I live in New York City. The current way to pay for buses and subways is with a Metrocard. You can buy them at some stores and check cashing places, or at most subway stations. You can pay with cash or a card. Now, at great cost, they are introducing a ‘better’ system where you pay for your rides with a credit card or smart device. They are planning on getting completely rid of the Metrocards. Soon, they will be able to trace anyone’s movements.
Bruh what you can buy omny cards for cash in stores.
You can buy preloaded credit cards with cash from convenience stores. It’s as trackable as your MetroCard.
I used my phone to tap and pay back in December '21. Not a new thing.
trace anyone’s movements
There’s literally a GPS enabled mind control device in almost everyone’s pocket.
Yeah and there’s a reason you can’t drive unregistered and that reason has nothing to do with bad drivers.
This same lame comment gets posted on every fucking internet post about Privacy. Stop it.
Not everyone uses a compromised phone with the GPS turned on all the time. Plenty of us put in effort to mitigate cell phone tracking, and anyone can leave their phone at home to completely eliminate tracking where they go.
FYI there are a number of privacy-focused Android distributions, and lots of options on Apple iOS to disable what can track you. Stop being complacent and protect your own privacy instead of hand-waving away the entire premise of Privacy.
If your cell phone is turned on, the phone company knows where you are. This fact is why your GPS doesn’t take 5 minutes to show your location every time you turn on your phone. The OS gets the cell towers to identify where you are and combines that with GPS to get a quicker lock and more accurate location.
The most secure Android OS cannot turn that off. If you transmit or receive data to a cell phone network, your location is known.
Yes, Android (and iOS) can turn that off: torn off mobile network or don’t have a mobile phone provider (SIM).
“if you send or receive data”
You could use WiFi only
Sure, there’s no way around that, even dumb phones are triangulated by default and that data is sold.
But doing just that is better than being triangulated AND leaking your GPS data to every Tom Dick and Harry that asks your phone.
Reeeeeee! Phones. Are. Not. Triangulated.
Most cell towers use phased antenna array, so they know relative direction all the time. And distance can be estimated from latency and signal strength.
Two cell towers allow to get precise location from angles.
Two cell towers allow to get precise location from angles.
But using two cell towers and angles would literally be triangulation…
2=3?
Interesting, I stand corrected. Thanks for informing me.
The GPS thing is different. The phone downloads the satellite positions from the net instead of having to receive the same data, very slowly, from the satellites themselves.
No, that’s not quite how GPS works. The satelites are constantly sending a signal, the GPS receiver is trying to pick up at least two satelites, and it computes your location off of the phase shift and whatnot of those constantly-broadcasting signals.
That’s why GPS still works in airplane mode.
As I said, cell towers send information so that GPS can work better. I didn’t say that GPS needs cell towers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GNSS
The tower has its own GPS antenna. The cell tower knows approximately where you are.
You’re still misspeaking and implying the data is necessary. It is not. At all. Period.
How do you think Garmins and the like work when they have NO external data connection? They don’t magically take way longer to position…
Yes, but the receiver need the position of the satellites to compute its own position. That data is transferred very slowly, so if you can download it through the internet, then you only need the identifiers of the satellites to immediately compute.
GPS receiver is trying to pick up at least two satelites
Four. GPS solves position in 4-dimensional space.
No, more is preferred, but the way the signals are designed, some positioning slowly works with only two satellites.
Like old phones. Remember when GPS was slow and always a few meters off? Part of that was they were bad at or could not acquire more than two signals.
3 satellites for 2 dimensional space, 4 satellites gives you height as well (3 dimensional).
your wristwatch gives you your fourth dimension ;-)
No that’s not very accurate. Cell phone tower triangulation only gives a rough approximation of location, and GPS is definitely able to be disabled by the software. I know a bit about these things as someone who has compiled their own android ROM from open source. I’ve been working on this stuff for more than a decade now.
Regardless of all of the above, anyone can turn off their cell phone or choose to not carry it to eliminate the ability for that cell phone to provide location data on them. This alone negates all the stupid “gotcha” comments about trying to preserve one’s privacy while owning a smartphone. So we are back to my first comment on this topic, with the point of STOP IT.
