How did they get your information. I don't give stores any persona information, unless I need to when buying online

Just pay cash

You obviously are opting in if they are sending you emails, even if you aren't realizing it.

How tf are they getting your email if you aren't giving it to them?

​

edit: interesting, I didn't think that was legal without individualized consent, but that must also mean you could possibly opt-out directly with square

I assume from my credit card, I've removed all preferences and data sharing on my CC but it still happens.

It sounds like their point of sales system collects your email somehow when you use your credit card. Likely the option to opt out is either not presented on the screen, OR it is there but difficult to see. It may be possible to go through your card company or bank, and see if there's a way to automatically restrict the release of your email when you make a transaction.

By paying with a credit card. That's it. I don't give my email, I don't ask for a receipt to be emailed. I just want my purchase T.T

The new Square registers that swivel even ask you if you want to opt into Newsletter emails and i always say no.

Square (and probably other POS systems) keeps a profile and attempts to associate all of your cards with them, which is shared across all merchants who use their system. If you opt in for one business (usually by asking for an email receipt), you're in for all of them.

As a customer who hates unsolicited email, it is supremely annoying.

As someone who helps with marketing for a small business, it's absolutely a super valuable tool. Seen very low unsubscribe rates too, so most customers seem to find it valuable as well.

Square has my email so I get emails from ANY merchant who uses square if I buy from them once. I always unclick “send me promotions” yet they send them anyway.

This is the worst. Would love to see something similar to the do not call registry for promotional emails.

Ugh, I think I'll start carrying cash again just to avoid this. Good idea!

You did probably opt in and just don't realize it. They are most likely using square or stripe and at some point you put in an email for an email receipt at a store. At which point you gave the payment processor permission to link your email to your credit card for all vendors that use them.

It's still shady and I would support a law that requires every store to individually obtain your permission but I suspect it will get pushback because getting email receipts is a common convenience for people.

That said, as a practical matter regardless of whether it's morally right for them to do it or not, I suggest making a junk email specifically for store purchases so all that garbage goes into one place.

They did not get it through the CC company or bank. 100% confident OP entered their email for something once and didn't realize they were linking the two because the payment processors (stripe and square are both guilty of this but stripe seems worse) was coy/misleadingon the POS screen that they were doing it.

Interesting. There could be a way to opt-out directly with Square?

As I said elsewhere, you did give your email, you just don't realize it. Probably at a different business using the same payment processor.

If you ever said yes to opt in even once at once store, even by mistake, or an unscrupulous or lazy store employee ticked the box for you when they swung it back around, it gave permission for all of them.

That said there is a way to tell square to fuck off and disallow it, but I don't remember what because I did it like 3 years ago.

I get a little upset when it's emails from a coffee store I went to once in Salem.

But then I also get updates on pretty decent deals from a dispensary I go to...

I'm guessing the whole "ok" was from one of those 100 page small print agreements you had to click while getting your credit card.

If you regular pay for things in cash, you are:

1. Risking getting that cash stolen
2. Risking losing that cash
3. Wasting everybody's time as transactions take longer
4. Losing out on cash back and other rewards that credit cards offer
5. Hindering your credit score
6. Forfeiting your ability to dispute any transactions
7. Lessening your ability to track expenses.

That already exists. It is illegal to email people promotional materials without their consent.

Edit: per the reply, it’s not actually illegal to email people without their specific opt-in. TIL

>As a customer who hates unsolicited email, it is supremely annoying.

Unless something has changed with both Square's product and the relevant email marketing laws, you are automatically opted in for transactional emails (receipts) but you are not opted in for marketing emails unless you specifically opt-in at each merchant. If a merchant is emailing you marketing material without the opt-in, they're likely breaking the law.

>That said there is a way to tell square to fuck off and disallow it, but I don't remember what because I did it like 3 years ago.

It's the unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email.

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worst financial advice ever....

