cross-posted from: https://links.hackliberty.org/post/125466
My credit card issuer apparently never gets to know what I purchased at stores, cafes, & restaurants – and rightfully so. The statement just shows the shop name, location, and amount.
Exceptionally, if I purchase airfare the bank statement reveals disclosures:
- airline who sold the ticket
- carrier
- passenger name
- ticket number
- city pairs
So that’s a disturbing over-share. In some cases the airline is a European flag carrier, so IIUC the GDPR applies, correct? Doesn’t this violate the data minimization principle?
Airlines no longer accept cash, which is also quite disturbing (and illegal in jurisdictions where legal tender must be accepted when presented for PoS transactions).
Has anyone switched to using a travel agent just to be able to pay cash for airfare?
UPDATE
A relatively convincing theory has been suggested in this other cross-posted community:
https://links.hackliberty.org/comment/414338
Apparently it’s because credit cards offer travel insurance & airlines have incentive to have another insurer involved. Would be useful if this were documented somewhere in a less refutable form.
GDPR question still outstanding.
Seconding the guess that it’s so your card doesn’t get frozen. If your bank knows you’re meant to be in a specific place, they’ll know transactions happening there aren’t because someone’s stolen your card. It would probably be a valid exception to GDPR on those grounds.
In fact, now you mention it, I’m guessing this is why my credit card company never raised any issue with me using the card in London a couple months ago, after buying train tickets to London on the same card. I thought that was odd, given they regularly ask me for 2FA on transactions that aren’t unusual, but suddenly being halfway across the country wasn’t flagged as being even remotely suspicious.
That said, I think the amount of information being given here does seem excessive. Just letting your bank know the destination and dates ought to be sufficient for security purposes. For data protection, it would be better if the airline said nothing, and your bank waited for you to tell them when and where you’re travelling… but how many people would remember to do that?
Every single person who has traveled has been advised to do this. “People might forget” is no good reason to mandate sharing this data. It should be opt-in, and it’s disgusting that it’s not.
It’s been more than 15 years since I last travelled abroad, but I’ve now got a holiday booked next July. It genuinely hadn’t occurred to me that I’d need to tell the bank I’m going, because I actually haven’t received any advice to do so. It’s not as common knowledge as you think it is. Thankfully, I’m now aware of the need to do so, so I will. But it’s not in any of the confirmation emails for the tickets, nor on the government’s travel advice pages (which I have checked, and started organising things like updating a couple of my vaccinations.)
Nevertheless, I agree it ought to be opt-in, rather than mandatory. Everybody should get to make the choice, even if it means occasionally they get stranded abroad with no access to money.
Exactly, this just tells us we need to do a better job about educating people. Many of the conveniences we enjoy come at the expense of personal autonomy and privacy, and in my opinion it’s never worth it.
I recently traveled to Canada by road trip, and when I called my bank’s number I was surprised to learn that I don’t need to report things like this. This actually disturbs me because it shows that they must have some way of collecting sufficient data to show that I am traveling to a specific place at a specific time, and in my opinion my bank has no business knowing this unless I choose to disclose it.
I think what annoys me most is that I have been trying to educate myself on what I need to do before I travel, and so much necessary information just isn’t available in a logical place. Like why, for example, does my country’s government’s travel advice page have some information (check vaccinations are up to date) but not others (check bank knows where you’re going)? Even for a decently intelligent person who proactively tries to educate themselves, it feels like a losing battle against poorly organised information.
Part of the problem is that government agencies can never keep something in place long enough to even determine if it’s effective, so this is the type of situation that leads to
Every bank’s AI-driven fraud detection system is different and non-transparent. Whenever my account gets frozen for “fraud” and I removed¹ at the bank over it, I ask WHY my account was frozen. The CSR guesses what happened (because apparently it’s such a secret the bank’s own staff is kept in the dark). This can be deceiving because bankers seem to be trained to propose their guesswork with confidence to thwart questions. I ask “where in my terms of service agreement does it say I shouldn’t do [whatever the CSR thinks triggered the fraud sensors] & how can I prevent this false positive in the future?” They can never answer that.
Some banks don’t require travel notices and some do. The banks that don’t: how are they finding out my travel plans when I buy the ticket using a different bank? Most likely their fraud algo is (or tries to be) smart enough to not need to track you.
How is sharing purchase info with banks within the bounds of the airline’s operational needs? The bank’s problem is not the airline’s problem.
(edit)
1: woah, slur filter did a silent hit-and-run on my post. The word “removed” should be some form of “complain” using a synonym that begins with a “b”.
The AI-driven fraud detection system is probably more accurate when the other transactions on the account support the questioned transaction. If there’s a bunch of transactions in a city/country you’ve never been to before, the fraud detection algorithm can come to two conclusions: either you have travelled there, or someone has cloned your card. If there’s a transaction showing you bought tickets to that city/country for the same dates that transactions happen within that city/country, that’s evidence to support one decision over the other on the algorithm’s part.
The prevention of crime and fraud is a valid exception to GDPR, and it being the bank’s problem entitles them to request the data from the airline/train company/whatever.
Like I said, I don’t agree with the quantity of data being shared here, but let’s face it, if you travel to another place and use your card there, then your bank are going to know you’re there. If you use your card to buy foreign currency, they’re going to know you’re going to that country. So as a general principle, I don’t think a travel company sharing the dates and destination really makes any difference.
That’s not the same bank that I bought my airfare with. The bank I use to buy the airfare with has no reason to know where I am. IIRC there’s a stat that on avg Americans have like ~15 or so different bank/credit cards. What you’re saying makes no sense. The airline takes the liberty of giving a travel notice to just one of your dozens of banks, and what about the rest?
I often buy a one-way ticket with one card and a one-way return with another. So not even one bank has the full picture. I typically leave those cards at home as well because they have poor forex rates. Yet this doesn’t trip fraud sensors on the cards I carry to the destination. The fraud sensors are tripped when I forget my ATM limit or incorrectly adjust that limit for the foreign currency.
One bank that requires a travel notice doesn’t even accept that a trip would last more than 2 weeks. I call and say I will be gone 3 weeks, or 4 weeks, and they cannot handle it. They say “the travel notice will expire in 2 weeks so you have to call again when that time comes to renew your travel notice”. What I tell them directly carries more weight than whatever shows up on the transactions because they have no way of knowing what other travel arrangements I have. Yet what I tell them is not fully utilized.
The other problem with your theory is travel notices are a recent development of the past ~10—20 years, whereas itineraries have been shared with banks for as long as I can recall (~25+ years). Anyway, speculation isn’t cutting it. Solid info needed on why this is happening.
I’m finding your hostility towards me to be completely unnecessary. Unless there is someone here that works for a bank, you’re not going to get a solid answer, only people’s best guesses. I have offered you the most likely explanation. Getting angry at me for that is not in keeping with the rules of the Beehaw community.
Reading this response, I’m compelled to ask
Do you want an answer or just a space to br angry and rant?
Do you have an answer in mind which you’re looking for and will react with hostility to anything which doesn’t fit with your expectations?
It’s all about getting an answer. Any rant that you think you sensed is at most an attempt to motivate a good answer.
I should also stress that I don’t want bad answers. The same broken speculation has been posted multiple times in this thread and in the parent. Thus compelling me to repeat the flaws in that bad answer.
I’m confident at this point that I finally got a viable answer: insurance. But I might be tempted to press for more details because it’s still unclear how the GDPR compliance pans out. GDPR violations are rampant these days, so it could lead to an article 77 complaint. I still have to do a bit of analysis on that from the insurance narrative.