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Many years ago I worked for a telco that had a mobile product that you could buy with cash (show up in a convenience store with cash and you would get a SIM car
by throwaway4good 5y ago
Many years ago I worked for a telco that had a mobile product that you could buy with cash (show up in a convenience store with cash and you would get a SIM card for use straight away without any form of registration).
This was 5 times as expensive compared to when you paid by debit or credit card.
This offering was extremely popular amongst drug dealers and people needing a burner to call in a bomb threat. (Maybe there were legislate uses too - I never found out.)
The problem for the telco was that this was generating hundred fold the number of request for wire tapping and logging by the courts and the police. And by law the telco was required to service these request free of charge.
So in the end the business simply wasn’t there even though the margins were sky high.
Moral of the story: selling stuff to criminals might seem like easy money but may not be worth the trouble.
- Etheryte 5y agoInteresting story, but how does this relate to Mullvad accepting Monero payments?
- throwaway82652 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monero#Illicit_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monero#Illicit_use
- throwaway4good 5y agoMy guess is that the level of abuse is much higher by the customers paying via monero, than the ones paying by card. My guess is also that abuse is not entirely without cost for Mullvad. In other words the cost associated with the extra business that comes via Monero might be higher than the extra money that comes in.
- lordofgibbons 5y ago>Moral of the story: selling stuff to criminals might seem like easy money but may not be worth the trouble. Interesting that you think only criminals want privacy. I use Signal and TLS too, I must be Pablo Escobar's second coming?
- stanmancan 5y agoIf you looked at 'average people' versus 'criminals' you'll find that there's a much higher demand for privacy/anonymous communication among the criminals. That isn't to say that normal folk don't want privacy too. The end result is that if you're one of few company that offer privacy to your customers you'll find your customer base has a higher ratio of criminals as they'll all flock to you.
- ipaddr 5y agoDoes this apply to vpns? Have we crossed the more normal people are using it threshold than criminals or should that be outlawed? Will we reach a point where self hosting is seen as criminal?
- shrimp_emoji 5y agoI think criminalizing useful technologies is an obscenely naive way to operate. You're incurring insane game theoretical cost for the consolation of revenge against the criminals.
- throwaway82652 5y agoEven if you aren't a criminal, the fact is that privacy tools of this nature are explicitly relying on having enough volume of criminals and other illicit users to provide cover for you. This is what they're designed to do, the designers of these systems will openly admit to it. You can make your own judgement on whether you're ok with that, but it doesn't help to deny what's actually happening.
- lil_dispaches 5y agoWhen only criminals care about privacy, privacy becomes criminal?
- throwaway82652 5y agoNo? I don't know where you got that from.
- kuroguro 5y agoMost of EU has prepaid SIMs without registration AFAIK? It's really not much of a problem.
- throwaway4good 5y agoNot in my home country anymore. And all major telcos have departments dedicated just to serve the authorities.