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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Should cash stay alive to enable "private" transactions? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by War5oldier@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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For example: in Canada, the bank accounts of those who protested were literally frozen (for simply speaking out or being critical) and talks of potential CBDCs (aka. used to deduct funds from one's account as a fine) whilst considering on abolishing cash altogether.

The alternative (for now at least) may be Crypto (online) until they consider that "illegal" in the future penalizing those who are using it, framing that as money laundering or tax evasion, whilst pushing their propaganda of "tap & go is safe & convenient".

The answers are divided between:

"Cash is King" (it allows anonymous or "private" transactions between you and the merchant)
"Contactless" (convenient, but your purchases & transactions are monitored by the state)

Cash is apparently the last bastion of "anonymous" transactions where it doesn't appear on one's statement and one gets to keep their money without the state deducting it from their account since a nation's central bank has monopoly over CBDCs and one's funds.

That's not even the end of it: them trying to make BTC or equivalent illegal by making CBDCs the default replacing gold overnight, it would mean all those bills you have are worthless. At this point, the only payment method is CBDCs that are linked to one's digital ID.

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[–] SkyeLight@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago

Especially with things like cyberattacks (institution losing access to your accounts), scamming (you lose access to your accounts), power failures (everyone loses access to their accounts), etc.

I mean, I literally have a small stash of money in the closet (some 20's and a bunch of smaller notes), so that if a semi-major disaster hits, I can still buy any supplies I can find that I need - gas, water, food, a couple nights in a hotel, whatever. Plastic is a great backup system, but it relies on me having my card, my card having enough money free, the merchant having power to run the card, the merchant's communications working, the system they link into having power and communications, etc. With cash, it's just "here, take this" and it's all good.