This treasure-trove of data has been producing quite a lot of drool at the C* level in major banks for quite some time.<p>Some are going with "its for the greater good and the children!": <a href="http://fortune.com/2015/05/21/jp-morgan-chase-big-data/" rel="nofollow">http://fortune.com/2015/05/21/jp-morgan-chase-big-data/</a><p>Some are being choosey with who they share with: <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/02/06/banks-using-big-data-to-discover-new-silk-roads/" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/02/06/banks-using-big-data-to-...</a><p>While others just blatantly hide behind a ToS: <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/provider-of-personal-finance-tools-tracks-bank-cards-sells-data-to-investors-1438914620" rel="nofollow">http://www.wsj.com/articles/provider-of-personal-finance-too...</a><p>Next time you're on any PFM-related site thinking "your transactions are secured with bank level encryption" means anything, think twice and take another look at who you're giving your transactional data to.
I'm only surprised they managed to get a good data source. MasterCard has been trying to sell prediction services while keeping their data internal. AmEx is likely to follow soon if they haven't already. This'll get really good once it is merged with cell carrier data -- what you buy, when, and where. Last I checked, the carriers were also trying to monetize while keeping the data "anonymized". Where you live, work, and hang out. Which allows inference of hobbies, who your friends are... Utopia!<p>It took some searching, but I found AT&T's location information services. Not sure exactly what this provides, but it seems to be selling your location, so we can provide timely offers when you're walking past your favorite store.<p><a href="https://www.wireless.att.com/businesscenter/solutions/mobile-marketing/products/location-information-services.jsp" rel="nofollow">https://www.wireless.att.com/businesscenter/solutions/mobile...</a>
The underlying data source for Second Measure is Yodlee. You can see a history of their data sales here:<p><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/provider-of-personal-finance-tools-tracks-bank-cards-sells-data-to-investors-1438914620" rel="nofollow">http://www.wsj.com/articles/provider-of-personal-finance-too...</a>
I think it was an A16Z podcast that touched on this recently.<p>Basically the issue is banks have a ton of data and would love to reap the rewards of the data of all the other banks for risk modeling, selling it, and other fun things, but nobody wants to give up their data asset.<p>Enter a middleman and suddenly all of these companies can provide anonymized data and wipe their hands of it while reaping the rewards of the output.<p>Something similar happened in the ad space with regards to cookie onboarding services like Liveramp.
Isn't this illegal? Capital One analysts did the same thing and got fined by the SEC for it:<p><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-22/capital-one-workers-accused-of-trading-on-what-s-in-your-wallet" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-22/capital-on...</a><p><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-capitalone-insidertrading-idUSKCN0UR2KR20160114" rel="nofollow">http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sec-capitalone-insidertrad...</a>
>Due to strict confidentiality agreements, Second Measure can’t say exactly where it receives its data from, but says it works with a massive quantity of anonymized consumer spending data, and that this data makes up a representative selection of 2-3% of all credit card transactions.<p>Well... any likely guesses? Are MC, Visa, Banks annonymizing their data and selling it off?
Are these the same two people who got fired from Capital One's Fraud Department because while working there they were using the Capital One database to make investment decisions?<p>Edit: nevermind, looks like it was these two: <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-22/capital-one-workers-accused-of-trading-on-what-s-in-your-wallet" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-22/capital-on...</a><p>Seems like these two should have been offered a promotion in Captial One's portfolio management division instead!