Slashdot Mirror
ATM For Anonymous Online Payments
prichardson writes "The New York Times has an article about a way to anonymously transfer cash online (NYT registration required)." The inventor, Carl Amos, believes the target market for his newly-patented 'Aunty IM' ATM machine "..might be teenagers.. [who] do not usually have their own credit cards, they usually have cash and are more than willing to spend it to download music or games", as well as "those who were worried about identity theft on the Internet, or who simply wanted the privacy it provided."
This would be perfect for when you want to buy something without being tracked... but there is still a trail. You could use one of these machines, but if the feds got involved, they could probaqbly find you (from the camera, etc). It would leave some sort of a trail. Still, not bad for buying that fake vagina you always wanted.
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
So how would I go about paying someone online? Today I could use
a credit card or Paypal at someone's web site...how could this be
done from an ATM? (No, I'm not gonna try to punch in the recipient's
URL!)
That's a rather critical detail not mentioned in the article.
Practice Kind Randomness and Beautiful Acts of Nonsense.
PayPal wont accept payment for "adult" related eBusiness now (ie; pornos).
Whoever steps in to fill that gap make a friggin mint. The frontrunner seems to be CitiBank's C2It, though I know nothing of such services.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Although I really support the idea of being anonymous for protective purposes, I don't quite understand how this product helps very much.
Sure, you don't have the logs of cash coming out of your account (credit, savings, etc), but there is cash being sent somewhere, and that somewhere has to be well-defined for the cash to get there.
Also, the product, assuming something is bought, has to go somewhere, again a well-defined location, even if it is a mail-drop.
AFAIK, all wired money transactions are logged in some fashion, and for this to be approved by the government, it would have to be as well. I still don't see how super-beneficial this gimmick might be.
There is a money transfer system called hawala that allows two people in different locations with a means of communication, who trust each other absolutely, to transfer money without the aid of the banking system. Lots of people use it to send money from America to the the Far East - mostly because it is cheaper than Western Union, etc. However, I understand it is being cracked down on because terrorists were using it to move funds around. Still, it will be difficult to shut down completely since it only takes two people and a means of communication to operate. Most of the people who use this system today do so because there is no reasonable alternative (financial system is not good in their area), not because they are terrorists.
I have read that organized crime transfers money from country to country by wiring small amounts (under the amount that must be reported) constantly. Even though there is a paper trail of sorts, it is very hard to sort through. But again, most of the people who wire money are not organized criminals. Should we stop this practice because some of the people are?
Means of moving illegal money secretively already exist. I think the idea with this system is it could allow people to make online purchases, even if they are from an area of the world that does not have the financial systems and identification systems that we take for granted in the West. I am inclined to think the net effect of this would be good. Many people do not have any sort of identification or formal bank account (as required for a service like paypal, which is apparently unavailable in much of the world), but if they could get to a kiosk with some cash, they might be able to order something - provided someone was willing to ship it to them. This could be a big improvement in the lives of many people. It could also help economic growth, facilitating transactions at greater distances and of greater complexity than was possible before.
Should we not build any infrastructure because criminals could use it? Criminals can drive on the roads, too, but that does not mean we stop building them. We police them. This system would have to be policed.
correct. and once some dumb criminal discovers he can use it to buy a gun (insert 1,000 $, get the card with amount on it, give to gun seller then go bang-bang) and then uses that gun to say... kill a high political figure (no insinuations there!!!) or popular person etc. BAM! instant ban or regulation.
Yes, and since you have the anonymous purchase card you don't have to register the gun or go through the other processes. "Here's my anonymous cash card!" "Right, here's your pistol and ammo." You do know that you have to register to buy a gun, right? You also know you can buy a gun with cash, right?
Anybody who accepts these cards will accept cash, and you have no benefit over them. For some reason I doubt that most private gun sellers will offer support for these cards.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Everything in society is not about terrorism, yet it is the overwhelming topic. I want to make and addendum to Godwin's Law:
Every slashdot discussion will eventually mention terrorism.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.