-> The actual purchases should not show up on credit bureau (TRW, etc)
-> reports. Only the range of dollar amounts and prompness ao payment.
->
-> Hmmn.  If that's all they're getting, I'm not quite sure why they'd
-> want to bother checking the reports in the first case. Any of the
-> spooks here care to comment on just what the they could deduce from
-> such information?
Credit card companies *do* classify types of merchants.  One year,
I got a summary on my last statement of the year that showed how much
I spent at each 'type' of store/merchant.
Also, stores that scan UPC codes, such as grocery stores, and whose
credit card machines are tied into the cash register, also tie the UPC
codes of your purchases to the credit card account number in a
store-owned database. Kroger does this, as testified to by programmers
who work for Kroger corporate headquarters. Kroger then sells this
information to direct marketers.
Also, stores that offer you a special kind of
rebate/discount/membership/check-cashing card do the same thing. So if
you pay by check, and they run your check-cashing card through the
register, they make the link with the UPC codes to your account.
Even if you pay by cash, but you present the membership card to get a
"special bonus" based on the amount of purchases, the same tie-in is
made.  The rebates or bonuses are the carrot to get you to use the
membership card.  This has two purposes.  One, to get you to do all your
shopping at that store to get the maximum discount/bonus.  And, two, to
build a database of what each "member" buys.
The credit card companies charge big fees to merchants for using credit
cards.  One of the carrots to get the merchants to use the
UPC-to-credit-card-account tie-in, is to offer the merchants discounts
on the credit-card transaction fees if the merchants report the UPC
codes that each credit-card holder buys.  All this can be done
automatically at the cash registers.  It doesn't have to be done during
the phone call to verify the credit-card.  It is just stored in store's
computer to which the cash registers are linked.
Even in small gun stores that don't scan UPC codes, the credit card
company still knows, or can know, that the store is a gun store.
So the gun-purchase information may not be transmitted all the way to
TRW.  But somewhere in Visa/Mastercard/Discover's computers, is a record
that John Doe spent $700 at "Frank's Guns" on MM/DD/YY.
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