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Santander To Track Customer Location Via Mobiles and Tablets
New submitter raburton writes: Santander (one of the biggest banks in Europe) slipped a little note on the corner of my latest statement saying they intend to start collecting "location or other data" from mobiles and tablets that their customers own, from 1st July 2015. There is no link to further information about the policy, or any suggestion you can opt out of it. The stated aim is of course to "prevent and detect fraud", but once they have the data (and they'll probably keep it for a long time) they, or anyone who can gain access to it, can do whatever they like with it. In this day and age I find it hard to take any assurances to the contrary very seriously. Is this kind of policy common practice with banks elsewhere?
I have exactly two non-stock apps installed on my phone - Chrome, and Adblock. I don't need a native client for my bank or Twitter or Facebook or Slashdot or anything, for that matter, that does nothing more than save me from opening Chrome and going to a particular URL.
I just don't understand the appeal of "we have an app for that" - Why would I ever want to give a company more access to my data than they already have, and let them drain my battery faster, when I don't need to?
Bank of America implemented this several months ago. No additional features, of course, to even justify more invasive use.
Undoubtedly Bank of Amerika will happily provide all your tracking data to the "security services" without so much as a warrant or if a warrant is issued it will be from the unconstitutional FISA Court adjoined to a National Security Letter for Bank of Amerika.
I've heard a lot of those banks have gone up in flames, literally. Seems like the security isn't all that great...
it fucks me up all the time. I use a vpn and my endpoint is all over the place. google really throws a hissy fit when I send email from my home (on a vpn) using imap. mostly they grey list me and time me out. if I use my own paid email vendor things are always fine.
but many websites do try to be smart but they fail because of vpn's.
I get google's calendar in various non-english languages simply because I use a vpn and some site that uses g's calendar ends up showing me days of the week in various languages. heh, maybe it a learning opportunity ;)
but this anti-vpn concept annoys me. I don't believe it rejects fraud. but it does discourage you to cloak yourself and I have my suspicions about why everyone is trying to force you to NOT anonymize, at least to the middle nodes along the way.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
And this is the reason why capitalism of today doesn't work.
It's the glory of the Free Market.
As soon as you become successful, you can afford to start buying up the competition. That can make you more successful, so that you can buy up other competitors who have been buying up their competition. Until finally the ultimate stage of the pyramid is that there is no competition, because no one starting from scratch can afford to compete against the massive economies of scale that only a very large competitor can afford.
All Hail The Glorious Free Market!
I did this for a long time, eschewing banks. Then, when I had enough cash, I tried to buy a cheap house with it, but, no dice. There's a law in the U.S. that's vague enough that no seller or agent will accept anything but a cashier's check because they are afraid they will be grilled by the Feds and the banks which answer to them as to where the cash came from; banks are not allowed to accept large cash transfers without reporting such to anti-drug, anti-laundering and anti-terrorism agencies.