Paid with a credit card and now I am paranoid about privacy — looking for input

TrialTracker_MD said:

The useful move here is to separate what is established from what is widely repeated.

Filing a mild objection. Mild because I might be wrong; an objection because nobody has addressed the case that does not fit. I think the framing smuggles in the conclusion. Ask it the other way round and the obvious answer reverses, which usually means the question is doing the work.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. Practical: whatever you change, write down the date and the reason. In three months the reason is what you will have forgotten, and the reason is what makes the record worth having.

DataDave said:

I think the framing smuggles in the conclusion.

There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. Worth answering the question that was asked rather than the one behind it. The narrow version usually has an answer; the broad version usually does not, and answering the broad one is how a thread stops being useful.

A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:

How would you tell the difference between that and the alternative explanation?

OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.

For the archive: it took about six weeks rather than the two I expected, and the difference between those two numbers was the whole of my problem.