In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
Additional Resources:
It should be completely illegal for these companies to just completely fucking change the nature of our agreements decades later. This is bullshit.
It is illegal in Europe, but not widely enforced.
It wouldn't have to be illegal if we transitioned to a decentralized and anonymous payments system that doesn't involve the likes of PayPal
Yeah that would work if you weren't forced through a billion KYC hoops just to buy some BTC or XMR.
So... Cash? Cryptocurrency pegged to the dollar?
Cash works, but not for online purchases. I pay for a VPN subscription anonymously with a cryptocurrency wallet app, it's at least as convenient as using PayPal, and unlike PayPal I can be sure there isn't a middleman collecting/selling my transaction data for ads or whatever else. This is a solution that works and exists right now. I know a lot of people really don't like cryptocurrency, but I'd also be ok with some other system that satisfies the same requirements.
To solve the problem instead by regulating payment providers, to begin with you would have to convince governments that are largely in the pockets of these companies to act against them. You would have to get these people to craft a set of laws telling them, "hey, this information you've collected that is on the computers you own and control, don't look at it ok? Also don't do anything with it unless we say it's ok." and then, somehow, actually enforce that. It's taking a system basically made to centrally collect and control information, and hoping that people with an obvious interest in using it for that purpose will play along with retrofitting it to prevent privacy violations. To me this seems like planning for failure when you can instead just use a system that doesn't involve trusting a company with this info to begin with.
I mean, the blockchain is public, so all that data is definitely being mined. It's really just a matter of whether your transaction history can be correlated to you (e.g. bought the crypto through an exchange via credit/debit, or if you're making crypto purchases in a way that correlates strongly enough with your internet traffic).
No, I used Monero, transactions aren't visible. You are right that blockchains are public and there is a lot of mineable data in cryptocurrency generally, but the point is that it is possible to have a system of digital payments with all the privacy properties of physical cash.
Fair, I know about Monero, I just forgot it existed for a sec lol
In the beginning PayPal was needed due to credit cards not working for international payments. Now not so much. They are giving you a reason to leave.
I'm so over this. So exasperated by it. Every company in a scramble to the bottom. Meanwhile my country's reporting a downturn in FOOD spending because people are fucking poor.
We're being bombarded with ads at every turn, having our data sold off, stolen, or repurposed for LLMs... Meanwhile the customer experience gets worse and worse.
I work in digital ux and honestly, I just want to unplug and go live in a cave.
Been interested in computers since childhood, and have been working in the IT industry for over a decade now.
I would love to take a sledgehammer to all of my stupid customer's servers and go live on a farm. The future we made for ourselves is fucking retarded.
We? No. I didn't participate in the building of this future.
The sad thing is that even if you really wanted to go off the grid, live in a cave, and rediscover the fire, you wouldn't be allowed to.
Microcenter shares purchases with Facebook. Even when you shop at the store.
Pretty sure my local bank has been doing this for a few years now. I thought I was losing it, but apparently it's a thing.
Only thing that pisses me off (besides the obvious fact that its my bank doing this, and i dont want ads) is that I get ads for the same stuff I just bought. If your supposed to be some all knowing awesome algorithm that understands me better than I understand myself, send me ads for stuff I might actually want, but haven't bought yet. Not, literally, the same thing I bought two days ago, and have no need for, for at least another month. Idiots.
I assume most things advertised in apps and websites to be low quality or scammy. I hate advertising enough that I actually avoid any large company that throws ads in my face because I assume they can no longer rely on their reputations and arr no longer the value they were when they rose to prominence.
I'm so fucking tired...
Guess I'll delete my PayPal account.
Alternatives? Except for not using services that require PayPal.
In America they have VenMo and CashApp, in Europe, it feels like PayPal have a monopoly.
Pretty sure Venmo is owned by PayPal.
correct; acquired in 2013.
Ha! They really need competition.
Paypal was the fast way to transfer money until 2024 in the EU.
But the EU has recently made it mandatory for banks to offer free SEPA instant payments. 15 seconds to send up to 100k as far as I know.
BTW: Look at the share price and how it went down and did not recover...
