My credit card issuer apparently never gets to know what I purchased at stores, cafes, & restaurants – and rightfully so. The statement just shows the shop name, location, and amount.
Exceptionally, if I purchase airfare the bank statement reveals disclosures:
- airline who sold the ticket
- carrier
- passenger name
- ticket number
- city pairs
So that’s a disturbing over-share. In some cases the airline is a European flag carrier, so IIUC the GDPR applies, correct? Doesn’t this violate the data minimization principle?
Airlines no longer accept cash, which is also quite disturbing (and illegal in jurisdictions where legal tender must be accepted when presented for PoS transactions).
Has anyone switched to using a travel agent just to be able to pay cash for airfare?
UPDATE
A relatively convincing theory has been suggested in this other cross-posted community:
https://links.hackliberty.org/comment/414338
Apparently it’s because credit cards offer travel insurance & airlines have incentive to have another insurer involved. Would be useful if this were documented somewhere in a less refutable form.
If you’re using a card, this may be to prevent the card provider from tripping the sus activity alert and blocking your ability to use your card in destination city.
Still seems like the sort of thing that should be opt-in.
Not good, if that is true. Some banks require a travel notice where you have to call and inform them of when and where you will be, in which case the notice is needed regardless of the ticket purchases. Other banks require no travel notice, and those cards work even if you bought the travel tickets using a card from a different bank.
I’ve not heard of any banks using that info as a substitute for a travel notice. And I think it would be a disaster. You buy 1-way tickets somewhere and with another card buy 1-way return tickets. Your card might fail to work locally because the bank didn’t see your return trip.
The card I buy travel tickets with is also not necessarily the one that I will bring & use at the destination. The airlines are doing me no favors by telling the bank where I will be.
Any alternatives for non-US residents?
privacy.com omits some critical details so it’s unclear if that would actually work.
The virtual cards are designed so the merchant does not get your permanent card №. But nothing is said on that site about how the money flows. If the virtual card is linked to a conventional card, then the transaction info from the merchant could get passed through to the bank anyway.
(edit) Registrants must agree to ACH linking. That’s probably a good thing… it somewhat suggests they do an ACH pull from your bank to pay for the transaction, in which case your bank only sees X amount being drafted, not what it is for.
I insist on cash to buy alcohol & junk food, because who’s to say the banks don’t sell that info to data brokers who sell it to insurance companies? Perhaps this is a way to use a card for purchases that could work against you. Although we still have to trust privacy.com, which I’m a little skeptical about because they have a gratis plan. Maybe the merchant fee compensates privacy.com well enough… but it would be nice to know if that’s the case.
it hides transactions from the bank, acting as a proxy. I connected via debit card. i trust privacy more than i trust big banks… and they make money off service fees
