Quote:
Originally Posted by pip08456
Companies love people like you. You mainly use Apple Pay what do you think Apple does with that infomation now? Your buying habits are sold on to other companies, would it be that hard for the Government to get that information also?
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What do you think Apple does with that information?
Apple is not selling what you buy to third parties. Why would they? First of all, it would be a major scandal and breach of data protection laws for peanuts worth of money for a company like Apple. Especially since their privacy policy explicitly states they don't store it.
Secondly, the data is worth more for them to keep to themselves. Facebook and Google don't 'sell your data', they use it to sell advertising. If they sell your data they can only sell it once. However, if they sell access to your eyeballs because only THEY have the reach to advertise product X to demographic Y then they make a business the size of Google on that.
Finally, it's not even technically how Apple Pay works. They're just a conduit between your card, the payment-processing network, and your bank. When you pay for something that transaction isn't going via Apple's servers, it's going via Mastercard/Visa/Amex just like if you were to use a contactless card. If you go into Apple Wallet and look at the transactions they like that information is coming directly from your bank which is why it doesn't always work well.
And as for the Government getting that information. How specifically would they get it? Do they send a request to the bank for your transaction history? That would work but it won't scale. They would need to automate it. That means each bank, which will have different databases and store it all differently, would need to write code to upload transactions daily/weekly to the Government. The Government would need to write code to receive that information and then store what amounts to a HUGE amount of data.
That's quite an undertaking and it won't go unnoticed. (Theoretically GCHQ could put a tap on the payment networks themselves I guess).
If the Government suspects you of something they can get your transaction information but that's different from a national database of everyone's purchases.
Besides, as with all these things, if the Government ever takes an interest in you specifically then you're screwed anyway. Paying in cash and turning off location history on your phone isn't going to stump them.