If you're choosing locally owned businesses for your coffee, groceries or other things, kudos for supporting alternatives to corporate-owned outlets. A reminder that paying with cash allows them to keep the full proceeds rather than sharing them with moneygrubbing banks and payment processors.
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privacy is another good reason for paying with cash. What's the point of using encrypted comms or ad blockers or taking other privacy-preserving measures and then buying everything with a payment card? Payment cards allow data brokers to track every purchase you make, every business you visit and when. When you split a check with someone else, it lets them know who your friends and coworkers are. The amount of privacy lost using payment cards is astounding.
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So many responses from people trying to find reasons to hold onto their payment cards. Fine, go ahead. Have your purchases, contacts and whereabouts permanently stored and tracked. Just don't lecture anyone about the dangers of unencrypted comms or website tracking.
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Wow, my comment really touched a nerve with many of you.
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@dangoodin money for “larger” purchases (as small as a few hundred dollars) can be seized by law enforcement. If you buy $300+ of groceries at a time (like I do weekly) I’m now a target for losing my money without recourse.
(Unless I manage to secure a lawyer, who sues the police dept and proves the money wasn’t for illicit purposes.)
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@dangoodin
Agreed. We should go back to a cash economy.
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@dangoodin Increasingly (but not yet substantially), vendors in my area (BC lower mainland) are declining to accept cash. The rationale, when one is offered, is that having cash on a premises increases the likelihood of a break-in. One assumes that this risk is real. Needed is an anonymous payment card - something like a universal gift card that can be purchased for cash, preloaded. I'm not aware of any in our market. Transit agencies should be creating fare cards that can do this - they could then take the vendors' cut. But other than the Octopus card in Hong Kong, I haven't seen anybody doing that.
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@rose @dangoodin Yeah, around here (Seattle) most places won't accept cash. I imagine the risk of robbery balances is higher than the transaction cost (at least in their mind).
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@iagox86 @rose I don't know about BC, but I'm surprised about Seattle. I live in a major metro area in the US and buy most things in cash for the reasons @dangoodin states. While I do encounter some businesses that don't take cash, it's a small minority in my experience.
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@rose @dangoodin
This is a problem here too. The vet up the road went cashless in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic.
My only warning of this change was when my cash was refused when I tried to pay for a tick/flea treatment. I left the packet on the counter and walked out.
I have enough passwords to remember without adding another to my wallet.
Plus, I can look in my wallet to see how much cash I have, extract cash out, and put cash back in… without the need of an Internet connection or electricity.
I sometimes go to rural areas where LTE coverage is patchy. At Southbrook and Imbil, I've witnessed the coffee vendor doing the Visa card jig with a payment terminal held high over their heads more times than I care to count.
We should not go cashless until payment cards work everywhere that cash does. i.e. in places without Internet access and electricity.
You don't need it to work in those places until the day some fire or flood comes roaring through your neighbourhood and you're standing at the counter of the service station with your jerry can full of petrol (for your generator) trying to pay for it.
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@dangoodin
Just a thought.
At least banks pay me (travel benefits, large sign up bonuses, cashback, etc.) to be tracked, and I'm aware of it.
I still block ads and trackers because no one is offering to compensate me for sharing that data.
🤷♀️
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@dangoodin Because replies don't appear to know this, credit and debit card transactions cost merchants on average between 1.5-3.5% of sales price.
PayPal is higher, IIRC.
Chart from NerdWallet:
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/credit-card-processing-fees
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@femme_mal @dangoodin For dealing with a local merchant, or a tradesperson, sure pay cash on the spot. The trades person may well designate that "beer money" and pocket it.
For dealing with big companies and online sellers, a credit card gives you quite a bit of protection. They do NOT like chargebacks.
Also I get that 1.5% back from the card company, so unless the big business is giving me a cash discount, I am 1.5% better off by using a card.
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@mike805 @femme_mal
The tracking of your hourly whereabouts, your purchases and your contacts seems like a high price to me. YMMV.
