DIGITAL WORLD PRIVACY

Some credit card companies notify you if they notice some unusual spending pattern. This is a valuable service but have you ever stopped to think about how much they have to know about you to do that. They have to know not only your location but also your usual spending pattern. Your location is easy: they can easily identify the vendor’s address, which tells time, date, and precise locations anywhere in the world. In addition, they can know the class of stores in which you shop and deduce your life style. If you a buy tickets on airlines, your vacations times and place in addition to how many people traveled with you becomes evident to them.

If you stop and think about it, your spending is probably highly habitual. We routinely choose to pay certain things by either cash or credit cards: grocery bills, utility bills, pattern of recreation (sports event tickets and movies tickets) as well as ATM withdrawals. If we use cash, the amount of cash withdrawn and the place where the ATM is located, from which we withdraw the cash, is “usually” the same week after week or month after month.  More and more businesses arrange for you to withdraw your weekly or monthly salary from a bank. By the amount you withdraw, they can establish your income; therefore, they know not only what you spend but also how much you have to spend.

Thank to the digital world, our individual transactions are no longer lost in a mass of transactions. With tapping a few computer keys individuals who work in those banks and credit card companies can open the book of our private lives, and depending on that company’s data management policy, almost by accident, that employee can know when that your spending pattern changed and by how much. Therefore, for the  convenience of a credit card, you have given strangers the most intimate details of your life, so they can alert you to potential criminal activity; it’s good to feel protected, isn’t it? 

     

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