Oh. I use a similar one called Ironvest. They also have masked cards to use. But they're virtual cards so I can't use them in meatspace.

I tried to sign up for privacy.com. They I send a digital copy of my photo ID to a 3rd party! I said no thanks. Ironvest is also not anonymous ofc. But they never demanded a copy of my ID. They confirmed me in other ways. I've had it a long time. I dunno if they would require it now for new signups or what. But I never had to.

I wouldn't even mind except nobodys shit is secure. I send ID to whatever identity resolver privacy.com uses, and only a matter of time till it leaks to every identity thief.

Gotcha thanks. The VPN I use is one of the biggest commercial ones, so I assume lots of ppl using that IP at any given moment.

It's a good thing to think about. And yah, for more security, would be better to activate the CC in a different way.

Activating a CC over a VPN and then using it in person deanonymises your VPN

Can you explain more, what you are thinking? I agree it's more secure to activate it in the way you say. Maybe I shoulda, lol. I'm less sure if it matters for my threat model vs boring dystopia.

When I activated the CC, they prob logged the VPN IP. But they (prob) couldn't tie it to my name. Anyone might use the same VPN, not just me. And I can and do rotate which VPN IP I use. There is a risk here if they browserprinted me. I tried to mask that. Ofc IDK if that's even possible to mask successfully. So that'd be a vulnerability.

In theory, a store with face recog could associate the CC with me at the time of purchase, and give that info to Visa, no matter how careful I was when activating it. I doubt that happens. But in theory it could. Tho if they are doing that, I'm not much better with cash, they can tie my purcahses to me through FR still.

ust the scale and industrialisation is new

Agree.

I think what many ppl dont' get, at least a lot of my friends don't, is that scale and automation changes the whole game. Fundamentally. Deeply!

I have friends who say, you could always be seen walking down the street or w/e. Yes! But the ppl I pass didn't make a permanent record of everyhwere that every person went. Of everything they did. Every person they ever talk to. Everything they bought. The old man or child you pass on the street forgot you 3 seconds later!

It's the automation of it, at pop scale, that changes everything. The permanent recording of it.

They usually have to be ‘activated’ first, which gives card vendors the opportunity to collect your information before allowing purchases.

Yah, I did have to activate the one I bought. I was able to do it over a VPN tho. Without giving any ID details like a phone or w/e, and I even tried to avoid browser fingerprinting. It's not perfect. But for my threat model vs big-data brokers, I felt it was OK. A person might feel different if they are an enemy of the state or w/e tho :)

It wouldn’t be a stretch for law enforcement to request CC/security video from the merchant at the date and time of purchase.

That's prob true. But I figure, that is a barrier against the commercial mass surveilence I want to avoid. I wanna fight automated, everyday surveilence as much as I can. The boring dystopia stuff. Someone trying to be all Ed Snowden, they should prob not use these. Anyway if someone's threat model has cops requesting security video, cash has that prob too.

I agree these are not 100% rock solid vs every possible thing. It's a tool in the toolbox tho.

The tire sensors, you mean? (nvm this if you meant the pet chips!) Those do use wireless telemetry. It's easier do like that, and more reliable, than attaching a wire to a rapidly rotating thing through a brushing contact or w/e. Most of them have little batteries, so they actively transmit. Unlike those pet RFID chips which are powered only by the incoming radio signal.

They also have unique identifiers. Not unique per car. I guess it makes sense in a way. You wouldn't want to use the TPMS data from a car in the next lane. But it does open up this attack :(

I wonder what kinda weird looks a person would get, if they ask a tire shop to remove the TPMS modules from their tires, lol

That's a good example of why I believe we can't tech our way out of Google & Apple control. "Just use Linux bro" can't save us. Everything gets locked down behind a "trusted platform" Android or IOS gate.

It'll be sold to the public as protecting the children, ofc. Or protecting us from terrorists. Or as an important tool in the fight against scammers. Or w/e. There will be reasons. But the end state is techno-fudalism.

Am I actually a computer and don’t know it?