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@dangoodin @femme_mal To me the ideal approach is to decide what you want "off the record" and figure out how to isolate that. Maybe you buy alcohol or cannabis products or vapes with cash so that doesn't go to your insurance company. Maybe you have a VPN for online activism. You have a boring on the record life, and keep the spicy stuff offline.
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@dangoodin @mike805 Excellent point — ex. women absolutely should be concerned about their purchases of feminine products as one example since fertility can be deduced from buying habits as well as the legal jurisdiction in which they are purchased.
But a purchase of a household appliance is different from monthly purchases of personal consumables. My home is public record and the 1-in-20 year replacement hot water heater is less noteworthy.
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@femme_mal @dangoodin why is American Express even a thing? I don't know any stores that support it, and this fees table kind of shows why.
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@sophieschmieg @femme_mal @dangoodin Amex seems to be good at catering to large companies.
My work credit card is from Amex.
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@sophieschmieg @femme_mal @dangoodin
My Amex is my grocery store card. 6% cash back. Guess where I purchase gift cards for Amazon, Airline tickets, and other common big corp? All subsidized by cash payers and CAC budgets.
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@dangoodin i expect you got the same sorta backlash that I get when i tell people to consider using wire or signal, or run their own mailsever or [pearl clutchy god for bid emote] leave facebook or instagram.
people do very much love sacrificing basically anything they can for tiny, miniscule grains of convenience.
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@dangoodin "i would rather sell out my entire address book, let siri and alexa record audio in my house, car and work 24/7 and get free next day delivery on amazon then EVEN CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY that i may have to click two more buttons, or use a slightly less popular app on my phone."
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@dangoodin i literally had one friend outright dump me and never speak to me again because i told her that the power purchase agreements from shit-tier orgs like vivint are basically con-jobs and for the amount of gear they put on your roof you should be GETTING PAID not 'just getting your power bill discounted by 20 or 30 percent'.
its bonkers. this sorta shit is worse than heroin. folks are ADDICTED to this kind of convenience.
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@Viss @dangoodin people.mp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLyJN9EImoU
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@Mustardfacial @dangoodin hah! yep, exactly this.
but applied to the internet and computers
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@Viss @dangoodin Convenience is why SCADA systems are accessible on the Internet 🫣
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@Viss @dangoodin I've been running my own email servers for decades and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
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@Viss @dangoodin
I'm cash everywhere aside from online purchases. It's for many reasons, including privacy, but it's also convenient. I like the straightforward nature of cash. You give me stuff, I give you money, and our relationship is done. I have nothing to account for aside from having enough money in my wallet to get through the day. All the struggles I watch with other people operating the various card machines exceeds the time I spend even counting out coins for exact change.
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@Viss My big issue with signal is that I can't get any of my non-technical contacts to use it, in spite of how dirt-simple it is.
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@c_change have them try wire. it looks and feels a lot more like slack. group based chat functionality
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@Viss @dangoodin ... And no recognition of the attention costs of "free" products.
I'm finally convincing my better half that we should get a custom domain and email hosting (I know enough that I could run my own, but know better). Ads in Gmail mobile were bad enough, but they're now taking up the majority of my inbox whenever I open it. Every glance has that additional mental and physical burden of getting around the ads and it's horrifying for me. Like, I just want to keep my brain on what I want to focus on, thanks.
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@dangoodin I mean, you're not wrong.
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@dangoodin Given the widespread use of loyalty cards to get the best prices, even paying with cash doesn't stop tracking. And hell, the license plate readers are recording you driving around everywhere anyway, as well as your car sending your GPS data to who knows who?
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@lauren
Sounds like privacy nihilism.
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@dangoodin I call 'em as I see 'em. As you know, I've been in the privacy arena for a long time. My privacy forum mailing list has been going continuously for into 34 years now. But my view is that most of what people rant about re privacy aren't the big issues that really matter. Perhaps that's working as intended to divert attention. For example, worrying about essentially anonymous targeted ads is an utter waste of time while data brokers actually buy and sell PII, and we're on the verge of requiring IDs to use the Internet in a U.S. version of China. Keep your eyes on the ball, in other words. Just sayin'.
