Is this an American thing? Because I've never had my bank, my provider, my health care etc sell any of my data (at least as far as I know).

It is a German thing as well: The Telekom sells mobile user data [1] (link in German).

[1] http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/datenschutz-vag-i...

How would you know?

Do you have a credit card, and have you read the pages of fine print?

Maybe (s)he has decent data protection laws in his/her country. I'm pretty sure this would be illegal in the EU, under the Directive 95/46/EC.

That is adorable.

Thanks, darling.

To make myself clear, I'm not saying they don't do it. I'm saying it's probably illegal, therefore the fine print doesn't matter.

I can't wait for Bitcoin like technologies to be ubiquitous.

I understand that some countries allow small purchases to be made with special bitcoins made out of atoms and backed by fiat currency. I’m told that in those countries, their atom coins are ubiquitous, and, there is technology that allows mobile payments.

For example, you can purchase foodstuffs from vending machines using atom coins. The mind boggles.

And unlike bitcoins, the atom coins aren't traceable!

However, the wallet technology is extremely insecure.

My wallet could get stolen, with a fraction of my money in it. Seems more likely that bitcoins will get stolen at some point, and all your money is just gone.

Tip: Carry your atom-wallet in your front pocket. Pickpockets have a hard time with front pockets.

This weird technology has been used for some time though, so users have already internalized good practices wrt. secure mattercoin handling.

Well considering the BitCoin hype has died down...that seems unlikely.