Me. I'd been slowly weaning off credit cards due to the potential for purchase profiling and then two years ago Visa and MC both started in double-talking about selling "anonymized" purchase histories for online ad targeting -- as if you can anonymously target specific individuals.[1] That obvious prevarication was enough to convince me it was now open season on customer privacy so I cut my usage down to the bare minimum necessary to maintain one account for emergency use.
For me, $100 bills are the new credit card. I get a stack from the teller at my credit union about once every 6 months (careful to stay under the $10K mandatory government terrorist hysteria snitching limit[2]) and spend as necessary. It took a little getting used to, but it quickly became quite normal. I'm confident that my CU does not participate in any schemes to correlate serial numbers on bills with purchases. At least not any non-government schemes.
That is an unhelpful response. If you have more to add than what the wikipedia article spells out regarding reporting requirements for under $10K transactions, I would very much like to hear it.
Exactly this. Algorithms have moved well beyond a simple "> 10000", and banks are interested in enforcing this, since the penalties are very signficiant (vastly outweighing any profit to be made looking the other way), and the modern anti-terrorism/anti-money laundering treaties are fairly non-gamable (in that they set outcomes and high-level behavious which are expected, rather than giving a precise set of criteria and rules that can be gamed).
Unless regulations relax, there will be an ongoing profitable business for people who sell software that does behavioural analysis on compliance-related cash behaviours for the finance sector.
ARghh... my mother in law carries her money around in $100 bills. It's a total PITA. Cashiers have to call managers to make change, or they just say "I can't break that." $20 bills are much more convenient, if a bit bulkier.
I don't really give a damn about the ads. It is the database behind the ad targeting that I have a problem with.
Best case it is really no one's business where, when and how I spend my money. Worst case the info could be used to directly harm me, maybe through blackmail, maybe to enable some other crime against me or maybe even to falsely implicate me in a crime that I would then have to spend time and money to defend myself against in court.
As for the change - my credit union has a coin counter, I bring in a bucket of change, they give me dollar bills in return.
Me. I'd been slowly weaning off credit cards due to the potential for purchase profiling and then two years ago Visa and MC both started in double-talking about selling "anonymized" purchase histories for online ad targeting -- as if you can anonymously target specific individuals.[1] That obvious prevarication was enough to convince me it was now open season on customer privacy so I cut my usage down to the bare minimum necessary to maintain one account for emergency use.
For me, $100 bills are the new credit card. I get a stack from the teller at my credit union about once every 6 months (careful to stay under the $10K mandatory government terrorist hysteria snitching limit[2]) and spend as necessary. It took a little getting used to, but it quickly became quite normal. I'm confident that my CU does not participate in any schemes to correlate serial numbers on bills with purchases. At least not any non-government schemes.
[1] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405297020400230...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Secrecy_Act