1. If your debit card/credit gets stolen, you can shut it off. Cash gets stolen, you're shit out of luck.
2. You're paying with cash everywhere, but only have $20 bucks at any given time?
3. I didn't say my time is more valuable than yours. Our time is equal, which is why it would be awesome if you got up to speed in today's world and stopped slowing everyone down.
4. You don't understand how credit cards work. I earn $100s in cash back every year and pay absolutely $0 in interest and $0 in fees. If you pay your cards off on time every month, there is no interest and the cash back rewards are quite literally free money.
5. Using credit cards in the quickest and easiest way to build credit. Your a silly person if your prefer to do things the hard way.
6. Yeah I kind of stretched on this one. No one disputes in person transactions.
7. You'll know how much you spent in total, but won't know what you spend it on.

No but seriously, point number 4 is the biggest reason. It's free money. And no the interest doesn't outway it because there is no interest if you pay on time. And it much bigger than $0.02.

Only if you’re an innumerate moron

Why's that?

It's evident the general public has no idea how to properly use credit cards. Everyone has been brain washed into thinking they're bad.

Yes, credit cards can ruin your life because they're interest rates are so high you can get out of it.

But what if I told you you can have credit cards, make free money by taking advantage of their cash back rewards, and pay $0 in interest in fees? Does that sound crazy?

Well it's not! Just pay the balance in full everyone month and it'll never accrue interest. Don't use your credit cards to buy things you can't afford (basically treat it like and a debit card - if the cash isn't in your account, don't buy it).

So if you have a credit card that offers 2% cashback and you use it to buy everything you would normally buy (groceries, gas, everything) and you pay it off every month - you will essentially be paying 2% less on everything.

Why would you not take advantage of that?

Square won't show the email if you're not opted in. But it is possible to download the email list, so merchants might be grabbing it and then emailing through other tools, or re-uploading to Square as new customers.

I think they made a change so opting in is across their network, rather than per merchant.

Opting out of one also opted out of all at one point (I never get these), but they might have changed that too, wouldn't surprise me. I've definitely seen an increase in customers who are opted in.

This is too funny. You people are clueless about credit cards.

See my other comment here.

Spoiler alert: Wait until CBDC is rolled out in the US and see what happens to your privacy.

That's not really what the CAN-SPAM act says. See here

I agree with most of this but the "free money" is just a portion of the fees the credit card company is taking from the merchant which you're already paying for in higher costs.

I had this happen when I used my credit card at a local pub lately. The next day I started getting promotional emails. I found out from the pub that they scraped my email from the credit card receipt.

You should consider a burner email or 3 with a forward on it for signing up to stuff. That way you never give out your real email address.

Sign a petition on Change.org, immediately start receiving unwanted emails…

I had a cashier at DSW Downtown Boston get absolutely furious with me when I declined to give her my email address on a transaction I was paying for in cash. Went like this

Cashier: Ok, so you total is...

ME: Cash in hand

C: Can I get your email address?

M: I'm not part of the rewards program and I don't want to be

C: OK, can I get a phone number for you?

M: Why? Im paying in cash, I'm not looking for a discount, why do you need anything other than my payment from me.

C: Slams closed fist on counter, pushes the shoe box, takes a deep breath and says I am not doing this today. I said, I realize you probably get some type of incentive to do this but I'm sorry, my policy is this, if I'm paying for a service or a product, unless I volunteer my personal information you are NOT entitled to it. These stores need to stop putting their front-line workers on these data gathering quests, its so annoying.

Cashback programs are wonderful. Like free money from the sky. Where does it come from? The consumer pays 3% higher cost in product so the merchant can pay the CC fee. CC gives you 2% (keeps 1%) and the world rejoices. ... Its already your money and now you paint it as the reason to use a CC instead of cash. Your own first line says it all.

"It's evident the general public has no idea how to properly use credit cards."

Since most people carry balances they pay 15%+ to borrow short term...months or years. Therefore it is better for people to pay in cash for most expenses. Debit card is a better deal overall for what most people that don't want to carry around a lot of cash. You can build a a credit history through a bunch of other ways without needing a CC.

sorry your argument is flawed.

Just mark them all as spam instantly and when enough do this their emails automatically get caught in spam filters

It’s the management pressuring cashiers to gather the info. Don’t blame the cashier. It’s incentivized. They are evaluated for their annual raise based on this.

