1y ago

PayPal plans an ad network built off your purchase history

www.theregister.com PayPal plans an ad network built off your purchase history

You are the product, after all

94 comments

There is it. The main reason why Honey exists.
- Yes, their evil plot finally laid bare. Copy what Mastercard and Visa have been doing since the 80s.

So, advertising the things I have already bought? Not sure thats gonna be super successful...
- Amazon has done that for the past 2 decades and it has somehow worked.
  
  We noticed you bought a fridge yesterday. Are you interested in these fridges, too?
  
  Has it worked? Its never led to a repeat purchase for me. :/
- If only it was smart enough. Make its like oh you bought a newtv, you would like this new surround system
  
  That would be actually valuable for consumers and advertisers. Shame its impossible.
- with stuff like this, usually the objective is to advertise based on patterns across purchase histories
  
  I'm sure thats the theory, and whats being sold to the ad buyers, but my money is on it ending up like the ads you get after buying something from amazon/ebay: same item you just bought.
- More like using your past purchases to predict what you will most likely be prone to buy next
- Oh, it definitely helps creating a good profile of you.

How is that GDPR compliant?
- It'll probably launch in the US only to avoid GDPR concerns
- They'll give you $2 or something like that if you give them consent. You would be surprised how well that works.
  
  Still not possible under EU law (as meta for the no-ads paid subscription)
- By showing you an annoying popup every time you use PayPal, and eventually you'll accidentally click OK and it will mysteriously remember this and never ask you again.

Let me guess: I'll buy a toaster because my old one died but then I'll get ads for new toasters constantly. You bought one, you must want another. And another. And another. Why aren't you buying more toasters. You bought one. Buy another! Buy twenty!! People who bought toasters also bought microwaves and kettles. Do you want a toaster? Does anyone want any toast?
- "No, I don't want any toast. No toast. No buns, baps, baguettes or bagels. No crumpets. No croissants. No teacakes, no potato cakes, and no hot cross buns. And definitely no smegging flapjacks."
  Yeah, that's the future with AI.
  
  Ah! So you're a waffle man! Wanna buy a waffle iron?
- Given that God is infinite, and that the universe is also infinite. Would you like a toasted teacake?
- It's amazing that these companies spend ultraquadrillions on advertisement platforms and algorithms and all they ever seem to do is just spam products at you that you have already purchased. Where is all this money going?

I'll be more concerned when Visa and Mastercard get wind of this idea.
- Did you not know they're already selling your purchase data? All the card networks do it.
  That's why you need to use cash to buy anything you don't want logged to create a data point about you to be sold
  
  For items or just the shop? Because I write EPOS systems for a living, and as far as I can tell, we pass no item data to the credit card merchants.
  The shop is obviously passed to them. So maybe don't buy from Dave's Enormous Dildo Emporium.
- If PayPal is doing it, so fucking will they too.

Up next: PayPal introducing new AI that purchases random shit for you.
- So... like Amazon Yesterday Shipping?
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  Amazon Yesterday Shipping
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

So happy I deleted my account with them 5 years ago after going throught their laughably bad customer protection (the only reason I had them to begin with, I had figured it was a good idea to have a buffer between merchants and my CC)
In the end, it was perfect because, as they refused to help, I went straight to the credit card to reverse the fraudulent charge and closed all accounts with PayPal... Then I get a whiny email from them when the CC took the funds and left them holding the bag... Sweet minor victory
- PayPal. All the authority of a bank. None of the responsibility.
  
  I feel like this could be used to describe any tech company that "innovates" or "disrupts" an area.
- The difference between selling your data and selling ads, is that only you can use your data. This is PayPal building a moat around its user private data so only they can use it.

Well, this sucks. PayPal was great for only having your credit card information in one place - now it looks like I'll have to risk it with every website.
- This has me seriously considering using a company like privacy.com to just create random CC numbers per sketchy website.
  
  Revolut does that, but far cheaper.
  
  I completely forgot about that site. Thanks for reminding me.
  
  FWIW, I've used privacy.com a few times. Works pretty well.
- Get a credit card that allows you to generate a temp number.
  
  Privacydotcom is amazing

Capitalism = legal entities that we don't need doing things that we don't want.

I would've loved to have a paypal alternative if so many damn services would adopt them.
And no I'm not talking Google Pay or Apple Pay. They're just as bad.
- How is Apple Pay just as bad? I haven’t heard anything that they do like this. There is no advertising in the Apple ecosystem. In fact, several places (like Walmart) don’t want to adopt the tap to pay because for some cards, it blocks tracking from them by using a pseudo randomized credit card number every time. It makes using the rewards for places a pain, but it works at maintaining harder tracking for whoever you’re paying.
- There really isn't going to be, besides giving them your card directly (or paying crypto🤢). PayPal is less about the software and more about the service, which isn't something FOSS can really replace. An alternative would have to have a company behind it that works with major financial institutes and whatnot.

I hope they enjoy analzying my once-a-month subscription to FFXIV and nothing else.
- Prepare to get inundated with ads for anime girls and other weeb shit.
  EDIT: To clarify, I mean "weeb" as a term of endearment rather than the pejorative.
  
  I first thought this was a bad idea by Paypal but you opened my eyes

I'm more surprised they hadn't yet, to be honest.
Over here regular banks have been doing that for years 😥

thsnks I'm out

This is the best summary I could come up with:
PayPal will use data from billions of customer transactions to supercharge its nascent ad business.
The new PayPal Ads group is headed by recent hire Mark Grether, a senior vice president and GM at PayPal, who says the budding advertising operation will "help make merchants smarter to sell more products and services effectively, as well as enable consumers to discover more of what they love."
But, his reported statement doesn't really dwell on the fact that it will be using customer data, including purchase history, to pull this off.
In addition to the main PayPal platform, it also operates cash transfer app Venmo and Honey, a browser extension designed to find deals online.
The report also mentions that Venmo will see fewer ads served in order to not drive off its younger users.
PayPal's data on users' purchases and other transactions, combined with AI, might prove to be great at advertising, though probably to the consternation and frustration of recipients.
The original article contains 366 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
- Is there an alternative to paypal?
  
  Depends on what feature you use.
  https://alternativeto.net/software/paypal/
  
  For my use case Revolut mostly replaced it.

Well… looks like I’m going to have to find a new payment platform to use.
- This would be? Most stores I know of either want your credit card information directly, or paypal Never really saw a international big player like this.. Here in Switzerland we have twint as alternative, but it is only available on most swiss stores.
  Well, stripe is relatively often available as well..
  What I wanted to tell is, paypal does not need to be the best payment service for end user, it needs to be the cheapest and easiest service to implement in your store. The store does not care about your data going to paypal, the store only sees the cut they have to gove the payment services.
  
  Privacydotcom

I'm surprised that they haven't been doing this from the start tbh. Obviously they've been selling your data to whoever, which is really the same I guess.

Just the tip you say?
How about no way!

Going to terminate account now. Good luck with that shit Paypal

Of course it is.

What a surprise.

Funny. I don't have a creditcard and I don't want one. That is the only reason I sometimes, maybe once or twice a year I use PayPal.
I wish them good luck building a profile on 2 purchases. Also, I'm in the EU and I suspect this will not be legal here.
I also cannot believe somebody thought it would be a great idea to introduce even more tracking and ads. Don't they understand they are driving away customers?

Every time I try to buy with PayPal I have to use a new account cause they ban me (VPN, simple login, VoIP phone, etc will all do it).

94 comments