I've been using cash for many years, near solely. Only time I use credit cards is for large ticket items of a mundane nature or where there is no alternative. I generally don't discuss why, but I'll toss it out there.
My concern was database trolling. Folks always love predictive indexes or other shortcuts, that crap out metric tons of false positives but people still love for some gods forsaken reason. I worked on some years ago, and never really liked them but imagined they'd become very popular. Which did happen, the new crap IT overhyped mess is "big data", even overshadowing the crap IT term of "cloud". My concern when I started wasn't what was happening then, but what could happen in the future. Not much good if you suddenly stop (actually, that might be considered a flag). So, I took a low footprint approach, betting that people don't do their homework, managers are lazy and folks impressed by shiny. So, I bet crap like predictive indexes for intel or counterintel purposes would become popular because it requires little work (just db feeds), looks shiny and the false positive problem would be overlooked.
While AFAIK, it has not been applied to domestic credit card data, it might someday. Or it might fall into the wrong hands. Or dozens of other hypothetical situations. Again, the problem is, you don't have to be doing anything wrong to look guilty, and all too often we have a guilty until proven innocent environment, even if just in the realm of public opinion or perception.