Cell phone tower triangulation only gives a rough approximation of location
That’s why I said they send that to allow the phone’s GPS to get a lock quicker and more accurate. All cell phone towers have GPS. Agps means the tower sends its GPS constellation to the phone so it doesn’t take 5 minutes to lock.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GNSS
So yes, even with GPS disabled, the phone company has a rough idea where you are.
If you are in the city on high band 5g, that location is known within 15 to 600 meters.
You only know what you’re told. There’s all kinds of space inside your phone for components with capabilities you know nothing about.
meanwhile, you don’t know anything.
What good is knowing something made up?
meanwhile, that’s how you live your life.
Cautiously.
Yes but its not required to get around, airplane mode, and not everyone has their cell service tied to their name, etc.
Take off the tinfoil hat, NYC is not planning to get rid of metrocards. The credit card payment ability is just a convenience feature to get more people riding transit.
I mean, my tinfoil hat is on for the same reason - I haven’t been arsed using Transport for London’s Oyster card because there’s a cost cap placed on all travel paid for by one single card. I suppose my bank has my details already so it’d better that than having another party with my data… and another card to lose, more likely.
Sad to see all the Monero fans and no GNU Taler fans here
Monero is the one everyone has heard of. That fact combined with knowing its untraceable is what makes it valuable.
Yeah, it’s popular among the crypto folks. But GNU Taler has advantages over Monero. Buyers are also untraceable, but sellers are not. So they are taxable, which is pretty neat. The EU and Swiss governments are experimenting with it and for them the taxation part is kind of valuable.
Edit: Ah, and it also doesn’t rely on a blockchain, so offline transactions are feasible etc.
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Sweden is a mostly cashless society. Let me try to respond to those points
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In case of domestic violence, you go to the police.
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You can still give individual people money with things like Swish. Yes, even “homeless” people have swish and they use it. Kids of all ages can have swish.
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It costs 0(for individuals) or 10-30 cents(for companies) to transact on swish and minimum transaction is basically 10cents(1sek).
There are privacy issues and it is kinda controlled by banks. Maybe eventually things like digital euro can improve on that in the future. You can have an anonymous digital payment system with near 0 fees, it is just that the governments arent incentivized to do it. Thats where cryptocurrency could fit, if it wasnt a pump and dump, to the moon hellhole.
In case of domestic violence, you go to the police.
What a bizarre disconnect from reality. You have waaay too much confidence in police power (and assumptions about actionable evidence), capability, and motivation, and no idea about battered women living in fear of the next attack, which a restraining order does not necessarily stop, if you can get one, especially if the next attack is a bullet. A cop who checks on a battery victim will be told “that big bruise on my cheek is from falling down the stairs”.
Domestic violence victims need options. You’re advocating for taking options away. That’s fucked up.
I think the only one that doesn’t really hold up is 1. There’s a lot of coercive control tied up with domestic violence that would make it hard for a victim to call the police for help.
Having said that, in the UK you can open a bank account with a new company in a matter of minutes then transfer money to it and be out of the situation before any paperwork turns up showing what you did.
Many of our banks have specific provisions in place to help victims of domestic violence. Including one that’ll set you up with a safe account and an emergency fund that doesn’t need to be repaid. https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/tsb-launches-emergency-flee-fund-for-domestic-abuse-victims-how-are-other-banks-helping-arSND8h82lGJ
Speaking from going through it myself; in the USA, Police often don’t help you if you’re dealing with domestic violence/rape in a marriage. My ex’s military commander refused to help me too…
so don’t get married. It’s your fault for perpetuating bronze age bullshit.
In the modern era a marriage isn’t really what it was in the past. You can get divorced if things don’t work out and there’s no “we must wait until marriage to have sex and then we must have children” rule for most people.
So marriage nowadays is really just either a celebration of love, or a practical move for tax or other reasons.
Domestic abusers however, ruin all that. But domestic abusers can ruin your shit even without de jure shared control of finances because they can still coerce you into giving bank auth details.
Yeah in a lot of western countries we now get the ick about all the women-as-chattel-property connotations it’s always had. Watch people scramble to re-invent the meaning of the father of the bride giving her away.
As far as I can tell, marriage is the ugliest and worst chapter of contract law, because that’s basically what a marriage is, it’s a contract. One that people tend to sign without reading or even realizing who all the named parties are. And the standard terms most people agree to aren’t all that great. “You can get divorced” yeah that process isn’t a garden trowel to the spleen, is it fellas?
