The Core

Some tools companies use to protect privacy are not as secure as they sound, like aggregation and anonymization. A 2015 MIT study found this was the case with anonymized credit card data. Using an anonymized data set of more than 1 million people’s credit card transactions made over 3 months, MIT researchers could identify an individual 90% of the time using the transaction information of just 4 purchases.

What countries and jurisdictions does My Data support?

At present, only those Mastercard platforms, products and services which process data about individuals located in the states of California, Colorado, Connecticut and Virginia (United States), Canada, South Africa, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Japan, Brazil, and the European Economic Area ("EEA") UK or Switzerland, or operate in the context of an establishment in an EEA country or Switzerland are in scope of My Data. For example, if a Mastercard product or service is not available in one of the regions mentioned above, we would not be able to retrieve your personal information from Mastercard’s databases through My Data.

I opened my View data request, but received a message that there were no matching results found for me. What does this mean?

This is because we did not find matching data in the scope of our search, based on the search keys you have provided to us. This may be due to the fact that you have not entered sufficient data for us to identify you in our systems (see question “How much information do you need to search for my data? ”), or that you have never registered with any of our platforms or programs, or we have deleted your personal information in compliance with our retention policies. Please also refer to: Apart from transaction data, are there other types of personal information I may not be able to access? Importantly, in various instances, Mastercard is a ‘data processor’ or ‘service provider’ acting on behalf of its customers, such as financial institutions. In such cases, you may have to reach out to your financial institution directly to have access to your personal information, as explained under: I’m looking for my transaction data. How can I get it?