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.
I went through their privacy agreement and personally speaking, I’m not too comfortable with them when Location and Device data is part of their data collection, as these doesn’t seem to be necessary for them to provide the service.
There are also a couple of other clauses that I find concerning with their data sharing agreement:
- With third parties who may access data about you to provide you with the Services;
- In Connection with, or during the negotiation of, any merger, sale of company stock or assets, financing, acquisition, divestiture or dissolution of all or a portion of our business;
My problem with the first clause is that it’s too vague. From my interpretation, they can potentially sell your data to any third part as long as they can make the argument such data is necessary to provide you with the “Services”
The problem with second one is in the case of this company getting bought out. Even if we trust that they are currently a privacy respecting and trustworthy entity, there is no guarantee that in the case of a future buyout the buyer is equally trustworthy (e.g. what if Intuit buys them?). With the amount of data that they know about you (e.g. spending behaviour, device / location info, government IDs etc.), this could be extremely detrimental to your data privacy in the long run.
Now whether this is the lesser evil vs giving your payment info to websites is a judgement everyone needs to make. I steered away from it because I think it consolidates too much of my online purchasing habit into one place, and it’s a risk on top of all the info I already provide to my banks. I can definitely see merit if you’re using one throwaway card with low credit limit on this service or using it to make purchases on websites that you don’t frequent.
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?
Specify who you are referancing.
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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
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.
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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.
If possible, i make online payments with Monero. For example hosting, vpn, anonaddy and a lot of giftcards.
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.
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.
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BTC isn’t really privacy respecting, and has an serious issue of fungibility. I would rather suggest monero.
