Google has been in the business of saving information for years now. The company saves user data such as search queries, Gmail messages, and YouTube videos. Google also saves credit card information. The company saves credit card numbers and expiration dates in a secure database. This database is accessible only by employees who need to process payments. Google says it never sells or shares customer data. The company also says it never stores credit card numbers on its servers in plaintext format. ..
The database file is not encrypted, so anyone who has access to Google’s servers can read the credit card numbers and expiration dates. Some people have reported that they were able to delete the records from Google’s database just by going to Google or Google Wallet, typing in the right search term, and clicking through until they got to a screen where they could delete their info. You can try searching for terms like ‘delete google wallet’ which sometimes returns a page with Google Wallet’s help article about deleting Google Wallet info.
There are several reports on Ask MetaFilter with more details:
2 recent threads about Google saving your credit cards, and one has a Google employee claiming they’re going to fix the problem soon.There are several Google Wallet help articles with instructions on deleting Google Wallet info:http://support.google.com/wallet/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=595503 (the answer is not clear)
You can also try Google’s “account search” or Google Wallet’s “where is my order information” feature to look for records of where Google has stored your cc info (usually in some state you don’t live in). If you find an entry under a different name than yours, you know someone else has used Google’s system to save their own cc info. Google responds to account removal requests within 48 hours. Google’s “account search” is at: https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/#search_results and Google Wallet’s “where is my order information” feature is at: https://wallet.google.com/manage/#orders .
You can also try Google’s “edit info” page for the CC entry, which asks you for your phone number (probably just for validation) but then Google may or may not give you edit access to that CC record in Google Wallet; sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t seem to care about it; this technique has yet to be thoroughly tested by anyone so far as I know. Google will probably change the Google Wallet site to require Google+ or Google login in the next year. Google’s “edit info” page for billing address is at: https://wallet.google.com/manage/#cc . Google will probably not delete these records because they might be sued by individuals and regulators for violating privacy laws (there are US and European laws that protect your credit card info and Google does not comply with them).
