No, it's not. This telemetry is useful for helping businesses avoid crippling fraud losses and we don't use or plan to use it for anything else. I don't think investors even know about it.
We're perfectly happy with the business model we currently have!
If Stripe is ever purchased or goes bankrupt, can you provide any reasonable assurances that this data won't be sold?
If your company ever receives a search warrant for those records, how will you respond?
Not really looking for in-depth answers! Thanks!
I'll take this moment to say I appreciate how active you've been on HN responding to questions every time a Stripe article pops up.
I realize this can't be very fun for you to have this as the top result for the last however many hours.
The problem is also, that the damage done, when/if the data at some point is sold or hacked or whatever, cannot be properly compensated. What is your personal skin in the game, if that happens, besides going for a new, probably high paid job ('cause of impressive CV of being founder of Stripe)?
Tracking mouse clicks and URLs is auxiliary imo would not move the needle for them right now, unless they move into advertising (not impossible long term, if they go public).
https://developers.google.com/authorized-buyers/rtb/download...
This is kind of a straw man. These valuable data sets are typically kept by tech companies to keep a competitive edge. For example, not even Google sells or rents user data.
The more relevant question is "is Stripe's valuation significantly predicated on revenue it can extract from the surveillance data it's collecting?"
My guess is that the answer to this is likely yes. Fraud prevention is the current product built on this data. But it would be shocking if the company never put the data set to additional uses.