Credit card transactions are enough to identify card holders
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028605
Nature : Metadata collected from credit card transactions has provided much useful information to researchers, businesses, and others interested in consumer spending, economic trends, and so forth. To protect the card holders’ identities, their name, address, credit card number, and other information directly linked to them are deleted. However, according to a study published in Science, even without that information, card holders can still be identified. The researchers looked at three months of credit card records for some 1 million people and were able to identify 90% of them just by knowing the date and location of four of their transactions. Although complete anonymity may be impossible in this modern age, progress is being made in creating legislation to protect consumers.
