Privacy laws actually work! Let’s pass more of them.
> Information gathered about you after the effective date of our updated Privacy Statement, November 27, 2024, will be shared with participating stores where you shop, *unless you live in California, North Dakota, or Vermont.* For PayPal customers in California, North Dakota, or Vermont, we’ll only share your information with those merchants if you tell us to do so
In 1999 the show writers of the West Wing accurately predicated this in an episode about the selection of a Supreme Court Judge:
"It's not just about abortion, it's about the next 20 years. In the '20s and '30s it was the role of government. '50s and '60s it was civil rights. The next two decades are going to be privacy. I'm talking about the Internet. I'm talking about cell phones. I'm talking about health records and who's gay and who's not. And moreover, in a country born on the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?"
- Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) West Wing (ep: The Short List) 1999
- We've seen massive breaches of EMR systems
- We've seen massive breeahes from dating apps (Grindr) outing Gay individuals
- None of these entities faced significant consequences for their actions and continue to operate with large amounts of profit.
- 2 years after this episode the Patriot Act was passed. We've failed on privacy so far.
The government has failed the constituents.
Regulatory capture is still the highest ROI investment, and we should work on that.
It's a perverse feedback loop. The more power the .gov has to regulate the better the ROI of regulatory capture.'
I'm not sure how we get out of this situation without it getting way worse.
Imagine if the real government was as competent and good faith as the West Wing government
This is so open faced and gross. It reminds of someone talking about getting paid minimum wage. If you get paid minimum wage, what your employer is saying is, "I would pay you less if I was legally allowed to do so."
It also reminds me of State Farm's (auto/home insurance in the US) website with this link at the bottom:
> Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information (CA residents only)
Don’t get mad, get active. Keep cranking on the policy ratchet, progress and success is clearly possible.
> If you get paid minimum wage, what your employer is saying is, "I would pay you less if I was legally allowed to do so."
The minimum wage is the government saying "if you produce less value than this arbitrary cut off, you aren't allowed to work".
No it isn't, because wages aren't set based on some objective measurement of the quality of value produced. If that were the case, increases in productivity would have resulted in a commensurate increase in wages, but the only increase is the gap between wages and productivity.
That's what Disqus has at the bottom of every of their comments section[0]. I find it ridiculous.
[0] https://electricdusk.com/img/disqus-gdpr-violation-marketing...
I would like a tax relating to privacy violations to be retroactive in all these other states. It’s actually legal to apply a retroactive tax, so why not?
They also raise the bar of entry for companies, reducing competition. I don't use PayPal and won't use Venmo in stores because of this, however I certainly wouldn't be putting trust in more legislation solving this.
Can you explain what bar has been raised unless you were planning to sell PII as part of your business model?
you know what works better? delete your paypal account and dont use them as a service. I did this years ago and in fact have never missed not having one of these accounts. and since I'm not using paypal they're not sharing info on my to stores when i shop, whether my local laws allow it or not.
I've gotten the sense that PayPal is circling the drain lately. Whenever I log on (which is rare) I'm bombarded by modals and banners offering payment plans, digital coupons, etc. When I receive money, there's lots of clever UI design that's trying to trick me into transferring it instantly (for a fee) or keeping it in PayPal, as opposed to withdrawing it to my bank account. I suppose this is just one more sign the company is in financial trouble.
Lately? It's been that way for decades.
I'll add one more to your list: since many things are paid in USD, and most of us live outside the US, your payment goes through a currency conversion. Up until a few years ago it was possible to configure PayPal to let your bank convert using bank's own rates, although it was hidden behind dark UI patterns. Then they removed it and now force you to run conversion at PayPal rates, which are just terrible, much worse than any bank I've ever used. This was about the time I stopped using PayPal completely, so I can't say exactly how much of a price hike this caused, but it's probably around 10%.
I can still defer conversion to my bank.
Looking at their revenue charted tells a different story.
One in which they are thriving.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/382619/paypal-annual-rev...
PayPal ($29B) also does more revenue than Mastercard ($25B).
Despite my bottomless hate for PayPal, I’ve been keeping my account active because there was always some worse option to give your credit card number to.
But with Privacy.com, I’m finally ready to let go.
Same here, I absolutely despise PayPal but end up using them often because I simply don't trust most retailers with my card information :(
(and it's often faster checkout if I don't have my CC details handy)
That being said, there's quite a bit of competition these days from BNPL vendors (klarna, afterpay etc.). I don't believe they are any more virtuous though...
Automatic data sharing policy to take effect on November 27, 2024. If you do not want PP to share your data with “participating stores”, you need to “opt out”.
Per e-mail sent regarding this policy update: “You can opt out of this at any time in your profile settings under "Data and Privacy."
Here is the precise page, for anyone who wants to easily do it and amortize my settings perusing: https://www.paypal.com/myaccount/privacy/settings/recommenda...
Don't see anything relevant in Australia...
thanks, the direct link works but I can't find it by browsing
Just logging in now, for the first time in years, I found two options that seem relevant.
For the first one: it presented that I had given permission to "paypal shopping" to share my identity. I removed that permission. This may be the automatically added permission that I had to opt out of. This was in a list of discrete permissions, or apparently so, since there was only one entry, but it could be removed by clicking on a trashcan icon.
For the second one, it was explicitly described with words like "share your info". This was a checkbox-slider, and it was already set to "off".
