> Regardless of the stupidity, that's still a pretty poor outcome. I assume the same applies if you were shoulder surfed, or you're an early victim of a newly d

> Regardless of the stupidity, that's still a pretty poor outcome. I assume the same applies if you were shoulder surfed, or you're an early victim of a newly discovered security bug? Or if you're kidnapped and forced to perform a transaction? All of those are possibly overturned if you can prove it wasn't really you or you were kidnapped. Things like signing away your company or emptying your bank account has the usual countermeasures. The physical aspect of your online identity does mean that you can take clear and simple precautions of it leaving your possession, someone just shoulder-surfing can't do much. It can't just be your SSN (our ID code) leaving your knowledge, it has to be someone near to you in which case no other system protects you either. So it really isn't a downgrade at least in my opinion. > So you're saying there's no technical aspect that prevents stores from obtaining your identity? That's an outright failure. I've personally moved back to strictly paying cash for groceries [0], so this would certainly not be a welcome development for me. If you choose to, yes, there's nothing that stops them. If you don't then they can't remotely collect that information. Unlike the CIA or NSA has, there isn't a private-company accessible facial recognition API :P