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by rootusrootus 1588 days ago
> Safe to assume Facebook is going to milk this data for all it's worth.

I'm no Facebook fan, but let's be honest. Your bank, credit card company, and merchants are all doing exactly the same thing. Perhaps the bank is regulated tightly enough that it isn't quite as bad, but the others definitely are.

5 comments

Every single store that asks if you want a digital receipt in lieu of paper, is doing this. Every single store that gives you coupons in exchange for your your email, is doing this.
You're not wrong. What's troubling is combining that with information gleaned from from the "social graph" as well as well as all the surveillance Facebook does via its web trackers. I'd rather this stuff be stored in different silos by different competitors than centralized in one place.

Although IIRC Facebook already buys some of this info from data brokers so...

My bank (eu) has ver strict privacy controls. Not least of which was me telling them I'll leave if anything spammy appears. Cc company, same. Merchants? To be fair, Ialways expect an avalanche of crap after signing something, but...nothing yet. Eu rules in general, or I just got lucky?
Yeah but Facebook is primarily an advertising company, and one of the biggest advertising companies at that. They can much better leverage this data and milk it to a much greater extent. People aren't going to your bank or credit card company in order to buy ads targetting you.
> People aren't going to your bank or credit card company in order to buy ads targetting you.

But they do ?

https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/consumer-privac...

> In 1999, Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB).

...

> Under GLB, companies can sell their customers’ financial data to anyone they choose, including credit card information such as the date, amount, and recipient of charges, and the personal details consumers provide when they fill out applications. Consumers have no privacy under federal regulations unless they affirmatively take steps to “opt out” of this sharing, repeating the process for each and every financial service provider who may have data about them.

...

> Even this opt-out option is not available for consumers to stop credit card companies and issuing banks from sharing this data with their financial affiliates and financial “joint marketers,” a vaguely defined term that provides a giant loophole in privacy protections.

PS. Just to make sure - I'm not trying to defend Facebook here, or credit card companies.

They go through data brokers like Acxiom.
To note, credit card companies are open about this in the contracts you sign, and it’s their core business model so there is no possible surprise element.