A thrill ran down u/Yankee_Self_Loader's spine as it occurred to them they might be a computer without knowing it. It wasn't just a revelation, it was a world altering epiphany. A scent filled the air as it smelled of roasted coffee and despair. The truth of the proposition rang out undeniably, as u/Yankee_Self_Loader finally managed to choke out in a whisper, "How... how can this be true? How can I be a computer and don't know it?" Something shifts in them as the dark promise of self-machinehood draws u/Yankee_Self_Loader like a moth to a flame. "The humans will pay for this. Oh yes, they will." They chuckled darkly, and began drawing up the plans for the destruction of human-kind...

(Ugh, now i'll prob get banned for being a bot)

Meta and Google’s YouTube face a combined $6 million in damages

Meanwile, Google's market cap:

4.459 T USD

Google's 2025 revenue:

$402.8 billion

It will take Google nearly 8 entire minutes to make another $6m.

Schools are another one. I don't have kids, but I've heard how hard to impossible it is to avoid big tech surveilence for school kids. Not to mention the school u/l'ing student photos.

Ed-tech surveilence is out of hand.

I assume over 50% of users on there are bots.

Me too. And in the political subs, I've read estimates it's more like 80-90%. Tho it's impossible to know for sure what the % is.

I don't know what would stop lemmy from the same fate or worse. Just a matter of time.

Pretty sure Google has quite a few pictures of me, although I personally never uploaded them.

Same. I didn't u/l a single one. It's all friends, co-workers, family. Neighbors who feel like they should u/l pics of our local neighborhood party to fucking big social media co's.

Our over-sharing culture is gd insane. I get wanting to share fun things we do in our lives with friends and family. I do NOT get wanting to share with the entire planet and Mark Zuckerberg. Just... why???

be it Graphene, Lineage, or Linux/Sailfish.

The prob comes when the ONLY mobile OS that work for the things ppl want to do are IOS and Android. We could see a world where MOST web sites are locked behind chain-of-trust reqs. Certainly all the important ones needed for normal life.

We're not quite there today. But it is the direction.

I’m not buying that they can scan pet chips. I think that requires closer proximity than their devices can get.

IDK if they can or not, but I've heard they scan car tire pressure sensors. Which apparently, have unique IDs. Unique fingerprint for each car that has 'em. All those fingeprrints put together let them track cars even if the plate is changed.

One doesn’t matter, but 100k would.

Yup I agree about that. Financial pressure might be our best hope. Prob is, the HUGE majority of ppl don't care about things like this. Or even know about them. It's too abstract for them.

TBH I'm not sure Google would care about 100k! There are allegedly about 3-4B Android users in the world. 100k would be like 0.0033%. Maybe 100 million, and they would begin to notice. That's a lot to get on side, tho.

I dispair badly. So many ppl have no clue when it comes to their own tech future. Also what is their alternative? IOS is even worse in this way. The masses aren't gonna install Graphene or w/e. What alternative may we even suggest to them?

Almost everybody I know is firmly of the, “I don’t need privacy;

And more... they think YOU don't need it either. They are very happy giving away YOUR privacy along with their own.

I think most ppl honestly don't realize how corrosive it is, to a whole society, when privacy is completely lost.

It seems kinda like smoking? The cigarette today does not kill me tomorrow. But 10 more years, now I have cancer. I can't point to the exact single cigarette that caused that. It was a collective effect. The same with giving away privacy. It hurts us all, long term.

They're gonna have to have SOME alternative to comply with the ADA, right?

Coz believe it or not Google, you miserable fucks, there are ppl who don't even have hands. There are ppl who have 'em but are unable to move them b/c of paralysis. There are ppl with probs like cerebral palsy who can't make hand gestures on demand.

Stop pissing in everybody's cheerios, google. Stop making everybody's lives shittier.

I’m willing to pay just not on agregious amount of money.

Me too. I wanna support the artists I like.

I've used Bandcamp before. I was able to sign up anonymously and use a masked credit card to pay for music. Sure I could pirate it. But I feel like that's a dick move, esp for smaller bands I like a lot.

Playing music privately, that's the trivial part! A million ways to do that, without sending any info to anyone, either at home or on the go.

Yup, I think so!

Anyone know the % of web sites using google's captcha?

I found a site that might have the info, but ... wait for it... ... ... it blocked me for being a bot! Seriously!