations.
- dmix 13y agoRewards cards are 100% about selling/analyzing that data. There are billion dollar publicly traded companies who specialize in mining consumer data (something for example, highly valuable in pharmaceuticals). I'd be curious to see the laws preventing CC companies from doing the same. Most likely the data is anonymized when sold. "Big-data" marketing is heavily at work in the background of our society.