Mastercard, Visa To Help Target Ads

New submitter ThatsMyNick writes "The two largest credit-card networks, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., are pushing into a new business: using what they know about people's credit-card purchases for targeting them with ads online. 'A MasterCard document obtained by the Journal outlines some of the company's plans, which included linking Web users with purchases. According to document, the credit card provider said it believes "you are what you buy." ... Visa is planning a similar service, which would aggregate its customers' purchase history into segments, including location, to make ads more effective at appealing to people in a respective area.'"

Comments

Do not want

[Spy Handler]

I'm for small government and as much a libertarian as anyone here, but this is one of those times where the government needs to step in and put some regulation in place.

We need something similar to the do-not-call-list thingie they did a few years ago for telephone numbers, where you opt yourself in and you don't get hounded at home from telemarketers.

Re:Do not want

[Anrego]

Here in Canada, it actually made the problem worse.. because they distributed the list rather indiscriminately to everyone "so they'd know who not to call"... including people who not only ignored it but used it as a calling list.

Re:Do not want

[0123456]

And then one would grow large enough to buy the others, and you'd be left with one or two behemoths controlling it all, doing what they can to maximize profits, and crushing or buying up start-ups.

Uh, no. That's what happens when you have regulations that prevent new competitors from entering a market by creating artificial barriers for new companies.

Big companies love regulation for that very reason; they can easily comply whereas small competitors can't. But useful idiots keep demanding that big goverment regulate big business and the big business keeps laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:Do not want

[snowraver1]

You forget that phone lines cross borders...

Re:Do not want

[TheGratefulNet]

for purchased mailing lists, they do tricks like this.

they will sell you one 'use' of the list. you can send to everyone there, once.

after that if you use it again, you have no idea who the fake one (or few) are and they are the test cases. if you hit those booby traps, the vendor knows you 'stole' an extra unpaid instance.

why not use that for the DNC? load it with 'triggers' and if the bastards call, throw them in the slammer! after taking ALL their assets (ie, treat them like drug criminals).

after a few catch on, the abuse will go to 0.0% very fast.

that is, IF we really want to solve this social plague. I really don't think we want that, though; the masters get their fees from this and we all just exist to serve our 1% masters (sorry, but I do support OWS).

Re:Do not want

[Cyberax]

And what are you going to do in Europe where AmEx is unusable except in airports and boutiques?

Building a world-spanning network is complex and expensive. And not because of monopolies but because it's HARD.

Re:Do not want

[Cyberax]

In a lot of places (car rent, parkings, etc.) you simply can not pay cash. So the answer is: "make these companies respect your privacy".

A non-commercial global company would have been the best answer. But it's not going to happen, alas.

Re:Do not want

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Good, slowly you are realizing that, once the government is shrunk small enough to be drowned in a bathtub, the first thug who could, would. After that who is going to protect you, Mr Individual Q Liberty? Yourself? Armed gangs? Would these armed gangs who could take down a thug who could drown a government will respect YOUR rights?

Re:If you have nothing to hide

[Anrego]

Personally they could post a list of all my visa purchases on a public website with my name right at the top and I wouldn't care.. but I can still understand why other people get upset about this kinda stuff.

Some people do have (perfectly legal) things they want to hide for whatever social or practical reasons.

Affected by Intermediaries

[elwin_windleaf]

I would be curious to see what effect services like PayPal would have on the ability for credit card companies to sell your data to advertisers. Do they still receive the relevant data, or is that retained at PayPal's level?

Granted, there's also nothing to prevent PayPal from doing the same thing with the customer data it collects. Back to gold doubloons handled with gloves, I suppose...

Re:If you have nothing to hide

[vlm]

Rather than hiding behind the fact that they probably won't do that, why don't you put your money log where your mouth is and post a history of all your credit card purchases in response to this post? Include times and locations.

I'm not trying to get in the middle of your specific spat or privacy terror, but isn't there an extremely practical problem now that MC and Visa can be used to pay medical bills, vs HIPPA and all that?

I'm sure they can figure out which billers to filter out, but it does bring up the point that its not just a tinfoil hat thing but a possible HIPPA legal violation.

