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I will gladly stop using Monero if someone can tell me how to privately transact over the internet without CC companies (and others) spying on me and selling m
by lordofgibbons 4y ago
I will gladly stop using Monero if someone can tell me how to privately transact over the internet without CC companies (and others) spying on me and selling my data. Until there is a better solution, I'll keep using it.
- jimbob45 4y agoPrepaid debit cards?
- yowmamasita 4y agoHow do you buy these without giving any personal information?
- bcherny 4y agoI’ve seen them for sale in supermarkets.
- silverPoodle 4y agoIn the European Union there is an online transaction limit of 50€ for prepaid cards. That's no alternative to Monero
- saurik 4y agoThey require you to log in and identify yourself before they can be activated.
- lrvick 4y agoMost actually do not require this. I buy visa gift cards with cash all the time from gas stations etc and spend them anywhere that does not take cash with no activation.
- lelandfe 4y agoI've never owned crypto but I can see the appeal for privacy's sake. Even going to the market can mean sacrificing privacy – retailers are constant abusers of personal data. Did you park at the market? Oops, they read all license plates to build a marketing profile.[0][1] See an ad online, and then later went into the store? Oops, Google picked up on that and told the retailer.[2] Did you leave your face uncovered when you went into the market? Oops, they use facial recognition.[3] [0] https://www.syracuse.com/news/2014/06/who_else_is_tracking_your_license_plates_its_not_just_police.html https://www.syracuse.com/news/2014/06/who_else_is_tracking_y... [1] https://drndata.com/ https://drndata.com/ [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20170523182250/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/05/23/google-now-knows-when-you-are-at-a-cash-register-and-how-much-you-are-spending/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170523182250/https://www.washi... [3] https://www.axios.com/2021/07/19/facial-recognition-retail-surge https://www.axios.com/2021/07/19/facial-recognition-retail-s...
- giantrobot 4y agoYou don't tell the teller your name as you give them cash to load the card.
- saurik 4y agoBut they can't be activated until after you identify yourself to their website.
- lrvick 4y agoYou are thinking of reloadable ones. Non-reloadable visa gift cards can be purchased with cash at any corner store at values up to $500 each and require no identification.
- saurik 4y agoI really, truly, do not believe this is correct. I looked into it quite hard recently and I simply couldn't figure out a way to pull it off (and I even actively attempted to look for ones that did not support being reloaded). FWIW, I do believe this product existed a decade ago, but I simply can't find it anymore. Would you mind providing some kind of link to recent discussion of some specific such a product (not even as much to "prove you are right" but "to help me out" ;P)?
- treeman79 4y agoCash.
- halfmatthalfcat 4y agoHow do you get from Monero to cash without leaving some kind of paper trail?
- willnonya 4y agoWhere I live in the US we're not permitted to buy these with cash. We don't have to provide any identifying information to activate but we cannot legally purchase them without that link to the original card purchase.
- lrvick 4y agoI am not aware of any states where you cannot buy non-reloadable visa gift cards with cash at values up to $500. Reloadable ones are the ones that often require KYC. I do this all the time in California and have in other states as well. If you are sure your state bans non-reloadable visa gift card purchases with cash I would love to find out what state to research what is going on there.
- alchemist1e9 4y agoI think check into Illinois and New York. As far as I know it’s not possible to acquire visa gift cards (non-reloadable) for even $100 without activation which results in implicit linking to some identity.
- VortexLain 4y agoUnavailable in lots of countries.
- pontus 4y agoWell, if you want true privacy you should try Zcash.
- lawn 4y agoOpt-in privacy has some serious flaws, not to mention the trusted setup that IMO makes it untrustworthy as a currency.
- pontus 4y agoBoth of these are no longer a thing with NU5 / Halo 2
- lrvick 4y agoZcash is well designed but in practice I have yet to see any services accept it but many that accept monero.
- lordofgibbons 4y agoWhile zk-SNARKs is a cool piece of technology, their source of funding[1] doesn't inspire confidence. In addition to that, even the few people people who do use Zcash, don't use it's privacy features. 99% of their transactions aren't private and are fully traceable [2]. Why would you want your transactions to stand out? [1] http://zerocash-project.org/about_us http://zerocash-project.org/about_us [2] https://news.bitcoin.com/not-so-private-99-of-zcash-and-dash-transactions-traceable-says-chainalysis/ https://news.bitcoin.com/not-so-private-99-of-zcash-and-dash...
- MerelyMortal 4y agoA couple of years ago on reddit, someone issued a challenge to find the destination of their private Zcash transaction. Someone won the challenege, not by tracing the transaction itself, but by recognizing it was the only transparent to private, and private to transparent transactions with in a timeframe. That's why privacy needs to be mandatory like it is with Monero.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- edent 4y agoI understand this privacy argument - but I'm wondering what the practical downside is of this "spying"? I've been using credit cards online for decades and I am yet to encounter anything negative from doing so. I get that my credit card provider knows that I'm buying £X of goods from merchant Y. But unless that merchant is very specific, the card company doesn't know what I've bought. And, if it did... so what? Perhaps I'm naive, but even if I was hiding (for example) my sexuality - what's the CC company going to do? Try to upsell me a rainbow themed card? I try to take my privacy seriously, and I don't particularly want my interactions monitored and mined. But what are the actual, non-theoretical problems that this causes?
