292
PayPal will use your purchase information and shopping patterns to sell targeted ads
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
292 points (100.0% liked)
Privacy Guides
16752 readers
1 users here now
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:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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
Wasn't the EU working on some digital Euro? I know it wouldn't help Americans at first but maybe create enough pressure for others to follow.
I kind of wouldn't want a government spying on me with this either, but it would be somewhat of an improvement over both the government and companies spying on me with it.
Been keeping my eye on these guys hoping they can turn the tide: Taler