Well FUCK.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

make ads more effective at appealing to people in a respective area

Please, please no...I hate this place and the people in it with a passion, the last thing I want is to be bombarded with the bullshit they buy -.-

Re:If you have nothing to hide

[Kilrah_il]

Actually, I partially agree with your sentiment. I worry more about privacy on the personal level and not on the corporate, world-spanning level. To clarify:
I don't give a rat's ass what Visa knows about me, and what Google collects about my searches and what info they get from it. Corporations want to spend millions of $$$ to harvest all my online activities and send me ads in my mail or on a site I visit? Let them have their fun. I don't give a damn. May they grow old and die chocking on their money, for all I care.
For me privacy is that only people I know can link my name to what I do (job, hobbies, friends, purchases, etc.). On this site, if you go through all my posts you can only find out which country I live in, my job and 1-2 of my hobbies, that's all. That's privacy. If some company aggregates all my actions on-line (or credit card purchases) in one big file, I don't mind; it's not like it's on some big bulletin board for my grandma to find.

Oh, and BTW, for years now I get ads and coupons in my monthly CC statement, usually targeted to stuff I buy, how is it different from what the summary mentions?

time date & location

[Colin Smith]

So... You're not home usually between X and Y. Bought a new TV, expensive computer, key hiding rock.

Information is power.

Re:time date & location

[DarwinSurvivor]

If you pay ANY restaurant 3 times per week (total, not each), it can be pretty reliably determined that there is a 50% chance you won't be home between 5 and 6 on Friday night. That list of computer hardware stores? I guess you've got some good stuff at home!

Season hockey tickets almost *guarantee* you won't be home at certain time, night clubs have limited hours (and most people go on Fridays & Saturdays), bus/plane tickets are also a good indicator that the house is empty.

You'll will notice that not ONE of the examples above requires even knowing what day of the week you bought anything. The most dangerous security leaks are the ones you didn't think were security related.

What if I don't mind?

[vlm]

The /. assumption is its all gonna be hospital bills paid by Visa HIPPA violations and sex toy purchases. What if I don't really care about keeping a certain subset private, say "books" or "anything I bought at amazon.com"?

OK /. here is a list of stuff I purchased recently using a CC:

I ebayed a HP (made back when HP was "cool") WR-42 waveguide frequency meter for a ham radio 24 GHZ thing I'm working on (thats twenty four GHZ not two point four)
I bought a quantity of tapioca maltodextrin to experiment with edible oil sands (tastier than it sounds). With the idea of making a sandy italian salad, if that makes any sense. I know its hydrophillic, I guess I'll find out if its deliquescent soon enough...
Sitting on my desk unread is a Stephen Wolfram paperback of all his comp sci papers. Glance thru looks interesting. I enjoyed ANKOS. Hoping for a rainy, reading filled weekend filled with cellular automata. Or maybe next week, who knows.
Nature Publishing Group had an "impact" sale where you can subscribe for the impact number of the journal rather than the list price. No way in Fing hell I'm paying $299 or whatever it is for Nature Physics paper journal. But I'll subscribe for $18 or whatever it was exactly. I suppose just the gasoline to drive to the library every month will pay for this... I'm not sure how they're even keeping up with postage costs at $18.

Does anyone, myself, /., or the NSA, really care about any of this or find any actionable info in this?

Re:What if I don't mind?

[sentimental.bryan]

I think you really bought the maltodextrin to cut drugs, dealer. Especially with your nerdy background, perhaps you're somehow involved in the manufacture of controlled substances, whoever heard of 'edible oil sands'. Lock m' up.

Re:What if I don't mind?

[vlm]

sure until some asshole decides to broadcast advocacy for terrorism from his ham radio

Obviously you've never listened to the idiots on 75 meters and 20 meter sideband

all of a sudden fit the description of a domestic terrorist due to information being available that would otherwise have required warrants to collect

Ham radio licenses are public record.

http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchAmateur.jsp

Also http://www.qrz.com/ and about a zillion other places.

Don't confuse government sharing, which is nearly total, and govt publicity which is also pretty wide open, with this new idea of advertiser sharing.

I've been expecting this for a while

[Animats]

I've been expecting this for some time. Google only knows what you look at. Visa and MasterCard know what you do. Amazon does this now, but only for sales within Amazon's system. Now it can work for everyone.

This could upset Google's dominance in online advertising. If some other search engine or social network partnered with Visa and MasterCard, they could do search ads much better than Google can.

Re:If you have nothing to hide

[Hope Thelps]

Some people do have (perfectly legal) things they want to hide for whatever social or practical reasons.

Some of us have 'things we want to hide' (or what we would cause 'a desire for privacy') for no social or practical reason, and find it weird that anyone would think that needs a justification.

Master Card Opt Out

[chazchaz101]

Master card appears to have an opt out page. Anyone know if there's something similar for Visa?

Re:If you have nothing to hide

[makubesu]

If you have nothing to see (ad-block) you have nothing to fear.