PayPal to use customers' purchase history to build ad network

General Privacy & Security
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Excerpt:

The new PayPal Ads group is headed by recent hire Mark Grether, a senior vice president and GM at PayPal…

“…we know who is buying the products where, and we can leverage the data,” Grether is quoted as saying.

Article: PayPal plans an ad network built off your purchase history • The Register

Time to cancel PayPal and Venmo accounts.

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This is one of the many reasons that I don’t use paypal or any sites that require it.

Reminder that I had attempted to purchase a pinephone pro from ameridroid, and they sent my personal information to paypal without my knowledge or consent; there is nothing about paypal being their payment processor anywhere in their privacy policy or terms of service, and I had selected the payment option that was not paypal, specifically to avoid interacting with paypal at all. I wasn’t allowed to receive the phone because paypal demanded that I send pictures of my payment card and video scans of my face.

Lesson learned: use uBlock Origin or similar to block paypal domains on all sites

  • paypal.com
  • paypalobjects.com

If you find that a site is frozen when confirming your order and submitting payment, this is likely because they are attempting to send your personal information to paypal; I’d recommend avoiding such sites.

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Or adapt this method for use against PayPal’s ASN: A guide on how to completely block Fb and other companies

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That’s a very good point. I had left paypal out of my network block, but I should probably just go ahead and add it to the list, joining bytedance, facebook, google, and others.

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Also, your devices (including the Librem 5) might travel outside your home network, so it’s worth it to apply it on every device.

For traveling with proprietary OS devices (if any), a good tracker-blocking app will do the trick, if PayPal and Venmo domains are added to the blocklist.

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Hmm. I’m currently using OpenSnitch on my Librem 5 for domain blocking, and I think that’s generally enough for me, at least for now. I also have a personal vpn setup on my router so that I can connect to my home network when I’m away. I should probably make a separate topic about troubleshooting my vpn setup though, as it seems to work without issue on android devices but not on my Linux devices currently.

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Well past that point.

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That time for me was many years ago already. :wink:

From a practical standpoint, I can’t easily avoid using PayPal to process credit card transactions for some web sites but I can at least avoid having a PayPal account.

It is unclear from the article whether this further Surveillance Capitalism applies only to those who have a PayPal account or also to anyone just using PayPal to process a CC transaction.

I expect that in the EU questions would be asked about the legality of the latter (not that that would help me in any way).

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Funny (i.e. not funny) story:

I logged into my PayPal account to delete it. I’ve forgotten why I even created this account over a decade ago, but I definitely don’t want it now. Clicked to delete account - couldn’t complete request. Reason was non-specific (of course).

After checking all kinds of FAQ “help,” I determined that it was because there was some sort of pending US$5.00 gift from PayPal that I had not yet/ever accepted.

OK… thanks for the free money…?

Clicked to accept - presented with 3 options:

(1) Deposit to a bank account “for a small fee.” (Nope. Don’t want to give PayPal my bank account number.)

(2) Keep in PayPal. (Requiring an open account, of course.)

(3) Mail check to address on file. ($1.50 fee… a 30% cut for PayPal. Lol/nlol.)

I chose (3), for the win.

I’ll try to delete again after I’ve received that $3.50 check.

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