Online shopping, privacy and behavior prediction. A rant.

FineCoatMummy@sh.itjust.works · 1 day

So years ago I made an account on an online shopping platform. I took pains to do it as privately as I could. Shipping address as PO box. Didn’t use real name to sign up. Masked credit card for payment. Etc.

I had it for IDK like 6 years? 7 years? I didn’t use it a LOT, but let’s say once a month avg. Over those years I had 100% the best feedback rating. I never caused any prob to anyone. I acted in good faith.

Suddenly one day… account canceled. Contacted company. They said send us copy of your gov photo ID. I said how about no?

I know it was b/c my account triggered some predictive anti abuse system. Scammers do a lot of what I did. Diff is, I was not a scammer. I just wanted some privacy. Wasn’t even buying anything embarrasing. Just normal shit.

I thought since I got 6+ yrs of history, spend like mid 4 digits of $$ total, zero probs, perfect feedback for 6 years, I figured hey maybe I wouldn’t be lumped in. But fuck me sideways.

Funny thing is. I had an older acct under my real name. It had LESS total purcahse history. By a lot. I never submitted any ID to create it. It’s still there. It still works. Diff is, it’s tied to my home addy and real name. It didn’t trigger anti-abuse prediction. ANd it is prediction! I never abused anything, and never would.

More and more, I can’t participate in the world, if I try to protect myself from data brokers that collect every fucking thing I do.

I’m sorry. I just had to rant lol. What is your experience with online shopping, if you try to set it up not tied directly to your name, phone, & home addy?

monovergent@lemmy.ml · 2 hours

No fun. If I order something that requires a signature, I probably won’t be home at the delivery time to sign the package. So it gets dropped off at the post office, and when I go there to pick it up, they also ask for an ID matching the name on the package.

Admittedly, I’ve stopped trying on this end since I order to my actual home address, which would be trivial for any company to trace back to my name. I try to find everything I can in a physical store and pay with cash, the rest is usually niche hobbyist electronics that would never make it to a store.

Also used to be that you could go into a physical store, buy a prepaid credit card with cash, then spend it online. But fewer and fewer websites are accepting those prepaid cards.

floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 hours

This is KYC (Know Your Customer). Unfortunately it is legally mandated in many places and has been for a while. It sucks and should be abolished, but currently most companies can’t really avoid it, especially when selling anything is involved, under the guise of “money laundering prevention”. Of course there’s also companies that go beyond the legal minimum and do shady shit with data brokers.

boogiebored@lemmy.world · 20 hours

The backlash is coming: fuck 55 factor authentication and ID theft and all this bullshit.

I bike up the road and buy what I need. Fuck off internet.

FineCoatMummy@sh.itjust.works · 20 hours

Oh yeah. I buy local too as much as I can. Feels better. I get to suport a locally owned small biz, and all that jazz.

It’s limited tho. The selection online is so much vaster. Some things I jcan’t source locally even if I want to. Hopefully if more ppl take your advise, it’ll create pressure for better local selection.

I loled at 55 factor auth!

Auli@lemmy.ca · 17 hours

Yah sure with non of the selection and more expensive. Oh and we can have it for you in two weeks.

PierceTheBubble@lemmy.ml · 19 hours

Probably because of systems like this, which cross reference account details across online stores, to spot discrepancies between provided information, or spot other “suspicious activity”. And mind you, they also consider chargebacks friendly “fraud”, which is absolutely delusional. I personally have no experience to share though, but thought this might be relevant.

valar@lemmy.ca · 21 hours

It’s super frustrating. More and more I run into issues like this even just trying to register an account somewhere with any form of privacy protection.

May I ask what you used to mask your CC?

FineCoatMummy@sh.itjust.works · 21 hours

I guess this group doesn’t have rules against mentioning commercial co’s, so it’s OK if I say it? They’re called Ironvest. It’s fairly cheap. The plan I have gives me unlimited masked emails, and masked credit cards. Also some other things.

Sometimes, I use my real name with a masked card. I’ll do that for companies that already have to know who I am for KYC or w/e reason. But I can still avoid my normal CC company selling my history. In other cases I will use a fictious name with the masked card, for when I want to buy sth but they don’t need to know my real identiy. Like I’ve bought digital music like that. I wanted to support the artist and even the music store who sells DRM free. But didn’t want the music store selling my music prefs. I want to give them my $$, not my data lol.

Should go without saying, everyone who uses privacy services shouldn’t use them to be a dick. If too many ppl try to abuse them, we will lose what very few options we have to protect from data brokers. Not tryin to accuse you ofc. Just putting it out there as general advise for all.

valar@lemmy.ca · 21 hours

I don’t know what the rules are, but thanks for the tip! I’m not asking for any nefarious reasons, I’m just a normal person who values privacy.

FineCoatMummy@sh.itjust.works · 20 hours

Yup understood, me too.

Hopefully the group is small enough still to not be a big astroturf target, so company mentions are OK. I guess mods can remove if they want. At the mo, it seems like mostly real humans here. Could change eventually I guess.