I’m thinking about credit/debit cards, but I’m sure there’s more I haven’t considered.
Cash is king
Use monero or cash
If in the US, check out privacy.com. It’s a bank so expect the signup process to be as invasive as any other bank, but they allow you to create masked cards and you can fill in any name and address you want into the billing info to keep your real info away from websites. Paid version also hides transactions you make from your actual bank.
Always carry extra cash everyday to pay at stores, never have debit/credit card in wallet unless it’s to withdraw more cash, never give stores your number or name to buy or reurn something, do not give legitimate info to register for a free store card, never register for a tap pay service on cellphone, buy a pre-paid credit card if you can buy it anonymously with cash, for Americans, use privacy.com for card masking.
If you exclusively use physical cash with change at stores and never give a name, there’s no behaviour prediction to get from you or how to advertise to you. Online purchases are not as good for data mining and tracking because there’s no geo location like paying with a card at a store that can be used to track your movements and at what time you were there.
I tried to sign up but they required my picture holding my ID. Even my bank doesn’t require that. I was not OK with that obviously.
To me it is just shifting trust from 1 entity to another like VPNs
I tried to sign up but they
Who is they?
Oh yeah, I was replying to a post that mentioned privacy.com - that is who, I meant, asked me for my ID to be able to sign up for their service
Specify who you are referancing.
privacy.com ask for picture of ID to sign up
If I were serious, I would use crypto, but I have virtually no money and NSFW toys from Japan are not illegal here, yet.
The problem is that when you order something online, you have to provide your real name and address, so whatever.
The problem is that when you order something online, you have to provide your real name and address, so whatever.
Not always the case 😉. Any name will do
deleted by creator
Honestly nothing.
My problem is cash is really the only way to be truly private with your finances. Nothing else besides going great lengths using Crypto or gift cards is really private as far as I understand. I personally hate using cash, it is just such a hassle to use when compared to a debit/credit card. I always worry I don’t have enough or I have too big of denominations, or I will fail at math and look like an idiot. It is annoying to carry around, if you live in a bad neighborhood it could be potentially dangerous to carry around.
I really wish there was a private mainstream finance option but I have yet to come across any.
Additionally to what people have said, I have set up several banking accounts with different banks. That way, no bank has the full picture of what I earn or how much I spend.
I’m not zealous about it… I’m selling my privacy for 1.5% cashback to banks and for 5% to Amazon! However, I’m consolidating my banking to fewer banks than earlier. And I stopped using services that aggregate financial accounts to provide insights - budgeting, projections, investment advice, etc.
On the other hand I use Privacy.com for smaller vendors, but more often for security reasons than privacy. Monero for some services, like VPN.
Also, no real name or address in store loyalty programs.
If possible, i make online payments with Monero. For example hosting, vpn, anonaddy and a lot of giftcards.
Probably worth moving your e-commerce sites off your google, outlook etc. Proton mail would be good. I don’t use open banking. Everything is debit card.
What do you mean by open banking?
It’s here in the UK, not sure about elsewhere, but a sort of standard for exposing financial data to 3rd party providers of apps etc. I don’t know too much about it, but linking my banking to other services didn’t sit well with me.
10 years from now I hope that most of my transactions will be done in BTC. I plan to have most of my money on a multisig non custodial wallet like https://github.com/fedimint/fedimint .
- If transactions are done between 2 non custodial wallets, the government cannot stop them, no one can. Meaning that if stores use non custodial wallets as well, no one can stop you from transferring money from your wallet to theirs and getting the item you want. Of course there could be a police presence to stop you from getting the items, but many stores use non custodial wallets, it no longer becomes feasible.
BTC isn’t really privacy respecting, and has an serious issue of fungibility. I would rather suggest monero.
