> Anyway, I wonder if there is any protection built-in that prevents the exchange from looking you up on linked-in and associating your salary information with

> Anyway, I wonder if there is any protection built-in that prevents the exchange from looking you up on linked-in and associating your salary information with your job, then selling the data. The same exact problem exists with BitCoin or any other cryptocurrency where you need to pay an exchange money directly (through some method). Most exchanges require you provide government-issued ID (due to the laws in most countries having strict requirements about financial businesses having to know who they are trading with). However, the really clever aspect of Taler is that the privacy is geared towards consumers and not businesses. You have to buy your tokens (as before) from an exchange that might ask for your identity, but after that the tokens can no longer be correlated -- they look completely unrelated to businesses and other users -- which means that correlation-by-credit-card is no longer feasible. In BitCoin, you can in theory correlate transactions made by a given person.