I'd never heard of SEPA. That's actually quite cool. Does that mean no more seeing payments pop up six days later.
SEPA is actually what we had so far. That is how the employer sends you the money. That's how you pay rent. That's how you pay off debts. That's how your insurances take money from you.
SEPA instant payments is what's new and it allows to transfer money to someone in under 15 seconds. It existed for a few years, but usually cost money and was not even available for all banks. That's changing now. Step 1 is making it free and force all banks to offer it. Step 2 will be replacing the old, slower system with it completely.
Thank you so much for taking the time to explain. It's posts like this why I enjoy Lemmy so much. Thanks for educating me.
Same happened in Australia. A few years back they brought in osko payid. Which means you can send money from your bank directly to others via their email or phone number. And it arrives in seconds.
Also free.
What about privacy-respecting alternatives?
The closest you will get is a prepaid credit card. The reason why PayPal are so big is because they're universally accepted.
Just using a debit/credit card? I still choose not to do this when there's a PayPal option though, just feels riskier!
I really miss the fake credit card number paypal used to have for sites that didn't take paypal
You know when you use your credit card and it shows the last 4 digits on the receipt big data collects all that and knows exactly who you are and where you shop and is used for targeted ads and demographic research. If you ever used your credit card where they know your name/ delivery address and even if you didn't they know exactly who you are. This technology is old as dirt not even sure why PayPal announced this like it's a big deal.
That sounds pretty illegal under the GDPR though, hence why I usually feel fine paying by card if the website feels like they obey the law.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The company’s new advertising business will encompass purchase information and customer spending habits from PayPal and its sister app Venmo, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A PayPal spokesperson tells the WSJ that the company will collect data from customers by default while also offering the ability to opt out.
When asked about the kinds of data PayPal will collect, spokesperson Taylor Watson told The Verge that the advertising platform is still in “early stages” and that the company doesn’t have “definitive answers” yet.
“Alongside the advertising business, PayPal will build transparent, easy-to-use privacy controls,” Watson says.
In January, a study from Consumer Reports revealed that Facebook gets information about users from thousands of different companies, including retailers like Walmart and Amazon.
JPMorgan Chase also announced that it’s creating an ad network based on customer spending data, while Visa is making similar moves.
The original article contains 325 words, the summary contains 143 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Opt out to payment data sharing is pretty illegal in EU.
As far as data goes, purchase data is one I can live with businesses doing this kinda stuff with. I'm using their platform to complete the sale, so it'd make sense to me they'd have data of that sale. And it makes sense to me that a business would leverage that data in ways to benefit themselves.
Someone tell me if I should be concerned, but this seems like what everyone else has done as long as they've been able to do it.
And it makes sense to me that a business would leverage that data in ways to benefit themselves.
Big fat nope on that one. This is exactly what the GDPR is about. I'm giving you my data for a specific purpose, and unless I tell you otherwise, you have no fucking business using that data for anything else. Gonna be interesting to see how this one plays out in the EU.
Thw issue is aggregation of all of the data into mega datasets that are used to fix prices.
A lot of the inflation we are seeing recently is literally result of these dataset being compiled.
They know how much you make, how much you save etc so they can determine how much they can extract from you esp once you add behavioral data. We are all profiled and they know what you like.
Although fast food seems to finally hit a wall on that...
The worst part is that it doesn't just affect you, it'll make it much easier to profile new users going forward so future generations will be screwed over even more. Imagine your insurance prices or phone bill being calculated by your max tolerance you would pay before searching for a different provider
we started down this path when we all signed for cash back credit card tbh...
but yes data does have a snow ball property... and boy have we hit critical mass. at this point, i doubt any of this can be reverted or even properly countered.
Best we can do is small direct action since the government sold out us and will side with mega corps.
I really wish there were another option. The only other option is to give raw credit card data to vendors, which is horrible for security given all the data breaches that happen. And no, card masking services like Privacy.com aren't an option when they're requiring your SSN (which is a load of BS).
I'm kinda surprised to hear they didn't already do that... I guess I just assumed that was the entire point of them acquiring "honey" and had been doing it since at least that point.
Will? That's an evil company, surely slightly evil targeted ads have been going on for awhile.