The surveilled society: Who is watching you and how

I think people would be alarmed if they knew the amount of detail that credit card readers can collect (Level 3 data).

> the amount of detail that credit card readers can collect (Level 3 data)

Please expand.

AFAIK level 3 data is essentially receipt line item level data.

I'd actually find it pretty cool to get access to my own level 3 data for smarter budgeting/analysis (eg: automatic tracking of food stocks, separation of spend on luxury foods from basics etc), but I've not found a way to get access as an individual yet

Merchants seldom submit L3 data with transactions for stupid legacy tech reasons. The card schemes encourage them to do so with bips off scheme fees for doing so, but it’s a minority of transactions I think with even L2 data.

The merchants usually don’t (to the data brokers at least), that is correct. But backdoored firmware on the POS could send it anywhere, no?

Traditionally we think of the information collected as:

8/11/2024 | Amazon.com | $50

But Level 3 data includes each individual line item:

8/11/2024 | Amazon.com | $50 | 1 Very Embarrassing item | some additional fields

This appears in all sorts of interesting ways, and is not restricted to B2B/B2G transactions as they state so prominently. Anyone can sign up if they have a certain number of transactions per year and save quite a bit on credit card processing fees for providing the data.

I can't find the article but there was a tire company that provided a branded credit card, and they had risk profiles for their customers. The riskiest went to some specific bar, and the least risky were buying snow removal tools. (Please forgive my memory if I have the details incorrect).

edit: Found it https://archive.md/gyde0

"Martin’s measurements were so precise that he could tell you the “riskiest” drinking establishment in Canada — Sharx Pool Bar in Montreal, where 47 percent of the patrons who used their Canadian Tire card missed four payments over 12 months. He could also tell you the “safest” products — premium birdseed and a device called a “snow roof rake” that homeowners use to remove high-up snowdrifts so they don’t fall on pedestrians."

Additionally if you try to buy large amounts of visa gift cards it can be problematic. This is one way they catch manufactured spend.

At the end of the day, some merchants are providing every single detail of your transactions down to the line item and all that information is being tagged to you.

Thank you. One note about the «Very Embarrassing item»: all purchases (in context) are private.

But: if the "purchased item" column is filled in the database of the credit card expenses, it means that the shop receiving the payment has transmitted the information. This is an unrequired deliberate action... The credit card company could just receive "Card ...1234 to pay 20u to Acme Inc. shop". That the shop transmit further information to the credit card company is a further action that should be made transparent to the card owner.

Yes, it was learning about this level of data collection that made me stop using my credit card for routine purchases and go back to using cash instead.