The credit card companies began to monetise the histories a few years ago. Facebook signed deals with data companies including Experian, allowing it to mingle third party offline and online data, something it also calls “closing the loop”. Last year Facebook was reported to combine six or seven data sources to create its “Facebook Graph”.
Last year too, Google created “super profiles” of its users, breaking an earlier promise never to mingle data from your search history, YouTube viewing history or GPS location (constantly tracked by Android) with DoubleClick cookie information unless you explicitly opted in. Super profiles have prompted an antitrust complain from Oracle, arguing that the combined data hoard creates an insurmountable barrier to entry for any ad competitor to Google.
“The new credit-card data enables the tech giant to connect these digital trails to real-world purchase records in a far more extensive way than was possible before,” the WaPo reports. “Neither gets to see the encrypted data that the other side brings.”
Source: Google now mingles everything you’ve bought with everywhere you’ve been • The Register
Pretty scary that your credit card history is being sold – i was not aware of that fact!
Robin Edgar
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