>delivered anywhere close to your home, for instance to a shop
My experience in europe is, the shop on the internet requires you to tell
name and address.
In which case seller has enough data to surveil and profile you. If the item
is shipped to
a shop, where you then go fetching it, you may be able to use an incorrect
name and address,
because sometimes, when you fetch the item, you only have to tell a package
number.
>it does not help building a profile of your friend (like you pretend) but it
turns it harder to build a profile of your friend
If the shop uses surveillance and profiling software it will do profiling.
The profiling will be inaccurate because seller likely does not know he is
linking his data to the wrong
person. A persons profiling being inaccurate may be favorable or not for the
person in
question. It depends.
> practice generates noise in the data used to build the profile
Because seller does not know his data is not correct, he will act on the data
as if his profiling
is useful. The proxy person may experience disadvantages on that account.
Should the
inaccurate data have the effect you say, it would require seller to know his
data is inaccurate.
>buy from merchants they don't trust.
If well known shops in usa are reliable, it is nice. Even among well known
shops in europe, I
would rather not display that level of trust. Even more if I buy from a shop
located in
another country. If you have no purchase protection and seller decides to not
do what you
what him to do, you have two options. The court system. Slow, expensive if
you lose and
bureaucratic. Second option is filing a complaint at the consumer authority.
It is not
expensive. It is slow. Slower if it is a complaint about a seller located in
another country.
If you win, seller can choose not to comply.
A system like paypal's purchase protection is fast. If you win the complaint
you will get
your money.
>is going to take their money and run off
Paypal's purchase protection can be useful in cases, which are not about
crimes and
fraud too.
>PayPal's purchase protection is only necessary for people who you can't hold
accountable either because you can't identify them or because they operate in
some country that makes it impossible.
Disagreements may occur also about shops you would not expect to be a
problem.
> Ebay for example, it's very simple to just arrange to have the e-cash sent
to them and then route that through their own system which does have purchase
protection (in the case of ebay, that would incidentally be PayPal).
You say, you can get paypal's purchase protection without having a paypal
account?
>To an extent.
That is correct.