If it didn’t already exist, and someone were to try to invent the modern concept of marriage from the ground up, we would drive them out to the middle of nowhere and leave them for dead.
Then your country hasn’t modernized its laws. In mine the law says that both partners have equal rights and responsibilities to each other.
My country is in the process of regressing its laws, in fact. I think they’re going to outlaw literacy next year.
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In case of domestic violence, you go to the police.
This was such an oddly specific “worry” that it kind of plays the hand of the target demographic as well as the intention of the snippet. Along with the weird bits about birthday cards and ice cream, it just screams propaganda for midwest Christian-leaning grandmothers and housewives.
Right-wing, conservative Christian housewives who hand-wring about everything ALL put away stashes of money to hide from their 1-dimensional husbands who are usually somewhere on the abusive spectrum. I lived much of my life out in the outskirts of cities where the rednecks nest and breed, there are some very predictable stereotypes out there. One of the most common talking points on the far-right Christian slice of America is the perpetual warning that the Anti-Christ is going to take control of all the money and bring the entire planet under his control, and he will enact a one-world currency, take away everyone’s cash and guns and then everyone will have to get some chip in their wrist and that will be the Mark of the Beast, blah blah blah, fear-mongering and superstition and mindless worry.
Nobody will ever take away physical money entirely because the moment you do, people will invent one. So if you don’t want unregulated Nuka Cola bottlecaps being traded for goods and services in your country, you need to maintain an official currency.
Let me try to respond back:
- Depending on your situation, your identity, your society, you cannot always rely on the police helping you. There are lots of documented cases of discrimination (e.g. racism) at police institutions in all kinds of regions across the globe. The companies probably don’t want to delete the data any time soon, so there is a chance that this data persists for decades. What if your country chances and starts discriminating or harassing whatever group you belong to? Can you guarantee that your government/society won’t flip the switch on any group of society within their lifetime? Can you guarantee that nobody ever wants to visit a country which their group will be discriminated or persecuted?
- If the homeless person does not own a smartphone, how do they receive money on their Swish account, yet create a swish account? How does a person without documents create a swish account?
- In your case, Swish seems to be a digital gatekeeper. What prevents them from going rogue, increasing prices or discriminating people? I recommended reading Jaron Lanier’s Gadget for understanding the power of digital monopolies.
If the first point does not convince you, here are 2 examples:
- gay dating apps: It repeatedly happened that information from gay dating apps were leaked, sold or extorted to bad governments. Those governments discriminated or persecuted, in some cases killed people just for being homosexual. Chances are high that a gay person has some digital traces to that, e.g. in Swish. Cashless puts them even more at risk in countries like Egypt. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/apr/03/jailed-for-using-grindr-homosexuality-in-egypt
- In the 1930s, a lot of Jews in Europe were identified through state documents which (unnecessarily) mentioned their name. In some locations, brave people protected them by destroying, hiding or faking state documents.
In other words: If your society changes, any data that exists may be turned against you, even costing your life and the lives of your closest people. Avoiding to have this data saves lives and protects minorities.
If your society changes
This is why I know that I’ll end up on a list if things go as poorly as I expect in the USA during my lifetime.
Swish is partly owned by the Central Bank of Sweden(which is 100% state owned) so it is basically state owned. But as with the digital euro, the private banks play a big part and atm are needed in order to facilitate the digital transactions. This could change in the future.
Your points are societal points and not currency related points. You are right, there are significant issues with swish, you basically need to be a swedish citizen(have a “personal number”). A lot of things in Sweden are gatekeeped by needing a “personal number”. This is an obstacle even for other EU(Schengen) europeans.
Societies are built with the majority in mind. There are holes that need to be fixed. But the existence of holes does not mean that they cant be fixed.
As far as privacy is concerned, you are right, this is a big attack on privacy. But it doesnt have to be, it is just that the governments want it to be. Not because of some megalomaniacal genocidal plan but for tax and criminal issues. Could it be used for more nefarious plans in the future? Sure. You can always use a cryptocurrency like monero though.
What all can you purchase with monero? I don’t see a lot of shops around me accepting any crypto whatsoever.
What all can you purchase with monero?
Drugs and guns.