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@lauren @dangoodin
Have you considered using (local area code) 867-5309 as your phone number with all loyalty programs?
"It should be under Tommy or Jenny".
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@Harleck @dangoodin There's a tremendous amount of cross-checking on these programs now to validate data. They're not stupid.
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@lauren
License plate readers don't work on cyclists or pedestrians.
@dangoodin
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@kevindalley @dangoodin De minimis.
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@lauren
For you, it is de minimus
For cyclists, it's nice to know that trackers don't work.
@dangoodin
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@kevindalley @dangoodin Actually, some of these systems are advanced enough to track bicyclists and pedestrians without license plates. More work to link them to identities, but that's often possible too. Some of this is still in the research stage. This is all secondary to plate reading of course, but once you have the video data you can do a lot with it. And of course, the more cameras the better in terms of the corpus for analysis. But since most pedestrians and bicyclists are carrying turned on cellphones, they provide a far more robust tracking mechanism anyway for those cohorts.
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@lauren
Agreed that cyclists and pedestrians are only safe from tracking for a while.
And high profile cyclists have been tracked. For example, Luigi Mangione.
But for now, cyclists can probably disappear more easily than motorists.
@dangoodin
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@dangoodin shout out to my buddy at Ly Gas and Liquor who laughs at anyone presenting an Amex and tells them to gtfo.
actually, thats pretty much any pho, noodle, ice cream, dumpling, or smalltime lunch spot ive been to in recent memory.
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@dangoodin Because many Amex holders are upscale and spend more. Does it compensate for the higher percentages? Don’t know.
At Congressional hearings, the head of VISA agreed that their margins are “above 50%”! No wonder corporations are heading to financialization instead of manufacturing or doing something useful and lasting.
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@dangoodin Every time I hear about how another one of these organizations are breached and they held my information without my consent, I wonder if computers were a mistake and if marketing should be illegal.
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@dangoodin Cash is also a great budgeting tool. At the beginning of the week you take out your budgeted amount of cash from the bank and then ALL of your purchases are done with that amount for the week. If you're disciplined enough about it, it's a real good way to both track your spending (in that you can physically see the money going away) and keep yourself to a spending limit because once all of the money is gone, there is no more until next week.
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@Mustardfacial
Loss of privacy, and hardship to local merchants are too high a price for a budgeting tool. There are plenty of other ways to keep track of your purchases.
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@dangoodin I'm advocating FOR the use of cash. Both for the reasons you've mentioned, and as a budgeting tool.
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@Mustardfacial
Derp! I misread your response. Sorry.
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@dangoodin No worries ✌️
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@dangoodin you're dang right.
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@dangoodin Digital contactless payments (like Apple and Google wallets) use temporary tokens rather than credit card numbers, which makes it significantly harder for vendors to track you.
https://robots.net/fintech/how-apple-pay-tokenization-works/
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@lpar
I didn't know that. Correct me if I'm wrong, Google and Apple will then have all the info that the payment card providers would have normally, yes?
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@dangoodin I don't know about Google. Apple Wallet shows all your transactions, so clearly they have the technical ability to look at your full transaction history. I trust Apple more than I trust random merchants, though. I wouldn't trust Google, since they're an advertising company.
Apple's contract with Goldman Sachs apparently doesn't allow Goldman to use the payment history for targeting, or sell it to others.
For people really into privacy, store loyalty/discount cards are a big thing to look out for, as obviously those allow even cash transactions to be de-anonymized. (Unless they're the plain paper type with holes punched out or that get stamped.)
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@dangoodin We support local businesses with cash, but we havent been doing it specifically for privacy.
We do it mostly to give them the money that they would otherwise get charged bank fees for on each traansaction.
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@dangoodin
I was surprised when working at Apple five different coworkers in my group alone never had a credit card. They only used cash for privacy. They’d even purchase their cars with cash.
All of them got Apple Card for their first credit card when we started internal testing. It was amusing as some managed to have such a small credit report footprints there was internal escalations to get them a card issued from GS.
I rotate at least 6 cards at any given time for bonus award gaming.
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text/gemini