Ask Slashdot: What Are Anonymous Ways To Pay For Goods and Services?

Long-time Slashdot reader mspohr submitted a report a couple of days ago from Richard Stallman via The Guardian, which argues that we should be able to pay for news anonymously. "Online newspapers and magazines have come to depend, for their income, on a system of advertising and surveillance, which is both annoying and unjust... What they ought to do instead is give us a truly anonymous way to pay." In response to that report, an anonymous Slashdot reader writes: There was a recent article posted here on Slashdot about Richard Stallman and his attempt to make paying for online content anonymous. The corollary to that question is: What are the remaining ways to pay for stuff -- in the "real" world and online -- that are truly anonymous? Even cash can be tracked, but what about other methods? Have we completely given up on anonymous payments? No more anonymous/numbered bank accounts, no more pre-paid/virtual bank cards in Europe (just happened recently), for that matter no more prepaid phone numbers (you have to register the number in Europe)? What is left after we had let the politicos run rampant with forced registrations of all payment services?

Comments

Cash...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way.

Re:Cash...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't function in todays society anonymously

Nirvana fallacy. There are degrees of anonymity. You fail.

First all the people who think their lives are so important that people will be lining up to spy on their mundane existence need to get over themselves.

You're a short-sighted moron.

First of all, while the probability of a 'normal' person being targeted is low, it's not nonexistent.

Second, 'normal' people taking measures to protect their anonymity/privacy helps provide cover for those who do truly important work, such as: Journalists, activists, lawyers, dissidents, political opponents, etc. Otherwise, anyone who takes such steps would be immediately suspicious.

Third, even if an actual human doesn't target you, automated systems might. An automated system might decide to add you to to the no-fly list or similar, for reasons completely incomprehensible to you. As law enforcement automates more and more tasks, mistakes like this will become increasingly common. It's already happened in a few cases that innocent people have ended up on these lists, and that might have been done by humans; imagine how bad faulty software will be.

Fourth, many people consider privacy and anonymity to be desirable in and of themselves, even if you would never be harassed by the government if you didn't have them. It's none of your business.

Re:Cash...

[TheRaven64]

First all the people who think their lives are so important that people will be lining up to spy on their mundane existence need to get over themselves.

That's not what people think. Some people remember the McCarthy era, when seemingly innocuous events in your past could be used against you. Did you give money to a charity that sent food to America's allies in the second world war? Better hope those allies weren't Russian, and if they were then no one finds out about it or your career can be ruined if you're in the way of the wrong person. Back then, it took a lot of investigative work, but if everything is recorded and indexed then you're just a database query away from having a list of all of the things that someone has done the next time that someone decides to introduce a Committee for Unamerican Activities or a Committee for Public Safety.

Other people are concerned more about aggregation. I'm not interesting, and you're not interesting, but when you start to aggregate information about you, me, him, her, and so on, then you get a lot of information that can be used to subtly manipulate political opinions. It's hard to think of many people you'd trust with this kind of power, and the people who are collecting it are probably not on the list.

A Couple of suggestions

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are a few ideas as to how you pay for something anonymously:
1. Cash (never truely anonymous unless you get someone else to buy it for you or wear a mask, disguise or something!)
2. Visa Gift Cards (may require a shipping address in which case you might want to get a disposable post box or use a friend's house)
3. Bitcoin

However, an interesting point tied to the transaction is how do you receive goods anonymously?
In person: Get someone to receive it for you, wear a mask or disguise
Via shipping/delivery: get a disposable address (e.g. mailboxes etc..., ship to a friend's house, hotel/motel you are staying at).

I guess the reason that there aren't so many options is mostly not a lot of people care if someone knows what they bought and in some cases you actually want them to know (e.g. for a warranty).

the more guns you have, the more likely you are...

[Anonymous Coward]

whitetrash gun nut

You might be interested to know that there's a funny name for you too: "Victim."

Oddly, statistics show the opposite: the more guns you have, the more likely you are to die by being shot.
Most of that, of course, is suicide-- having guns around turns a brief bad moment into a permanent problem for somebody else-- but even subtracting that, gun owners are more likely to be victims than non gun owners.
(the non-gun owners are likely to back away from a confrontation. The gun owners are somewhat more likely to walk into one.
But "Whitetrash gun nuts" and "victims" are overlapping categories.

By supporting it financially

[SoundGuyNoise]

You can support your local newspaper by actually buying one.

Re:Anonymous Payment Equals Money Laudering

[ptaff]

The biggest problem with mass anonymous payment is that it will facilitate criminal transactions

True, but individual human privacy should always win over war on criminals. There are other ways to catch criminals; there is absolutely no need to put on file all transactions made by citizens.

I'm getting so tired of all that "security" theater going on to excuse more and more data collection. My favorite these days is the "give us a primary key to merge our datasources across the net" by the name of two-factor auth and phone numbers.

Re:the more guns you have, the more likely you are

[drinkypoo]

statistics show the opposite: the more guns you have, the more likely you are to die by being shot.

That's not what they show.

Most of that, of course, is suicide-- having guns around turns a brief bad moment into a permanent problem for somebody else-- but even subtracting that, gun owners are more likely to be victims than non gun owners.

I bought a handgun not because I wanted to go shoot people, but because I was worried about being harmed by a specific person who was a relative. Calling the cops would have been useless, and only exacerbated the situation. People who are more likely to be attacked are more likely to choose to own guns. If I'm risking a stabbing, it doesn't matter if I risk losing control of my gun and getting shot. It would hardly leave me worse off than being shot. It takes fifteen minutes to even get to my house and it's on a winding road so going faster in an ambulance is not an option. If I wind up on the financial hook for a life flight, I might as well just commit suicide because I'll be in debt for eternity.

Guns prevent crime every day, but just doing so is illegal ("brandishing") so the law discourages an accurate accounting.

I don't care if guns make suicide "easier". Sorry, but I really don't. So a few more people kill themselves. Whoopee. Taking the guns out might reduce the suicide rate slightly, and in exchange we get to be surrounded by more people who don't really want to be here. If we want to reduce suicide rates substantially, we're going to have to make some serious changes to our society. I'm all in favor of that, but removing the guns won't produce the change you're looking for. It will produce a whole lot of them which you aren't, though.