Don’t use PayPal this Christmas
PayPal is the world’s most popular online payment service, but it’s no longer the most trustworthy. Robert Irvine explains what’s changed and what to use instead
Why you should stop using PayPal
PayPal shares your data with third parties
In July, PayPal updated its privacy policy in the UK to permit ‘merchants’ to “share customer personal information provided to them by PayPal with their service providers” (www.snipca. com/52855). This means any business that uses PayPal to process payments can now pass your data to third parties, such as advertising and marketing companies, who can then target you with personalised ads and ‘offers’.
Under GDPR rules, which since Brexit have been enforced by the Data Protection Act 2018, companies must allow you to opt out of data sharing. However, PayPal chose to inform users of the policy update through the Message Centre of their accounts, rather than by email, which meant many people missed the announcement.
PayPal now opts you into two types of interest-based marketing
Shockingly, the new data-sharing settings are enabled by default, so to protect your privacy you’ll need to disable them manually. To do so, log into your
PayPal account, click the Settings cog in the top-right corner and select ‘Data & Privacy’. Click ‘Interest-based marketing’ and you’ll see two options (see screenshot below left).