PayPal's New Data Sharing Policy: What You Need to Know and How to Opt Out
If you're a PayPal user, there's an important change coming to how your personal data will be handled starting in November 2024. PayPal is updating its Privacy Statement, which could have a big impact on your shopping privacy. Here's what’s happening, why it matters, and how you can take control of your information.
What’s Changing?
Beginning on November 27, 2024, PayPal will automatically start sharing certain personal information about you with merchants to create a more "personalized shopping experience." This means details like your product preferences, sizes, and styles might be shared with the stores you shop at using PayPal. This is part of PayPal's push to help stores show you products, offers, and rewards that they think you’ll like.
Why Should You Care?
While PayPal presents this as a way to improve your shopping experience, it also means more of your personal information is being shared—by default. For many people, this raises privacy concerns. Even if you're comfortable with a personalized shopping experience, you might not want your data shared automatically with every merchant PayPal partners with.
Additionally, these changes vary based on where you live. If you're in California, North Dakota, or Vermont, you're in luck—PayPal won’t share your data unless you specifically opt-in. But for everyone else, data sharing is turned on by default unless you actively go into your settings to turn it off.
How to Opt Out
Thankfully, you have the option to stop this data sharing if you don’t want PayPal sharing your shopping history with merchants. It’s easy to do:
- Log in to your PayPal account.
- Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner (this is your settings menu).
- Go to the “Data & Privacy” section.
- Find the section labeled “Manage shared info” and click on it.
- Look for the option called “Personalized Shopping.” There you’ll find a toggle switch—turn it off to opt out of sharing your personal shopping data.
Take Action Before November 27, 2024
If you don’t want PayPal sharing your data, you’ll need to make this change before November 27, 2024. After that date, any information collected will be shared unless you’ve opted out.
Stay Informed
PayPal did notify users about this change through emails, but like most of us, it’s easy to overlook these messages. The good news is that you can still take control of your data. If privacy is important to you, taking a few minutes to adjust your PayPal settings is a good move.
To sum it up: PayPal’s new policy will automatically share your personal shopping information with merchants starting November 2024. If you don’t want that, make sure to opt out by adjusting your settings in your PayPal account.
Stay informed, stay in control, and shop smart!