If our societies would be perfect (now and any time in the future), we would not need this discussion, maybe not even privacy at all. Though a lot of things are very good in our societies, I guess we will not live to see them becoming perfect, so I rather retain some caution, and privacy.
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Every single point raised in this post is already solved with current technology.
If you deposit your money at a bank, or PayPal, or some online digital bank transfer service,** you do not have your money anymore.** They have your money.
Now you have some kind of contract that says they’ll give you your money on demand. But sometimes they won’t give it to you when you want it. If any judge or cop wants to see every person or business I’ve ever transacted with the bank will happily give it over.
On the other hand, cash is cash. If I possess it, then I have it. And nobody gets to know how much, or how suspicious, or with whom I’m transacting.
If you deposit money at a bank, it is covered by federal deposit protection insurance (up to some limit that varies by country but generally in the range of $100k-$250k), so you are guaranteed to be able to get it back no matter what. Even if the bank fails. Banks are subject to extremely strict regulation to protect consumers and make sure you have access to your funds
PayPal is not a bank, it’s an EMI (e-money institution), but those are heavily regulated to protect consumers. Your funds are not covered by deposit protection insurance, but as an EMI they have to keep your money in a safeguarding account at a real bank and they can’t use it themselves, so in case PayPal fails you will still get your money back. Revolut in the UK is another example of a non-bank EMI
If you deposit money at a bank, it is covered by federal deposit protection insurance (up to some limit that varies by country but generally in the range of $100k-$250k), so you are guaranteed to be able to get it back no matter what.
Time matters. Those insurance claims take months to process and they only cover bankruptcy (which is the least likely reason a bank denies you access to funds).
The copy of my ID card that the bank had on file expired. I renewed it on time but did not think to update the bank with a new copy. The bank’s way of communicating to me that their records of my card were out of date was to freeze my account. Boom, just like that, I have no money all of the sudden. I don’t recall the time of day it happened, but if it had happened on a Friday night I would not have access to my money until I appear in person at the bank Monday morning — assuming it’s even possible to get off work. At that time, I kept an empty fridge… only eating on the go. Had I not had cash on hand, getting food could have been a struggle.
Even if the bank fails. Banks are subject to extremely strict regulation to protect consumers and make sure you have access to your funds
LOL! Those so-called strictly enforced banking regs are not for us. Banks are scared shitless of AML/KYC shit hitting the fan. Banks laugh at the consumer protection variety of regs with reckless disregard. It’s a joke. I’ve reported banks in breach of consumer rights. The bank’s regulators do fuck all. One reculator responded to me and said “why don’t you switch banks”. I shit you not. That came from a regulator who’s job it was to enforce a law that the bank was breaking.
PayPal is not a bank, it’s an EMI (e-money institution), but those are heavily regulated to protect consumers. Your funds are not covered by deposit protection insurance, but as an EMI they have to keep your money in a safeguarding account at a real bank and they can’t use it themselves, so in case PayPal fails you will still get your money back.
No, that’s not how it is. PayPal has a reputation for copious extremely out of whack “anti-fraud” false positives. I was burnt by it. Paypal blocked my acct and kept my money. There are many similar complaints.
https://git.disroot.org/cyberMonk/liberethos_paradigm/src/branch/master/rap_sheets/paypal.md
On the other other hand, in the U.S. if you are pulled over by the police with cash, they can choose to seize that cash just because carrying cash looks suspicious. They don’t need to charge you with a crime. If the cash was in a bank, they’d need to go through a lot more process to seize it – the cops typically can’t just walk into the bank and demand it.
Yea, but that’s a different problem.
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I love how in a PRIVACY Lemmy community there are people who actually, unironically argue for a dystopian cashless society.
We’re all fucked, aren’t we?
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No one is arguing for a cashless society though?
I’m sure someone, somewhere is. The bigger problem is that society seems to be moving in that direction without first having a serious debate about whether it’s a good idea.
I take a hard line and hold the position that, if you’re in business, you should be required to accept legal tender (maybe only up to a threshold where Know Your Customer laws kick in). There’s a strong social value in there being spaces for unmonitored transactions.
That comment is implying that the statements made in the post are incorrect, not that a cashless society is desirable.
That’s not an argument for a cashless society.
We need cash but these are just silly reasons and hurt the idea more than they help
All of these reasons are why the corporations want to force us all to use digital currency completely controlled by them.
