What is it to do with Google?

[NPMR]

I am always VERY wary of the Internet and worry about who is out 'there' snooping on my PC.

This morning, I received an email from "Google Checkout" asking how a transaction went, that I had carried out to buy an masthead lamp recently.

I used Google to find the supplier.

My concern is, how did they know I actually carried out a transaction? And also, what is it to do with them how good or bad the supplier is unless they're going to take responsibility for the quality.

It concerns me that this is more 'Big Brotheritis'.

Has anyone else experienced this? I will not respond to Google but is it worth looking into further? Or is life too short?

 

[DavenHelen]

AFAIK, Google Checkout is now another payment method like PayPal and Credit Card. Did the site you bought from use it?

 

[NPMR]

No, I went direct - Google was used to 'find' the supplier again, as I already knew about them.

 

[BrendanS]

who is the supplier? you can pm me if you want. Google won't have know about the transaction unless you used in some form, their service. You may not have actually been aware that you used it,. but just about all online stores use third party billing of some sort

 

[NPMR]

Thanks, I'll PM you.

Thinking about it further, I think it was this site that I saw a little 'red eye' symbol pop up at the bottom of the screen which when I hovered the mouse over it came up with message 'privacy report'. I do not know what this refers to - but could it be this?

 

[BrendanS]

As per my pm to you. All is totally above board, and totally safe. The message from google was a customer courtesy email to check the trader was providing a satisfactory service using the google checkout system (they want to check that no rogue traders are using their payment system and not deliverying goods) and you did use the google checkout system to purchase, as that is the only online card purchasing option you would have had.


So good on Google for checking that traders using their payment system are actually delivering satisfactory service.