We trust companies with our information every day. But many companies—even those that hold our most revealing information—are using it not just to provide the services we ask for, but to amp up their profits at the cost of our privacy.That's why EFF has joined a campaign, led by the U.S. Public...
This is why I think gnu taler is a great company and project
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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A wise man once said “cash is king”
Although that brings up a point on how reliant we are on the banks, but a private crypto currency like monero is not yet ready for mass adoption.
Already, I see a lot of stigma around cryptocurrency. I don’t know if it’ll ever take off thanks to stuff like NFTs ruining it.
Monero will never be ready for mass adoption. The problem is that it is primary used for illegal transations. Its effectively tainted in my eyes
Anything that is private is going to be used for illegal transactions. That is not Monero’s fault. If you want it to be used for less illegal transactions, then use it for legal transactions yourself. I personally use it to pay for my life insurance, groceries, phone bill, etc. And as far as I’m aware, none of those are illegal transactions.
I’m surprised at your list things you pay for with it. How does that work? Is there a gotcha and you are not actually using it but converting it to fiat at the time of purchase? For instance, what grocer accepts Monero?
For now, it’s primarily through gift cards, or friends willing to send me fiat, and take Monero. However, I am one of those people who will actually pay more for something if I can pay for it directly in Monero. As an example of this, I get fresh coffee beans from gratuitas.org because they run their business in Monero. It is way more expensive than buying coffee from the store, but I am willing to do it just because they accept Monero only. My phone bill and groceries are paid via gift cards to Instacart and my phone carriers gift cards and life insurance is paid through Fiat with a friend who accepts Monero and sends me Fiat.
Same argument can be said for encryption LMAO
Not really
Seriously though why not? People pay for criminal transactions in USD, GBP, EUR. Do you not use these currencies?
No they don’t. At least not much anymore. Most of that stuff is in Monero.
How do you think North Korea funds its nuclear program
Probably by not spending money on making sure it’s citizens are fed and healthy but what a silly way for thinking for me, the answer is obvious you’re right, they created a crypto currency and get the NYC mafia to pay for their nuclear program
Is cash tainted for the same reason? I think when a currency is good for commiting crime, it is an indication that the currency is well designed.
Cash isn’t used for crime nearly as much
So much cash is used for drug deals that it literally helps to shape our (USA) economy.
It is a stereotype here that if someone has a lot of cash, they are either drug dealers or sex workers.
Hoo boy do I have some news for you.
But you actually don’t know what monero is being used for when it’s used in transactions, no one does. You just have a bias that if people want to keep their transactions secret, it must be illegal.
You could make the same argument for cash.
Most of the people using Monero are drug lords are foreign counties. You can get similar privacy with cash and it doesn’t have the same crime issue.
I also mentioned taler because it provides privacy for the spender but not the receiver. The idea is that there will be less ways to effectively take dark money while protecting the rights of the consumer
Not really. At the time cash was created it was simply for exchanging value, because we didn’t have anything better. It’s just legacy currency now.
It’s a little harder to lug around millions in cash without anyone noticing.
Not all secret transactions are illegal, but the people who are doing illegal transactions will do anything they can to keep them secret.
I use it to pay for VPN and stuff, works pretty well IMO. There’s potential scaling issues if too many people use it, but you can get around those by using XMR to privately purchase a different cryptocurrency with higher throughput. Tornado Cash was pretty cool too before they made using it a felony.
How do you get your XMR? I looked into it once but it seemed like a hassle
I think you can get it with a credit card through the Cake Wallet app by buying a different crypto first and then swapping for XMR, this is probably the most user friendly way, though I can’t personally confirm. You can buy it directly on Kraken, though the account setup is some effort. Here is a curated list of reputable ways to acquire, trade and use crypto without KYC, if not providing personal info is a priority for you.
I don’t think it’s actually that terrible for privacy to get it initially with KYC, because all they will know is that you purchased $X of crypto, so it’s comparable to withdrawing cash from a bank.
Thank you! I’ll probably just use KYC because I’m not a high value target and the alternative for me is just buying and spending Bitcoin.
I’d avoid KYC for a different reason - I just can’t trust an exchange to keep such sensitive data safe. I thought of using Localmonero first (the usual recommendation), but then found a friend who can sell it to me for cash instead.
No shortage of different ways but most of them require KYC which basically instantly makes it in useless. You can, however, buy from individuals using LocalMonero.
Are they alleging that Mastercard sells data with personally identifiable information? Because if not, what’s the big deal? The people that buy this data want to know about trends.
Ask the woman and her daughter that got charged after anti abortion laws got passed and were dumb enough to use Facebook for communication.
Even assuming that MasterCard is fully intending to keep everything secure (which is impossible to guarantee), you never know how it’s going to be used later on.
I mean, ffs, it’s already known that multiple US agencies just buy data and use it for their purposes. It’s a damn sure bet that every damn country does something similar.
De-anonymizing data is a thing. You get enough data points, and everything is right there.
The big deal is having my spending analyzed. I don’t want my spending habits be used against me
How is it being used against you?
We should stop paying for things with credit cards.
Monero? I personally buy some services with it.
It just seems like a scam to me. We buy things with credit cards to get the points and each transaction costs the merchant money. The merchant raises their prices to cover transaction fees, so now you’re not really getting points - you’re paying hidden fees that get some rewards points for (but not enough). The real scam is that it’s such a monopoly now (oligopoly?) that if you don’t pay with a credit card then you’re losing out - you’re paying inflated prices but not getting the reward points.
Now, some people have to pay with credit cards, but that shouldn’t be the norm. If you’re perpetually one month (ie, one payment) behind on bills, etc, then credit card makes sense, but that should be an edge case - just need to save for a month and then you’re good. (yes, lots of shoulds and wishful thinking there, I know, read the next paragraph).
If you fall more than a month behind on payments, the you’re paying some 20% interest, which is likely going to destroy you anyways. So living “a month behind”, while maybe the reality for many is likely to get way worse before it gets better.
I will acknowledge that CC companies provide things like insurance and liability protection. I think that if governments and/or banks could provide this, there would be no good reason to use a credit card beyond the odd big purchase. And realistically, some international transactions, as well, since it will take a long time before all our payment systems are integrated to that degree.
More importantly, we should stop giving Mastercard our data. Paying for everything with credit cards has been an obviously bad idea since thirty years ago at latest.
Regardless of it being a bad idea, it’s convenience completely overwhelmed any privacy considerations. As far as I can tell, we’re marching towards a cashless future with the last dam being politicians need for untraceable cash themselves. But those old politicians are being replaced by family dynasties who have replaced cash payments with favors for their son’s wife’s firm.
Feudalism with extra steps, as ordained by our Heavenly Father Mr. monopoly man
Our only real private option is cash, and people are more and more pushing it as “outdated”.
Why just Mastercard. ALL payment services are doing this. Everything from payment gateways, card brands, digital wallets (You really think google and apple aren’t logging every detail of your purchases). Seems a bit silly to just call out Mastercard.
The government is selling your financial data, which is a whole other level of fucked up since thats not something you can opt out of, at all.
Per the article, it seems Visa has already stopped this practice. I think they’re calling out Mastercard as the other top player in the consumer credit card space (I doubt Amex has quite the market dominance Visa / MC do, especially overseas).
They probably spawned a sub company who will take that over. No way in hell I believe they stopped this practice.
This.
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