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

Posted by BeauHD on from the anonymous-coward dept.

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?

27 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Cash... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The only way.

    1. Re:Cash... by flink · · Score: 2

      The bank can link the check number back to you account. The check itself doesn't identify you, but it's not anonymous.

    2. Re:Cash... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Cash... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Sexual favors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Barter sexual favors

    1. Re:Sexual favors by tehcyder · · Score: 5, Funny

      Barter sexual favors

      Do you have any idea what forum you're on?

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  3. barter works for me by turkeydance · · Score: 2

    especially with ammunition. .22LR is gold.

    1. Re:barter works for me by rossdee · · Score: 2

      especially with ammunition. .22LR is gold.

      Silver bullets are more useful, especially against Weres

  4. A Couple of suggestions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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).

    1. Re:A Couple of suggestions by pD-brane · · Score: 2

      Here are a few ideas as to how you pay for something anonymously:
      [...]
      3. Bitcoin

      Bitcoin is not anonymous.
      Anonymous cryptocurrencies are developed, but Bitcoin is not one of them.

  5. I just fax them cash by jfdavis668 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I just fax them cash. I keep it along with the fax confirmation sheet as a evidence that I paid.

  6. hard currency by Lead+Butthead · · Score: 3, Informative

    You know, that paper money you referred to as cash isn't hard currency; it's fiat currency.
    Let's hope the faith we have in the government continue unabated.
    ---
    Government was a lot like a religion, but lately it felt a lot closer to a cult.

    --
    ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
    1. Re:hard currency by mjwx · · Score: 2

      If the government collapses you'll have bigger problems than worrying about whether advertisers know you subscribe to the NYT.

      If the US government is going to collapse, you'll be able to cash out long before the currency becomes defunct. Typically when that happens a country has already adopted the currency of another country, whether legitimately or by de facto. If things in the US get bad enough, they'll just start using imported Euro notes for purchases.

      Although the US is a long way off from this.

      As for buying things anonymously, its not that there aren't ways to do it, there's heaps with cash being first and foremost. The problem is that most people are refusing to use anonymous payment methods because they've been sucked into living in debt for everything (this is going to become apparent as a major issue long, long, looooooong before any governmental collapse and is likely to be the cause of a(nother) financial collapse). When you borrow money for everything, someone else knows all about your spending habits.

      Yes, I know the view that people should live within their means is unpopular here in /. but I will not apologise for holding it.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    2. Re:hard currency by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      It's worse than that even. The rest of us who lost everything will vote to confiscate your foreign currency for the common good. Yay Democracy!

      Yeah, I was just thinking about bank bailouts. What we did there was pay the banks to create the current housing crisis in which there are multiple empty homes for every homeless person in the country, in exchange for nothing.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  7. Cup of Noodles or Smokes keep Bubba's penis at bay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    so there's that

  8. Amazing nobody has answered the question yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    1) Buy a prepaid visa with cash
    2) Use a library PC to create an Amazon account
    3) Ship the merchandise to an Amazon Locker.

  9. Re:the more guns you have, the more likely you are by x0ra · · Score: 3, Informative

    False. Canadian data show that suicide rates are *not* affected by easy access to firearm, which remains constant post gun control laws.

  10. Monero (XMR) is the most private payment method by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Monero (http://getmonero.org) is the most private existing cryptocurrency. It is similar to Bitcoin but based on an entirely distinct codebase (CryptoNote). It uses ring-signatures to obscure who is sending the payment, stealth addresses to obscure the recipient, and "Ring Confidential Transactions" to obscure the amount being paid. Soon it will use i2p to hide the IP address of the sender.

    Monero is mostly traded on Poloniex.com but can also be acquired for Bitcoin on http://shapeshift.io or using the decentralized p2p exchange https://BitSquare.io

  11. By supporting it financially by SoundGuyNoise · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You can support your local newspaper by actually buying one.

    --
    You never expect irony, do you?
    Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
    @iyfwrestling
  12. Re:the more guns you have, the more likely you are by mjm1231 · · Score: 2

    Wouldn't the statistical number of people who were shot which selected from among only those who were shot be 100%?

    A statistical measure of the percentage of people who were shot who own guns isn't necessarily flawed on it's face. I'll grant that taken on it's own, it's not very meaningful. However, if the percentage of gun ownership among shooting victims is higher than the percentage of gun ownership in the general population, you just might have a correlation.

    --
    Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
  13. Re:the more guns you have, the more likely you are by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are still quite a few relatively easy ways to kill yourself, even without a gun.

    But those ways aren't used nearly as often. and they're not nearly as lethal. Some of the most common means of attempting suicides have a success rate of around 5-10%. Very nearly 70% of all successful suicides are with a firearm. Not the number of attempts mind you, but the number of successes. All those other "relatively easy" ways to commit suicide are very often unsuccessful, and that means those people have a chance to get help. Firearm suicides are successful just about 90% of the time, which means a gun owner having a very bad day might be dead when if they didn't have ready access to a gun, they'd still be alive. And if they're still alive, they are very unlikely to die of suicide later.

    High-gun ownership states have suicide rates just about double that of low-gun ownership states.

    Oh yeah, people who attempt suicide and are unsuccessful are unlikely (less than 10%) to die by suicide later. But since only about 10% of gun-related suicide attempts survive, it's too late for them. Now put all that together for yourself.

    https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/m...

    https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/m...

    https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/m...

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  14. Re:Anonymous Payment Equals Money Laudering by ptaff · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  15. Cash in a brown paper envelope by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny

    Cash in a brown paper envelope. If it's good enough for our politicians then it's good enough for me.

  16. Re:the more guns you have, the more likely you are by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  17. Re:the more guns you have, the more likely you are by Shane_Optima · · Score: 2

    I specifically attached a "just out of curiosity" to that bit. It's a side tangent I choose not to fully explore in the interests of brevity, but it was relevant to the larger (but still secondary) point I was making about the suicide argument being a pathetic and doomed-to-fail appeal to a nanny state mentality.

    The government clearly has a role in preventing people from harming each other (and in that area, you have a reasonable although not bulletproof argument that gun availability is causing significant suffering in America.) The government's role in preventing people from harming themselves is much less obvious. I think it sets a worrying precedent and is doomed to failure anyway because, as I said, there are plenty of other highly effective methods of suicide (or other kinds of self-harm) that the government cannot realistically combat.

  18. Re:the more guns you have, the more likely you are by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

    However, very few of these suicides are committed with a firearm. The majority are drug overdose.

    There is no state in the US where intentional suicides by drug overdose outnumber suicide by firearm.

    You're bullshitting.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  19. If you need to be anonymous... by ElectricHellKnight · · Score: 2

    Well if it really is that big of a deal...

    Rest stops, gas stations, and bars sometimes have those little dispensers for condoms in the restrooms (so no fear of being on camera). Just drop in a few quarters. I don't know why that's so embarrassing anyway. If you're buying them, it means you're the one getting laid, not the cashier.