Also, maybe it defaults to off if you reside in USA and live in one of these states:
> Information gathered about you after the effective date of our updated Privacy Statement, November 27, 2024, will be shared with participating stores where you shop, unless you live in California, North Dakota, or Vermont
I'm in California and it was indeed off by default.
I didn’t revoke the “PayPal shopping” permission. But now I will.
Wonder if PP system automatically moves that slider to off if you revoke the “PayPal Shopping” permission. I honestly don’t remember granting that explicitly. Then again, I have only used PP for rare occasions
Any indication on _which_ setting under "Data and Privacy"?
One thing I realized. This appears to be a change in their privacy policy for _US_ PayPal. If you are not in USA (ie, Canada), then it likely won’t be there as it’s not rolling out to you.
For me: I opened the app, navigated to Profile > “Data and privacy” > “Personalized shopping” (under “Manage shared info” header) > toggle off “Let us share products, offers, and rewards you might like with participating stores”
Haven’t checked on paypal.com
option 2 - delete your paypal account, you dont need it.
It’d also ridiculous that I can only delete my data by closing my account.
I work in Payments.
This must be related to their new product - Fastlane.
Fastlane is an express checkout product, similar to ShopPay. Even if you have never used a website, you authenticate with OTP and all your information (Address & Payment Methods) is available.
Originally, merchants could not use this data to make customer accounts. This was not ideal for us merchants as there was no method to login to track your order information.
PayPal came to me this week saying they were updating their legal agreement to allow merchants to create customer accounts.
(Express checkout options will soon be everywhere - Stripe, Shopify, PayPal, Zelle/Paze are all competing in this space now)
> No matter where you live, you’ll always be able to exercise your right to opt out of this data sharing by updating your preference settings in your account under “Data and Privacy.”
There is currently no opt out button or switch on this page on their website when signed in through either my personal or business account.
Edit: Someone further down direct linked to it here https://www.paypal.com/myaccount/privacy/settings/recommenda...
No idea how they got this screen, as when I click back it gives me the same menu I saw before where this option doesn’t exist and the website design is different.
I have tried to delete my PayPal account on ten different occasions (I mean, something like that), and never succeed to do so. A maze of dark patterns and crappy UI and buttons that go nowhere. I even sent a couple of emails one of the times, and then gave up when there was no response. They're a heinous company.
I battled this. Turns out the key was to get the CFPB involved. Within a few weeks I received a letter of explanation from their legal department and my account was deleted.
Companies hate getting a letter from regulatory agencies because it frequently has to be dealt with in part by legal, which is an expensive department to clog.
Edit: I see you are in Europe. So the above doesn’t directly apply, although there may be a regulatory agency that is equivalent that you can gripe to.
Anecdotally, I deleted my PayPal account a few weeks ago and found it pretty easy. I’m in Europe, which may have made the difference.
I'm in Europe! I haven't tried in ages, a few years I suppose. I'm going to try again, bolstered by your comment. Thank you, kind netizen. Maybe they've been obliged to stop messing around as much with some of the new laws of the past years.
Is it only in the US? My PayPal account is from Switzerland. I haven't received an email and the option doesn't appear in "Data and Privacy" either.
yes - appears to be only US, for now.
edit: updated title to add (USA)
US PayPal is not a bank. Other incarnations are and will be subject to the relevant banking regulations.
Ha, I forgot about that. The US Freedom is really shiny over at Paypal, a bank free to not follow banking regulations, and no pesky liberal privacy, except in California.
Will be axing my paypal account if this goes through
PayPal has always been a disaster. There have been so many stories of people having their accounts frozen for long periods of time while whatever passes for "customer service" at PayPal jerked them around or outright ignored them that I stopped using PayPal a very long time ago and I've never once regretted it.
I see that paypalsucks.com is gone now. Not sure when that happened (archive.org is down too), but really, people have had more than enough warning about what a shit company PayPal is, so anyone continuing to get screwed over by them now is pretty much asking for it.
Are there payment companies that don't sell user's data?
Glad I deleted my account some time ago
The whole reason why I use paypal for some purchases is to keep the vendor from knowing my PII.
Paypal Enshitification level = 11
Is privacy.com an option for you? Disposable virtual payment card numbers and whatnot.
Strongly recommend not using privacy.com. It's full of dark patterns and has lots of crazy behaviors like randomly locking your account and demanding good old picture of you with photo ID. For a privacy focused service, this is hilarious.
This has not been my experience using it for years. You should expect KYC (know your customer) processes and requirements for any financial service provider with a US nexus or interconnection to US financial infrastructure.
If you’re attempting to be completely anonymous with regards to value transfer, crypto and cash are your only potential options. The privacy, in this use case, is from other parties between you and the merchant (and including the merchant, if you’re not providing PI).
PayPal already shares enough contact info for the purpose of shipping when I order physical goods.
This new sharing appears to consist of marketing data on items you shop for, not necessarily PII, unless you consider your inseam to be classified top secret.
What PayPal lists in the Privacy Policy for the US is only an example. I interpreted the change as “PayPal collects any number of information on you. Gives you seemingly innocuous data such as inseam. But in reality, we may collect political affiliation, contacts, salary information, and share that with retailers that want our data”
Doesn't the vendor get your name and address when paying through PayPal?
S/he probably meant payment information as credit card number, cvv etc. And there was no way before this for merchant X to know what Alice or Bob bought from merchant Y.
And E-Mail and phone number afair.
