Obviously cash is the more private option, but I have had trouble getting away from the convenience of using cards. Is there a way to use debit or credit cards and preserve privacy?
I usually try to use cash, but the convenience of being able to use online banking (and the requirement many sites/services have for online banking) makes it difficult to only use cash.
I always use cash. Mostly because I like it, it’s fast and flexible
Credit cards are to be avoided, unless you want to put a name on your transaction, which you usually don’t
I know I shouldn’t for privacy reasons, but I use credit for almost everything.
- Easier, I don’t like dealing with change or carrying around loads of cash. I can also just pay with my phone.
- Cheaper. The credit card scam is that you get 2% off your purchases (in North America). Or even more for certain verticals.
- Needed for online anyways.
Of course the scam is that prices go up 3-6% to account for credit card fees, then the credit card companies give you some of it back. Of course if you don’t participate you are just paying higher prices for nothing.
In europe there is a max comission of 2-3% :p
Yup, a much more reasonable system and largely prevents the scam. That is why I didn’t use a credit card when I lived in Europe. IBAN transfers also make it feasible for online without credit/debit. However debit (or credit) is still significantly more convenient for day-to-day transactions in my opinion.
Yes, sadly thats true. I am actually looking into an smart payment ring hehe.
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Cash for Gift Cards?
I try to pay cash at small businesses. Having that much on hand is not really convenient
Cash when possible, if not then crypto. I would not call cash more private, your bank can see lots of details. When you went to the bank, there are cameras within the bank + the ATM itself has a camera, but I know what you mean.
PayPal and other systems are black-holes to collect your private data, they share even more data to third-parties than my bank.
there are cameras within the bank + the ATM itself has a cam
The footage is gone within days, but I’m pretty sure they have to log the serial numbers in connection with your bank account when you make a withdrawal :/
You really believe they delete something 😂… . oh boi … they upload everything into the cloud as cheap storage because hosting your own stuff is much more expensive, this is why Signal uses Google, AWS and Azure servers. At the end it does not matter what the bank deletes, Google makes copies I am sure, especially if the interest is high. I mean, how would you ever find out, they just duplicate, end. Or the feds forcing you by law or illegal to do it, but even if, Google etc. would not be allowed to talk about it because they sign a contract with the feds or govt. and in return they get something, I am pretty sure. Hard to prove, tho… sure.
Everything is in the system, your ID, tooth documents everything. Trying to solve things by afterwards hiding something is pointless, no one escaped every. Maybe D. B. Cooper but that was before PCs and CCTVs went mainstream.
Storing metadata is really cheap because its small. But no one keeps raw security footage around any longer than necessary, because high quality video takes a lot of space.
Can disagree and prove that, join Telegram, check the mirror channels and other groups. They mirror anything, gore, live leak, CCTV cams, etc.
Self-hosting is more expensive than cheap cloud, otherwise everyone would self-host which is not the case. You also need to build an infrastructure if you self-host, no one usually does that because one small DOS attack and your little PI goes down, good luck bringing Google etc. down.
That said, I highly disagree, it is a naive point of view and dangerous. If it comes to be reliable, I always choose Google servers over your little mini server.
Can disagree and prove that, join Telegram, check the mirror channels and other groups. They mirror anything, gore, live leak, CCTV cams, etc.
What? Do you think that ATMs security footage are just available in the wild or are uploaded to public spaces on Telegram or Mega or whatever?
Self-hosting is more expensive than cheap cloud, otherwise everyone would self-host which is not the case
Storage is cheap. The company I work for handles the security cams installed by some local town administrations (around 400 cams in total), and the entirety of the footage we collect is stored on our proprietary infrastructure. Of course you need some terabytes of storage at hand, but it’s not an ever-increasing amount of data because footage is erased every week to free up space and comply with the law. We work for third-parties so we have no interest in breaking the law and keeping footage past its expiration date, so I have no idea of what happens with banks and the footage they collect, but I’m pretty sure these kind of things are often handled on a local infrastructure, usually with the support of specialized IT companies (I don’t work for such a company but we somehow offer this service just to publicly-administrated entities and compete in the market with specialized companies) which are liable for what happens to the collected data. It’s not always so obvious that large amount of data = google or amazon-hosted. For what I’ve been able to see (keep in mind, this is anecdotal experience), it’s the opposite
I never said anything about public ATM footage in Telegram, the stuff you quoted is in response to the Admin and the hosting question. Most people, including myself, do not self-host for a bunch of reasons, it is cheaper and easier to upload your stuff into the cloud such as Telegram or Google Drive. My initial statement was that most providers, use and rely on third-party infrastructure and that externals could duplicate it, on their own, or they could be forced and that no one could find out. My statement regarding cheap and Telegram as an example was to show that people upload everything into the cloud, which is also the case, Google Drive and other services is full of Material, all sorts of material. Other services exist but they make maybe compared to big providers 10 percent of the traffic.
Most I know uses Google, AWS or Azure. Because they measure CPU work time, not even storage itself. That is how cheap they are. They are reliable, they are cheap as hell. If you want to build your own infrastructure like e.g. The-EYE did to host Terabytes of data you constantly need to upgrade, which is expensive. Oh well, and they went down because of what… money. The benefit is also that you do not need to worry, you pay for not only the provided services itself, also they take care of security issues etc. If you self-host you need to take care of all of that and upgrading the software alone is often not enough.
I rather trust experts who do this professional than some random dude who hosts his mini server that can be taken down without breaking a sweat. I tried that myself btw, for example I created a Tor server, it was not even public, took 2 hours until I got the first attack and it never stopped ever since then until I took it offline.
Your argumentation that we never do this or that is absolute redundant, assuming someone would do shady stuff with footage, no one would admit this anyway or he simply would be forced by contracts to never talk about such specific deals. However, it does not change anything regarding my statement that, if they can, they never delete things. Most people only delete stuff if they run out of storage, but typical scenario is run and forget it… until there are problems.
I never said anything about public ATM footage in Telegram
You claimed that banks never delete CCTV recordings from ATMs. So I really dont understand what you are arguing for or against.
Cash to buy gift card/s
I mostly use cash and only use credit cards for online payments.
Cash as much as I can. No traces, simple and always work. I do like the quickness of cards as well as the “safety” in the sense that robbing people is less interesting when noone hasoney, but that’s not worth the privacy costs. Also, the more cards are used the more stores will refuse cash (seen in restaurants in UK), and society will exclude even further poor people. (Not anyone can have a credit card or a phone to pay with)
