Is this true?

[Tessa K]

This was on a bus stop in Camden. Is the part about medical records true?

[WFJ]

No

[TimW]

It doesn't say who can do it.

It's theoretically possible, given the necessary data, does that make it a Yes?

[IvanV]

An attempt to work out who might be behind this turns up a Facebook group campaigning on the issue. No proof it was people connected to the poster in Camden, but it's the only visible campaigning group I have found. The founder of the Facebook group is an ice cream man from Leicester called Gez Varney, who is also behind a registered charity called Community Wishes.

I rather suspected I'd turn up some kind of political connections, given the conspiracy theory type suggestions of cards being linked to medical records. So maybe it is just a one issue campaign. Personally I think traders should be required to accept cash, for smaller transaction sizes. Because there are people who find it difficult to get suitably banked in our socially divided society. But the misinformation about cards being linked to medical records suggests that the campaigners include people with strange ideas, rather than being focused on a bona fide social aim.

The Community Wishes charity looks a little odd. It fulfills people's "wishes", as selected by the trustees. They seem to be sentimental wishes (eg no 99 was getting a new horse for a girl whose horse fell and died) rather than helping the needy. According to the Charity Commission, it was registered as a charity in mid 2022, so there are no data returned yet. But the webpage shows charitable "wishes" only up to number 100 which was in late 2021. And there is this odd "Book a Holiday" link on the webpage.

[Tessa K]

Why would linking to medical records cause a transaction to be denied? It makes no sense. No, you can't buy a pack of chocolate digestives, you're diabetic.

[IvanV]

Why would linking to medical records cause a transaction to be denied? It makes no sense. No, you can't buy a pack of chocolate digestives, you're diabetic.

I would guess it is more about denial of credit. I can imagine a conspiracy theory that recent increases in the frequency of denial of credit might arise because they have been snooping at people's medical records.

From an actuarial perspective, the health of a person is potentially relevant to the willingness of a bank, etc, to give a person credit. No, you can't go overdrawn, or by no more than X, because there's too much risk of you becoming unable to work/dropping dead and being unable to pay it off.

Banks, etc, have been less willing to give people credit of late, because available credit has got a bit tighter. That is about bank's assets reducing in value, so they have less headroom to give credit. Then there's a greater tendency for more people to spend beyond their incomes in the cost of living situation, the economy lacking buoyancy, etc. The pack of digestives becomes relevant when it's the purchase that takes you past a particular credit line that they don't want to let you go past.

[TimW]

Given that it's a load of bollocks, the only defence is that it doesn't causally connect any of the things it claims. It just says "and".

Any card transaction can be denied. Just not because of any reason to do with data linkage.