Prepaid/Gift Card Nubie Discovery?
I've always been an advocate of privacy in business for the last 20 years to a certain degree in areas other than and including eb/az/e-commerce, etc. A couple of months ago, I was on my way to a colleague's birthday party and didn't have a gift and stopped in my local supermarket and bought a $100 gift card to a well known eating establishment and a card. I paid cash for both items at checkout and off I went to the party.
The next day when I logged into my home pc (located in the same zip code as the store I bought and activated the card), there were ads for this specific eating establishment all over my computer. Strange I thought. Same thing with my smartphone...which I happened to have in my pocket when at the store making the purchase. This really peaked my interest and got me thinking.
Could this happen with any prepaid CC/debit/gift cards? They have to be activated at the point of sale in the store. There has to be some record of the location the card was activated at. Would it have any bearing for stealth purposes, for example, if the card was bought and activated in..say, Chicago...and then registered to a stealth address in Denver for example.
Any way there could be a link somewhere upstream to cause difficulties/redflags with PP?
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