Paypal has announced (quietly) that they will begin sharing your personal shopping information with merchants, including your products, preferences, sizes, and styles. To opt-out of this egregious invasion of your privacy you must opt-out before November 27, 2024. Here’s how to opt out.
First, the gotcha: buried mid-way down on their ‘updates to Paypal polices‘ page they explain “The key update to the Privacy Statement explains how we will share information with merchants to personalize your shopping experience and recommend our services to you. Personal information we disclose includes, for example, products, preferences, sizes, and styles we think you’ll like. Information gathered about you after the effective date of our updated Privacy Statement, November 27, 2024, will be shared with participating stores where you shop, unless you live in California, North Dakota, or Vermont.” The reason they say “unless you live in California, North Dakota, or Vermont” is because those three states care more about their citizens’ privacy than do the other 47 states.
On the full Privacy Policy page, which is bizarrely dated November 27, 2024, even though we are writing this on October 15, 2024, they say they will use your personal information to:
“Develop product recommendations: We may use insights from purchases and other behaviors on our and our Partner or Merchant websites or apps to develop product recommendations about products, brands, sizes, preferences and styles that we provide to our Partners and Merchants so that they can recommend relevant products to you.
Take a moment to parse this slowlly and think about it carefully.
The Internet Patrol is completely free, and we don't subject you to ads or annoying video pop-ups. But it does cost us out of our pocket to keep the site going (going on 20 years now!) So your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are VERY appreciated! Receipts will come from ISIPP.
CashApp us
Venmo us
Paypal us
This is saying that you are giving Paypal permission to scrape what you have purchased at, for example, REI, and share that information with Eddie Bauer, so that Eddie Bauer can serve you ads for or recommend wool socks for those boots that you purchased at REI.
Actually, it’s worse than that. It’s not actually saying that you are giving permission to Paypal to do that, it’s saying that you are not withdrawing permission to do that.
That’s right, Paypal is actually pre-opting you in whether you know about it or not*, unless you take specific action to withdraw your consent (the consent that you never gave in the first place).
*And of course you won’t know about it unless you thoroughly read the email you got from Paypal (if you received it), and went to the site to read through all of the fine print. Or unless you are reading this (which you are),or heard about it elsewhere.
So, here’s how to opt out.
How to Opt Out of Paypal Sharing Your Shopping Info with Other Merchants
First, make sure that you are already logged in to your Paypal account
Next, go to this link:
https://www.paypal.com/myaccount/privacy/settings/recommendations
This will take you to a page where you will see this:
Notice that, of course, the “Let us share” button is set to ‘on’.
Slide it to the ‘off’ position.
Be sure to check on this every so often, as these things tend to somehow, mysteriously revert to whatever position is most advantageous to the service, not you.
The Internet Patrol is completely free, and we don't subject you to ads or annoying video pop-ups. But it does cost us out of our pocket to keep the site going (going on 20 years now!) So your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are appreciated!
Receipts will come from ISIPP.
CashApp us
Venmo us
Paypal us
