Slashdot Mirror
How Private Is Your Financial Data?
Our bank, BankDirect, is mailing customers a 'Notice of your Financial Privacy Rights', containing the following text: 'We may disclose information about you to our affiliates. Here are the kinds of information and the source of that information: Information about your transactions and experience with us, such as: Name, address, account balances, account activity, types of accounts, transaction history, and payment history. Federal law allows us to disclose the information listed above with our affiliates. You do not have the right to opt out of the disclosure of this information...We may disclose information about you to our affiliates: 1) to provide you with information about additional products and services; and 2) to better serve you, to help us save you time and money, and to help you understand your specific needs.' Am I the only one who is bothered that my bank is ready to share my transaction history, including my salary (direct deposit) and payments to merchants (online bill pay)? More importantly, are there any banks that don't share (or sell) their customers' private information? I couldn't help but notice that BankDirect's web site has a different
privacy policy, which reassuringly states 'We restrict access to nonpublic personal information about you to those employees who need to know that information to provide products or services to you.' Hmmm..."
Is it me, or is that massive paragraph of half bold half "normal" text the ugliest thing ever?