And dealing with public facing jobs is brutal.

Short staffed.

Dead end job.

And everyone has bad days too.

Lol, my favorite is when they don't even ask if they can have that info, they just straight up say, "Phone number?" I'm buying a pair of shoes. My phone number is not necessary for this transaction. And if it is, please let me know so I never shop here again.

This actually done on the payment processor level. A lot of times if you use a card and enter an email address for one location if another merchant also uses that payment processor, if you use the same card, they will have the email address tied to it.

Currently this is legal everywhere.

Source: I work in e-commerce, specifically dealing with support on payments, and this is a topic myself and the team has gone over a bit.

I believe it's illegal currently in Europe and California to automatically be opted in to marketing subscriptions - so if you did really want to push for it you could figure out the Cali law and see if we could get something passed like that here. California has pretty decent consumer protection stuff on the books even though I think they go a bit overboard sometimes.

I know, thats why I said to the cashier "I realize you probably get some type of incentive to do this".

Thank you for this post! I have not yet signed up for ANY emailed receipts but i Have considered it -- reading this info i am gonna continue to NOT get any receipts emailed. TY!!

I’m having one of those Mandala effect moments. I know I’ve seen FTC pages explaining how opt-in was required and yet…you’re right. I also found an FTC page saying specifically that opt-in isn’t required but honoring opt-out is required.

It's incredibly annoying. I am constantly unsubscribing from unwanted emails. The thing is, I don't want my credit card to have a fake email address. That's the only way to avoid this if they are scaping info from your card.

Also, I'm in Square. Nice to know that is leading to a lot of these emails as well.

Well.

This was pleasant.

Have a good day.

“Idiocracy” is coming at us so fast and furious we don’t even know it.

Brawndo. It’s what plants love.

The low unsubscribe rate is probably because it just goes to the spam folder.

I still blame the cashier.

There is definitely a lot of that. If you mark one Square merchant as spam the rest get marked as well. Had a bunch of people trying to resubscribe through our website that were already on our list, and they were all going to spam when we reached out.

We try to do a good job of sending infrequently and only with important updates, so I think that helps a lot too.

so you pay the 3% credit card fee in that it is built in to the price of the goods and services no matter if you pay cash or credit so I choose to pay with credit and get 2% back thus only having to pay 1% of the fee while cash users pay the whole 3%.

would using Apple pay cut the tie of the profile to cards as I think the "card" apple pay gives is a one time use.

It's got electrolytes

Yeah, but note CASL in Canada and GDPR in the EU do require opt-in (and in Europe that can't be a pre-checked consent box). This leads providers to try and implement something that meets requirements across all the jurisdictions they support.

Now I would argue unchecking a "send me promotional email" box is the same as opting-out and is in violation of CAN-SPAM, but I'm not a lawyer, so I just enjoy reporting as spam knowing that I'm tanking their deliverability :)

Nope. It's not one time use, but it does hide your card number, which is useful for security (I think all tap to pay transactions do this).

Square will still be able to associate it with your profile if you opt into email/sms receipt like any physical card.

More environmentally friendly than paper.

Right.

And if you pay in cash you pay for those higher prices without getting the cash back.

If you use cash, you are paying for the 3% credit card charge anyways.

Best to use a credit card that your being charged extra for and get the cash back.

Your argument is flawed.

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Tell me why it isn't valid.

curious why you care so much? just report it as spam or unsubscribe. it takes less time to do that then it does to make this post, lol.

This is part of the reasoning why products have the 3% kick into them. You feel free to feed the monster. My argument is sound. I'll do what I do and recommend the same to others.

It is a free country after all.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Anonaddy and simplelogin are your friends

It takes 5-10 seconds per email/business.

I've done it for years now. It never used to be the norm, but it is now. Just annoying and sad that it's expected I guess.

It used to be very specific, open up an account at Macy's to make a purchase? Get promotional emails.

Now I see instances where even if I Google a business or walk into their store, I'm likely to get emails from them.

> promotional emails. Now I see

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