- nanidin 4y agoHave you ever needed to buy something illegal?
- jjav 4y ago> Have you ever needed to buy something illegal? Or more importantly, something that is normal today but becomes illegal with some future government (or court). Having a paper trail of everything in perpetuity is always dangerous in the future. Best to use cash for most things.
- Gigachad 4y agoThe main real world problem is when your business isn’t able to use the credit card system. Adult/nsfw services and weed stores are the obvious examples. But I can imagine many more coming up over time.
- drcode 4y agoIt's hard for you to know what purchases you MIGHT have done if you weren't constrained a priori to only making purchases from sellers that were big enough & sold products innocuous enough to get approval from one of the big 3 CC companies, or what products might have been available without this limitation.
- lrvick 4y agoMetadata on credit card transactions you make at a pharmacy, smoke shop, adult toy store, or abortion clinic is sold to a range of entities including government agencies, adtech firms, insurance companies. Your travel habits and times you are often not at home also can be very revealing. When this data inevitable leaks via hacks, or is used to target you when political tides change, suddenly you will be wishing we had all been normalizing alternatives. I recommend everyone use tumbled bitcoin, monero, cash, or visa gift cards whenever possible. The less data we all give in aggregate to those seeking to sell changes in our behavior the better. Your data pollution empowers entities that harm us all.
- riedel 4y agoMost scammers targeting your retired parents know how: play store or other vouchers you can buy in the super market. In Europe a standard free IBAN money transfer probably does not lead to much spying either. The biggest use case for this kind of privacy crypto privides is the 'freedom' to do things not legal in your country. I am actually happy to live in a world with limited freedom at times although there is certainly room for improvement ( I do not consider crypto currency as one )
- uberswe 4y agoI disagree with your statement about cryptos biggest use case. However I also want to point out that legal can vary a lot between countries. There is at least one third world country where a woman can't even get an abortion without risking life in prison. If cryptocurrencies can help people who don't have equal rights with more privacy in such situations then I am all for it.
- shkkmo 4y ago> I disagree with your statement about cryptos biggest use case. Then look at the numbers, besides speculation, which isn't really a "use case", that vast majority of cryptocurrency transactions are ransomware, coin washing, illegal purchases and currency control evasion. > If cryptocurrencies can help people who don't have equal rights with more privacy in such situations then I am all for it. > There is at least one third world country where a woman can't even get an abortion without risking life in prison. If cryptocurrencies can help people who don't have equal rights with more privacy in such situations then I am all for it. What an extreme red herring? Even the most private cryptocurrencies are less private than the cash that such people use today for such transactions.
- riedel 4y agoI agree with you about the legal landscape in many parts of the world. However, I really do not think that without having seen any numbers that crypto really betters human rights ( I guess violation of them would be the only reason why in which local legislation/constitution should be ignored) . It will be a tool mostly for the oppressors I in many undemocratic countries to circumvent things like sanctions.
- yashg 4y agoExactly where do you use Monero?
- samatman 4y agoPretty cool that you can ask that question but no one else can answer it without his private key, which you don't have. Not even vaguely true of "exactly how does yashg use their credit cards", which many people can answer in as much detail as they care to purchase.
- binarymax 4y agoThe privacy is a myth, if you want to actually use the cryptocurrency to pay for things in the real world. If you pay fiat to get monero, the exchange has your info. If you cash out monero for fiat to buy something, the exchange has your info. The wallet and transaction in chain are permanent in the ledger. So where is the privacy?
- shiftingleft 4y agoMonero has some limited form of privacy that's fairly good in practice: you can't determine which of N accounts is the origin of a transaction, where N is some fixed small number (6 in Monero I believe).
- habosa 4y agoUnlike with BTC with Monero you can’t tell what I did with the coins in between the two fiat transactions. For most people that’s a very meaningful level of privacy, even if it’s not perfect.
- MerelyMortal 4y agoI don't mind the company I'm buying an item from to know my name and where I live to send it to me. I do mind if they have the ability to look up my address balance or past transactions to other entities. (Why I support Monero over Bitcoin.)
- mattwilsonn888 4y agoAtomic swap from Bitcoin is the easiest and most effective choice. If not that or a local, in person swap, the worst they know about you is that you owned Monero at some point. This is assuming you take the required Op-sec for your level or paranoia.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoYour "data" is not worth anything. No-one is spying on you. You are not interesting.
- jjav 4y ago> Your "data" is not worth anything. No-one is spying on you. You are not interesting. The billions (trillions these days?) online advertising market clearly disagrees with you.
- loughnane 4y agoI came here to make this exact point. There’s scarce another crypto project I’m bought into but I _really_ want a way to make a private transaction online so I’ll support any project that furthers that end.