If privacy is that important to you then just pay cash. Otherwise your credit card company, your bank, Facebook, Equifax, Google and the store itself among others are all tracking you as much as possible across purchases in the physical retail world and across all your web traffic. All of these datapoints are being cross-correlated in a billion different ways.

"I'm not on Facebook" - oh yes you are. There's a shadow profile built of you even though you never signed up for Facebook. Same goes for Google, and many other services you never explicitly signed up for.

So now let's talk about cash. So you pay with cash and you think your privacy is preserved? Nope! The moment you walk in the store, the wifi beacons are tapping into your smartphone and adding to the internal profile the shop has of you. They know when you walked in the store, they know when you walked out, and they probably know enough to correlate your cash payment with your profile.

I'm sorry but that's the world we live in.

Absolutely. Every middleman in the chain is repackaging and selling your data.

Wi-Fi beacons work only if you can connect to them on modern phone OSes, but yep, exactly my thinking. The price of free Wi-Fi: your privacy.

Bunch of places near my work don't accept cash anymore (seems recent as of a year or so ago). Card only, no checks either.

I was curious how this was legal, but it looks like they're only required to accept cash as payment for debt. As long as no service is provided before you pay then it's legal to refuse cash.

Is this legal?

Yes. Cash is only required to work for paying debt. The store can request whatever payment method they want.

Not everyone has a smart phone. I don't. Believe it or not you are not required to have a smart phone function in the word. At best it is a pointless waste or time and money gadget at worst it is a tracking device and profile builder.

Your comment is incredibly short sighted and is on par with saying "Having a computer is not required to function in the world, at best it is pointless....".

For many people in the world, the smartphone is their only computer. For many people in the world, a smartphone is an invaluable tool that has been a driver of positive change. For many people in the world, a smartphone is required for them to make a living and put food on their family's table.

Having a smartphone is on par with having access to the internet to economic success in many societies.

Like the internet, yes the smartphone has a multitude of downsides that are well documented. But to throw the baby out with the bathwater and make sweeping statements like the one you've made is just wrong.

I've never had one, and it's as difficult for me to understand why people think they need one, as it is for them to understand how I survive without one.

Or use Apple Pay (etc.) with the new contactless reader, then only your credit card network and bank can identify you based on the transaction.

Not really. The token merchants/payment processors get is very easily trackable across transactions. It is a bit harder to link to a real card number though.

Since you see transactions that occur on the card off Apple pay in the wallet also im pretty if Apple wanted they could just sell API access to 3rd parties banks and issuers already have that access possibility also payment processors.

I don’t think Apple could sell transaction data:

> Apple Pay retains anonymous transaction information such as approximate purchase amount. This information can’t be tied back to the user and never includes what the user is buying.

https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf, page 38.

They don’t have much information that the issuing bank/card network do not have already.

You think Square is the only part of the credit-card purchasing process that's a privacy nightmare?

Credit cards track your purchases. Square maybe makes it a bit more obvious that your purchase history is going up to the internet, but i'm not sure why you think other credit card processors aren't tracking you.

I understand they know where I shopped, that is clear on my statement each month. But they don't know what I bought, unless I shop at a store that only sells one thing.

Many POS terminals send full purchase information back to the cc processor. This is used in fraud detection and also sold as part of your profile.

A while back Mastercard did a commercial where they showed you how you could see what you bought in your online statements.

It looks like this is called "Level 3 data" and primarily for corporate cards, not standard consumer credit cards. I'm not sure if that data is still collected for consumer purchases - I've never been offered any opportunity to see more detail about what I purchased, even for a price.

One significant benefit of having that data would be that it would be easier to remember and prove things you owned for insurance purposes after a loss.

All payment processors do this- they just don’t make it so obvious

Most large retailers already do this and have been doing so for a while (pretty much all grocery stores and chain retailers) and you most likely never "opted-in" to those either.

Agreed. I was absolutely horrified the first time I got one of their receipt emails after buying a sandwich.

>>The worst part is there is no "opt in" either. There is no privacy policy or terms of service that I agree to. My only option is to either pay in cash or not shop there.

This is true about every store. All credit card companies and vendors work together to collate all of this data easily. Most don't tell you they're doing it. Square at least made you aware of it.

Is that even legal?

This happens regardless of whether you use a Square till or not: https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/datalogix/inde...

US? Of course. EU? Subject to data protection, but still quite widespread.