There’s nothing like a little data security breach to get people chatting about new services that tap into credit card purchases, and how they keep your data safe.  We’re certainly not here to point fingers at anyone else, and Blippy seems to have responded swiftly to handle the issue.

Every one of these services (like Mint.com, Blippy, and yes – even Offermatic) wax poetic about how safe & secure their system is, but don’t just take their (or our) word for it.  See how their system really works before you give them (or us) the keys to your data.  Different services that different ways of handling your data.  Make sure they explain it in plain english, not a bunch of techno babble.

In our case, our method for anonymously monitoring your card purchases is through the login credentials you provide us to the online account for your card.  This is the username/password combination you use to login to your credit or debit card account online.  We use these credentials to securely connect to your card issuer to download your transactions.  This provides us read only anonymous access to your debit or credit card transactions.

Most banks don’t display or show the card number in their online statements, so in the vast majority cases we won’t have access to your actual card number (and we prefer it that way).  If you notice, when you login to view your account statement online – you’ll typically only see the last four digits of your account number – not the entire number.  If the bank actually displays the card number as part of the online statement, we strip the card number from the raw data and do not store it.

So in our case, it’s the login credentials for your online credit or debit card account that you want to be sure are handled properly – and they key thing to know about that is we don’t store them on our (Offermatic) servers.  Our data partner, Yodlee, stores them on their servers using both hardware and software encryption.  Yodlee’s platform is used by top financial institutions and millions of consumers, and they’ve spent tens of millions of dollars building a secure infrastructure – so we pay them to securely store our users login credentials.  Here’s how your data is protected when you use Offermatic.

Further, unlike services like Blippy – there is absolutely no “sharing” of data between users on Offermatic.  If you want to tell the world (or just your friends) what you’re buying, sign up for Blippy or another service like it.  We don’t do data sharing, and don’t plan to either.  It ain’t our thing.  That alone eliminates one of the biggest risk factors involved in keeping data secure.

We like to keep things simple.  Our goal is simply to use your anonymous purchase data to put more money in your pocket, by saving money and earning it.  It may not be as sexy as broadcasting to the world that you just bought diapers online – but that’s fine with us.