There’s no business like your business. With the extreme rise in popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn, living in a virtual glass house is quickly becoming the norm for a lot of people. Most who use these sites know to at least proceed with caution. After all, you really never know who may be watching you.
Now there’s one site that aims to help you air even more of your dirty laundry for the world-at-large to see: Blippy.com.
Who the hell comes up with the names for these sites, anyway?
Blippy (which I can only assume is named for the electronic “blip” card machines make when you charge to them) is basically Twitter for your credit cards. Just another way to drag up personal and mundane details about your life for anyone browsing to see. It’s certainly an interesting concept, as seeing what a person spends their money on can tell you more about them than whatever song lyric they decide to post on Facebook.
How it works
Similar to Twitter, you sign up for the service, then start amassing an army of followers, and following other people in kind. You’re then given the option of linking information from your online purchases from sites and services like iTunes, Netflix, eBay, and Amazon. Once you’ve done that, whenever you buy something from any of the sites you linked to, your purchase information is posted for all to see, whether they’re following you or not.
So whenever I rent a movie from Netflix, win a bid on eBay, or buy a new album or song on iTunes, anyone can see what I got, and how much I paid for it. Thankfully, you have the option to review each transaction before it’s posted, so any purchases from behind the black curtain at a video store can be kept hidden.
Why you might wanna rethink signing up
Besides listing your Amazon purchases, Blippy also gives you the option to link to your credit and debit card information, so you can post virtually anything you charge to a card online. While I can think of a couple of possible ways this could work in your favor (“I swear honey, I DIDN’T blow our savings in Vegas, and I can prove it!”), I’m still a little wary of making that much information public knowledge.
Last month, Blippy was tracking over $2 million in user transactions each week, so either a lot of people are onboard and I’m just being paranoid, or people are spending a LOT of money on eBay purchases these days. Still, with news that a few members accidently had their credit card numbers cached in Google, anyone thinking about sharing this much personal information about themselves may want to stick to posting what they did with their kids at Disneyland, not how much they spent there.
Got a Blippy account? Let us know what you think of the service, and whether or not you’d post your purchases online.
My closing thoughts.
As a credit repair company that deals with thousands and thousands of identity theft victims, I don't like this. I see red flags everywhere. I'm not saying its bad, but something about this makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable.
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