this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
17 points (77.4% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35737 readers
1173 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

For context; I live in a NOT progressive country/region where being LGBT is illegal, and I often post in LGBT spaces. I want to do digital transactions but am afraid of the above will quickly get me in jail.

top 16 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is broadly the case with any bank account, credit, or debit card. The 'digital' part of a digital bank account just means there isn't a physical bank location to visit.

If you are worried about your government tracking the details of your financials, cash is the only option which cannot be surveilled easily.

[–] Que@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's also cryptocurrency. Not as invisible as many would have you believe, especially when KYC checks are involved, but there are definitely ways to stay hidden with it, by choosing certain exchanges, transfer methods, and currencies.

Not as straightforward of an answer as OP is probably hoping for though, and it also depends heavily on the recipient of the money.

[–] DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Does anyone actually use crypto to make actual purchases though?

[–] Que@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

There's some countries that accept it as payment fairly widely, and a couple that have even properly adopted it iirc.

In general though, no, but it's certainly usable globally and would get around OP's problem if the recipient accepts it. And if OP can be bothered with the hassle of learning about it.

[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

It's almost mythical by this point.

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 1 year ago

The bank can see your transaction. They may be part of a mandatory (or voluntary) reporting scheme.

The bank will not in general know about other things you do that don’t involve financial transactions.

[–] laylawashere44@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Basically as long as you don't link your bank account with your social media accounts in any way, you'll be fine. Basically don't put your real name on your social media accounts, which no doubt you don't do anyways. Don't for example add bank information to say a Google account linked to that social media account.

The bank only sees the information you provide it, which is where you send your money and where it comes from. A bank cannot rat you out unless you are sending or receiving money from something illegal in your country.

A government investigating you on say social media might try to obtain information about your account to eventually tie said account to a real person. For example, you might use a Gmail to sign up to a queer site, and that google account might have bank information if you have Google bank information. Then the government will use said bank information to identify you. Just don't put your bank information on anything linked to your social media accounts.

[–] sir_reginald@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is good advice.

just wanted to add that OP needs to mask their IP. If they log to social media and other sites, including their bank, with their real IP then the correlation is easily done by a government that will have access to ISP's logs.

I'd recommend OP to use a VPN for all their online traffic, making an exception to their bank because they might block VPN/Tor.

Also, it's quite important that they never give their real phone number and don't reuse email accounts. Having a separate browser profile is also a good practice.

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not usually a "this" guy, but I thought it might be worth pointing out that this seems like the best advice of all the other answers.

[–] scytale@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Assuming banks in your country follow typical banking industry regulations, an account with a digital bank doesn't really differ much from opening an account in person at a local branch. Banks report to the government for tax purposes, and transactions may also be monitored because of anti money laundering regulations.

You need to clarify the relation between banking transactions and posting in LGBT spaces though. Do you mean your transactions are directly related like donating to LGBT orgs? Or do you just mean you don't want your online activity (posting and communicating on forums) connected back to you? If it's the latter, then you need to look more into anonymization (i.e. use throwaway user accounts and don't share personal info; get a vpn; etc.)

[–] Wander@yiffit.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes. If your country is authoritarian use cryptocurrency such as Monero. Even Bitcoin can be much better.

The bank would know the amount, the merchant and other details even if it's a merchant from abroad. The bank might have a duty to report certain transactions or could be forced to give out a record. Other international payment process or foreign banks will generally not refuse a request if it comes from a country government you are a citizen of.

You can use crypto to buy gift cards to shop at regular retailers. This is your safest bet if you're concerned about a state surveillance of your transactions.

[–] sonovebitch@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I Am Not A Lawyer : I presume your best chance of anonymisation will probably be crypto accounts. But even then, platforms must register as authorized banking institutions with ID verification to be able to operate. And I suspect the local state can access that data, for example to track tax evasion.

But you also don't want unauthorized platforms because who knows what will happen to your money.

😓

[–] YIj54yALOJxEsY20eU@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can store crypto on a thumb drive, it is not necessary to keep it in some online account

[–] Companion1666@lemmy.world -4 points 1 year ago

If you're into anonymity, then don't open a bank account. Instead, use crypto.