They could make the digital money invalid at stores they don’t like, they could make it invalid for buying something they don’t want you to buy and they can make it expire after awhile, forcing you to spend it instead of saving it.
They could make the digital money invalid at stores they don’t like, they could make it invalid for buying something they don’t want you to buy
Credit card companies already do this.
Well I think banks have a few laws that prevent those things. But remembering the Pornhub incident where MasterCard and Visa stopped their partnership to strongarm them. In that case the motivation was child safety and not greed. But it was a display of power.
Pornhub does everything they can to remove nonconsensual stuff from their platform as quickly as possible
The boomers in the executive room just listened to the media sensationalizing the story and hit the nuclear option without taking any objective looks at what was actually going on
Conservatives making things up and getting mad about it
huh? anyone can dislike going cashless, since when do conservatives care about domestic abuse victims for example? conservatives generally perpetrate domestic abuse!
This domestic abuse thing sounds to me like a “pull up yourself by the bootstrap” situation kind of myth. Are there women who can stash thousands away to prepare to flee, but cannot somehow have a bank account? That sounds so unrealistic, it seems to me more of an excuse to tell abused people they are just “not trying hard enough”.
Sir this is a privacy sub, keep your political tribalism to the political communities.
Privacy famously being a non-political topic.
It doesn’t have to be and shouldn’t be. When a specific political entity makes anti-privacy plans, then it’s different ofc, but don’t bring politics into non-political posts.
This post is political. It is about how an aspect of society is organized and its effects. This is literally what politics are about.
You’re right to a point. It is somewhat political in nature, but not in the my party vs your party kind of way.
Who said anything about a party, conservatism is an ideology
Found you downvoted. As if there aren’t conservative Democrats. As if conservative Democrats don’t fill the DNC leadership positions 🤷♂️
… but what if I was in a place without mobile phone reception and nanna wanted to buy a toy from a homeless person having a garage sale to give to my kid?!
See… you just haven’t thought this whole cashless thing through.
well they can’t say the parts they’re actually angry about so we get this bullshit roll.
it’s very much like racism, they won’t come out and say they don’t like people of color, they’ll simply come up with a dozen ways to discriminate against them but say it’s personal freedom, etc.
they’re angry about not being able to pay people under the table, about not being able to skim the petty cash etc.
I think we need to ban cash
Why do garage sales have to go away, I just went to one and used zelle to send the guy money.
I was scratching my head with that one too. HOAs are doing a better job at killing the garage sale.
HOAs only control 25-27% of housing in the US. A number that should be zero, but not enough to kill off all garage sales, by any stretch.
I use my paypal card reader! Both when holding garage sales and when visiting, it’s pretty normal and a lot of people use it without blinking.
If you pearl-clutching Christians fearful of change don’t want a cashless society, maybe stop pouring all your support behind the political powers that want to see giant megacorporations flourish and crush out small businesses. The people who want to control your rmoney are not the banks nearly as much as the Walmart down the street that can now take credit card payments simply by glancing at the store as you pass.
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Get prepaid cards then
Why are you like this though
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In a cash based society they might make us nail coins to our body with special screws only the government can undo.
You, if digital transactions came before cash.
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No one is pushing for a “cashless society” like this post describes. It’s fear mongering.
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There is a massive difference between a business being cashless and a government enforced “cashless society” like this post describes.
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- I completely disagree that if a majority of businesses went cashless that would mean the government has no choice but to be cashless.
- I never said it “could NEVER happen.”
- What do you mean it “DID happen,” it hasn’t.
- Ad hominem gets you nowhere.
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26% in a recent poll:
A Mastodon poll with 210 responses is hardly representative.
Why do you think 210 is statistically insignificant? Is there a reason why the central limit theorem does not apply in this case?
If you’re more fixated on the samples coming from Mastodon, can you explain why you might expect cashless proponents to be even fewer in populations outside of Mastodon? IMO, a Mastodon-using population is more likely to embrace individual rights and condemn imbalances of power that favor giant corporations like banks. I believe if the same survey is carried out outside of Mastodon, the 26% will be bigger, if different.
The same reason someone might think Linux is a wildly popular choice of OS on Lemmy. These communities are very niche.
Crypto solves all these issues. Can’t wait for cash to finally die for good.
LOL.
LMAO, even.
Crypto is this:
