As things stand, data belonging to PayPal users will “quietly” (that is, without their knowledge or consent) start to be used by third parties.
Reports explain that this “secret opt-in” is explained in the settings for the personalized shopping page. Those who happened to make it to that page could learn that this more “personalized experience” can be opted out of.
The plan is to start data “sharing” in the early summer of next year, and at one point, the same page said that after this November, PayPal will be using information collected about users to “personalize your shopping.”
However, 404 Media says this line was gone after they contacted PayPal on Monday.
As of Tuesday, the situation around transparency remained the same – the only way for users to find out what’s coming is to (unprompted) come across the page, where they can opt out of allowing PayPal to share “products, offers, and rewards you might like with participating stores (aka, third parties).”
Both old and brand new accounts behaved the same, that is, defaulted to opt-in, the publication said, citing its own tests.
Another interesting new feature on PayPal is the privacy statement – both its updated content, and the fact the newest version has a different URL than the existing one, which users get if they click on “privacy statement” from other pages on the site.
Where this meets the “personalized shopping” of it all is PayPal declaring examples of what users’ personal information will be “shared”: products, preferences, sizes, and, “styles we think you’ll like.”
This shows that PayPal has (or is “optimizing” third parties’ “shopping experience” too – by selling them on the idea it does) access to very detailed personal data that enables such targeting.
And unless expressly required so by law, this version of the privacy statement said, this is opt-in (originally, the date was after November 27).
What opting-out gets users is PayPal continuing to disclose their personal information “as necessary to complete transactions you initiate, but will not disclose personal information to partners and merchant for personalized shopping experiences.”
The data that does reach partners and merchants is then at the mercy of their own individual privacy policies.
As of Tuesday, PayPal had no answer to 404 Media’s question whether customers would be “directly notified before November 27 that the company plans to share their data with third-party partners and merchants, and what happens to users’ data if they opt out after that date.”
Looks like PayPal is literally and figuratively banking on users addicted to “convenience” and, on them rather than not knowing how “the convenience sausage” gets made.
