Guarding personally identifiable information

Posted Jun 19, 2017 12:07 UTC (Mon) by hummassa (subscriber, #307)
In reply to: Guarding personally identifiable information by nybble41
Parent article: Guarding personally identifiable information

Actually, you are making my point: merchants and targeted advertised HAVE access to the credit cards database, being it the original financial ones or some database they can collect along the way.

Guarding personally identifiable information

Posted Jun 19, 2017 15:01 UTC (Mon) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> merchants and targeted advertised HAVE access to the credit cards database

Agreed, but the point still stands. You can't get anyone's shopping habits or location from just a credit card number. When combined with additional information, sure, but not from the number alone. It's not the number itself which is personal, but rather the web of connections linking the number to other (likewise individually non-personal) pieces of data.