5 ms·

Maybe it is a mild paranoia attack kicking in, but I find the trend to a cashless society very troublesome. I'm doing all I can to avoid being tracked on the we

by sveme 12y ago

Maybe it is a mild paranoia attack kicking in, but I find the trend to a cashless society very troublesome. I'm doing all I can to avoid being tracked on the web, using AdBlock and Ghostery, among other things, yet the privacy implications of going cashless I'm rarely considering. Cash is anonymous; cards are perfect trackers. Both your tracks and your most intimate preferences on the web and in real life are perfectly transparent to anyone with access to the transaction database. And I have no idea what kind of protections there are against governmental access to these databases. It is weird that the privacy implications of cashless are so rarely discussed - everyone just seems to be touting the great benefits of cashless all the time.

hga 12y ago
Agreed. I use cash for everything I can, checks when I can't (local payments), and credit cards only for purchases over the web, where it can't be easily avoided, and one does need, in the US at least, to maintain a credit record. This is primarily to avoid fraud with stolen info, and secondly that mild paranoia we share. If I had a Pocky addiction, no one would know outside my family ^_^.
- tzs 12y ago
  Why checks for non-cash local payments? They aren't really much better than credit cards for privacy, are they? They also come with some significant risks [1]. [1] http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html
  - Swizec 12y ago
    They are also virtually nonexistent in Europe. From Wikipedia: "In most European countries, cheques are now rarely used, even for third party payments. In these countries, it is standard practice for businesses to publish their bank details on invoices, to facilitate the receipt of payments by giro." "In Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Scandinavia, cheques have almost completely vanished in favour of direct bank transfers and electronic payments. " "In Finland, banks stopped issuing personal cheques in about 1993 in favour of giro systems, which are now almost exclusively electronically initiated either via internet banking or payment machines located at banks and shopping malls." "In Poland cheques were withdrawn from use in 2006" "Since 2001, businesses in the United Kingdom have made more electronic payments than cheque payments." The story seems to be similar in Asia and Oceania. According to the Wikipedia article on cheques, North America is pretty much the only place where they are still taken seriously. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheque#Modern_era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheque#Modern_era
  - hga 12y ago
    There are certainly risks, but these are to vendors I consider to be reliable, e.g. doctors ... and they're really expecting checks (many more "vendors" directly draw from one of my checking accounts). I also have more trust in my banks than Knuth seems to have ... and I indeed keep a fairly low amount of cash in those checking accounts.
sliverstorm 12y ago
There are privacy implications, but you do get a lot in return. Cards are perfect trackers, and that is why I love mine- with virtually no effort, I have a perfect record of my spending stretching back years. That's very powerful for taking control of my spending & finances.

by sveme 12y ago

hga 12y ago

Agreed. I use cash for everything I can, checks when I can't (local payments), and credit cards only for purchases over the web, where it can't be easily avoided, and one does need, in the US at least, to maintain a credit record. This is primarily to avoid fraud with stolen info, and secondly that mild paranoia we share. If I had a Pocky addiction, no one would know outside my family ^_^.

tzs 12y ago
Why checks for non-cash local payments? They aren't really much better than credit cards for privacy, are they? They also come with some significant risks [1]. [1] http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html
- Swizec 12y ago
  They are also virtually nonexistent in Europe. From Wikipedia: "In most European countries, cheques are now rarely used, even for third party payments. In these countries, it is standard practice for businesses to publish their bank details on invoices, to facilitate the receipt of payments by giro." "In Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Scandinavia, cheques have almost completely vanished in favour of direct bank transfers and electronic payments. " "In Finland, banks stopped issuing personal cheques in about 1993 in favour of giro systems, which are now almost exclusively electronically initiated either via internet banking or payment machines located at banks and shopping malls." "In Poland cheques were withdrawn from use in 2006" "Since 2001, businesses in the United Kingdom have made more electronic payments than cheque payments." The story seems to be similar in Asia and Oceania. According to the Wikipedia article on cheques, North America is pretty much the only place where they are still taken seriously. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheque#Modern_era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheque#Modern_era
- hga 12y ago
  There are certainly risks, but these are to vendors I consider to be reliable, e.g. doctors ... and they're really expecting checks (many more "vendors" directly draw from one of my checking accounts). I also have more trust in my banks than Knuth seems to have ... and I indeed keep a fairly low amount of cash in those checking accounts.

sliverstorm 12y ago

There are privacy implications, but you do get a lot in return. Cards are perfect trackers, and that is why I love mine- with virtually no effort, I have a perfect record of my spending stretching back years. That's very powerful for taking control of my spending & finances.