this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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I'd bet you can guess why

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[–] mox@lemmy.sdf.org 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

There is no privacy-focused PayPal alternative in the US, in part because US money transfer laws and policies (e.g. Know Your Customer) directly oppose privacy.

However, there are a couple of new projects that might eventually lead to something less bad for privacy than PayPal is:

  • GNU Taler, if they ever get any exchanges, and they either figure out how to mitigate the high fees for wire transfers or use some other settlement method when people on different exchanges make small payments. (Their plan to use batch wire transfers won't help until the exchanges get a lot of adoption and frequent use. Of course, high fees discourage adoption and use, so this might not ever happen.)
  • FedNow, if banks ever use it to offer appealing person-to-person payment services instead of just using it for themselves and their business customers.
[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Monero as the current fiat system becomes more and more untenable and people look for a solution not controlled by governments.

[–] mox@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Cryptocurrencies are not reliably fungible, nor stable, nor widely accepted. They have their uses, but they are not suitable replacements for PayPal and not what OP asked for.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago

Monero is fungible and especially when using the one-year moving average is quite stable. The variance on either side of the moving average is about 15% and that will decrease as adoption occurs. I run a small store where I sell products for Monero at stable prices for three months in a row by using the moving average as my price point.

[–] davoid@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago

Taler looks like a cool project.

[–] davoid@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago

Thanks for the input

[–] tehWrapper@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Cash or Crypto is about all I can think of..

If your looking to move money from a bank to someone else's bank, I don't think you can expect to have much privacy in that from the parties actually making the transfer happen?

[–] davoid@lemm.ee 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I'm more looking to keep legal transaction data private in the sense of not being shared or sold. If that's even possible ever-the-more.

[–] SecurityPro@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Best option I can think of is privacy.com

You can create virtual cards linked to your bank account and the transaction data is masked when processed by you bank. All my bank transactions show up as NSA Gift Shop. My bank doesn't know where I'm spending my money. Yes you have to trust privacy.com...

[–] davoid@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago

Yeah i guess it's too much to ask for open source for this. Privacy.com actually looks like a good option. I will check it out. Thank you.

[–] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What about just wire transfer? Everything goes through your bank anyway. That’s what I’ve replaced PayPal with a while ago.

[–] davoid@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago

Thanks! That had not occured to me. The purchases i would use it for would generally be small amounts, so i wonder if that would be feasible.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think there is CC masking service Lois rossamnn shills that that's prolly easiest route for what youa re looking.

[–] davoid@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Never heard of Rossman... looks like an interesting thing he's got going. Thx

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 5 points 1 month ago

Yeah if you are down this path it was inevitable for him to come up. He got a lot of hot takes which are not that very hot once you think about it.

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] jet@hackertalks.com 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/advanced/payments/

Monero is the only privacy digital cash equivalent I'm aware of. There are a limited number of vendors who will accept it, and any of your friends who you can convince to take monero will also accept it

https://kycnot.me/?t=service

Here's a list of known services that accept it. Things like VPNs, web hosting, email hosting, game hosting, internet services basically

Any of the other payment systems, the bank systems like zelle, PayPal, etc ... They all have the problem of introducing a third party into your transactions. Who will then almost certainly sell your data

[–] davoid@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

Thanks for those links.

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago

You can also use monero (and other cryptocurrencies) with gift cards.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 2 points 1 month ago

They all have the problem of introducing a third party into your transactions. Who will then almost certainly sell your data

Shoulda held on to cash harder....

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'd bet you can guess why

If your use case is illegal and requires anonymity, digital money transactions are dangerous due to the US law requirements, even if the system is FOSS. Use cash or cryptocurrency with good opsec in such cases.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

PayPal recently announced it’ll start selling customer information.

[–] davoid@lemm.ee 6 points 1 month ago

The barstards

[–] davoid@lemm.ee 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Nothing illegal, just good consumer privacy practice.

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ok then sorry for suspecting.

[–] davoid@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

No prob. : )

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If money is involved there's most likely KYC so... no?

[–] davoid@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago

And that's okay. Just looking to break with the enshitification movement.