Personal Finance & Money Asked on March 7, 2021
A colleague told me he cancels his payment account every few years and opens a new one for better privacy. He says the IBAN and various other related info should be known to as few people as possible. With each payment, this information is sent to companies (who have invoiced me).
Is it worth such a high effort? Does it provide a privacy benefit?
The question Is it really risky to make your IBAN public? is about security aka not loose money. I am more interested in privacy related stuff like data collections of various private companies (big data mining etc)
It doesn't provide any material benefit. It is more private, but excessive. When thinking about the "attack surface" you have to think in terms of the government and private hackers and potentially jealous people.
The government already has a way to know your entire balance and what vendors you have interacted with, by mere nature of ever owning a bank account at all.
Private hackers cannot do anything with just an IBAN number, but this varies by country and institution.
Potentially jealous people don't have the data from all vendors. In the event of a data leak any large payment will get their attention anyway. So it is pointless to try to further segregate all the vendors across accounts.
I would say this one is not worth the effort it entails, as the utility is minimal.
Answered by CQM on March 7, 2021
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