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Ask Slashdot: What Are Anonymous Ways To Pay For Goods and Services? 212

Long-time Slashdot reader mspohr submitted a report a couple of days ago from Richard Stallman via The Guardian, which argues that we should be able to pay for news anonymously. "Online newspapers and magazines have come to depend, for their income, on a system of advertising and surveillance, which is both annoying and unjust... What they ought to do instead is give us a truly anonymous way to pay." In response to that report, an anonymous Slashdot reader writes: There was a recent article posted here on Slashdot about Richard Stallman and his attempt to make paying for online content anonymous. The corollary to that question is: What are the remaining ways to pay for stuff -- in the "real" world and online -- that are truly anonymous? Even cash can be tracked, but what about other methods? Have we completely given up on anonymous payments? No more anonymous/numbered bank accounts, no more pre-paid/virtual bank cards in Europe (just happened recently), for that matter no more prepaid phone numbers (you have to register the number in Europe)? What is left after we had let the politicos run rampant with forced registrations of all payment services?
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Ask Slashdot: What Are Anonymous Ways To Pay For Goods and Services?

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  • Cash... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06, 2016 @07:12PM (#52838063)
    The only way.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Well that and barter.

      • Not a lot of places take barter in the US. Though cash works at almost every store I've walked into when the price isn't up into the thousands. I have used a cashier's check to purchase an automobile before, and nothing on the check identified me, although to buy an auto you still have to provide ID.

        • by flink ( 18449 )

          The bank can link the check number back to you account. The check itself doesn't identify you, but it's not anonymous.

        • Actually there is a lot of bartering in the US. The problem is most of the time the consumer who has little vs someone who is rich and has everything that the average joe has already. But if wou are dealing person to person or business to business there is a lot more bartering going on. As it is a nice way to distribute their less liquid assets.

        • As noted in the Original article. Cash is not very anonymous. I'm not sure how anonymous, but every bill has a unique serial number that can be used to track it if it is involved in a crime. Does anyone have any familiarity with how often the numbers are logged or looked at? If the government wanted to they could require that all bills from cash transactions be logged out and in of banks so that the only way to anonymize cash would be through some 3rd party scheme ( which would probably be made illegal).

    • There's actually a really easy way, steal some BTC from some ridiculously insecure mechanism like a brain wallet [bitcoin.com], then go to a carder forum and buy someone else's credit card. Then you can buy all the drugs, pr0n, and other crap you like, and someone else will get prosecuted for it [alphr.com].
    • The only way.

      That's cute AC.

      Now smile for the camera.

      As in the 4,208 of them you'll be passing on the way to pay for your goods with your "anonymous" cash transaction.

      Being able to move in this world anonymously is a dead concept unless you plan on moving to the Alaskan wilderness to live off the la...oh wait, they have a camera crew there already. Forgot about that TV show. Nevermind.

      TL; DR - You're delusional.

  • Sexual favors (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Barter sexual favors

  • by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Tuesday September 06, 2016 @07:12PM (#52838073)
    especially with ammunition. .22LR is gold.
    • I need to do this.the next time I travel to Chicago. Ammo is cheap and plentiful around here. "Wanted, new car, have case of ammo".

    • by rossdee ( 243626 )

      especially with ammunition. .22LR is gold.

      Silver bullets are more useful, especially against Weres

    • How is barter anonymous? They may not know your name, but they sure know your face and possibly other information. Or are you bartering by placing items at some random location at different times, hoping the other party actually leaves the items at the location?

      And that can only work for goods - I don't know how it's possible to barter services anonymously.

      Or maybe people have changed the meaning of what 'anonymous' means?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Here are a few ideas as to how you pay for something anonymously:
    1. Cash (never truely anonymous unless you get someone else to buy it for you or wear a mask, disguise or something!)
    2. Visa Gift Cards (may require a shipping address in which case you might want to get a disposable post box or use a friend's house)
    3. Bitcoin

    However, an interesting point tied to the transaction is how do you receive goods anonymously?
    In person: Get someone to receive it for you, wear a mask or disguise
    Via shipping/delivery: g

    • Here are a few ideas as to how you pay for something anonymously:
      [...]
      3. Bitcoin

      Bitcoin is not anonymous.
      Anonymous cryptocurrencies are developed, but Bitcoin is not one of them.

      • by pla ( 258480 )
        Bitcoin is not anonymous.

        1) "Auditable" doesn't mean the same thing as "personally identifiable". You can absolutely say that account FOO sent 4.57BTC to account BAR at 11:05PM last Thursday. That has no bearing on the real-world identity of the transaction participants - From that information, tell me, who owns FOO and BAR? Did Grandma send me a birthday gift, or did Kim Jong Un just buy the plans for an Illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator?

        2) In common usage, most people only care about the "we
  • by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Tuesday September 06, 2016 @07:35PM (#52838167)
    I just fax them cash. I keep it along with the fax confirmation sheet as a evidence that I paid.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    so there's that

  • by Anonymous Coward

    1) Buy a prepaid visa with cash
    2) Use a library PC to create an Amazon account
    3) Ship the merchandise to an Amazon Locker.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Monero (http://getmonero.org) is the most private existing cryptocurrency. It is similar to Bitcoin but based on an entirely distinct codebase (CryptoNote). It uses ring-signatures to obscure who is sending the payment, stealth addresses to obscure the recipient, and "Ring Confidential Transactions" to obscure the amount being paid. Soon it will use i2p to hide the IP address of the sender.

    Monero is mostly traded on Poloniex.com but can also be acquired for Bitcoin on http://shapeshift.io or using the decen

    • by jonwil ( 467024 )

      Anyone who creates a truly anonymous cryptocurrency (one that even law enforcement/intelligence agencies cant track) will be a huge target. Governments of all sorts wont allow an untraceable method of moving money around the world to exist, it would hurt their interests too much.

    • Monero (http://getmonero.org) is the most private existing cryptocurrency.

      Not quite. It's one of the most private ones.

      It is similar to Bitcoin but based on an entirely distinct codebase (CryptoNote).

      This should already ring a bell -- it's based on something else. There are a few other CryptoNote coins, which are no less private. Some of them have technical advantages, like being much faster to update the local blockchain. In addition, there are other privacy-oriented cryptocoins which have nothing to do with CryptoNote.

      Monero's advantage is having a large developer/support base. IMHO, Monero is like the Microsoft of privacy-oriented cryptocoins, with lots

  • by SoundGuyNoise ( 864550 ) on Tuesday September 06, 2016 @08:22PM (#52838355) Homepage
    You can support your local newspaper by actually buying one.
    • You can support your local newspaper by actually buying one.

      My local newspaper [record-bee.com] is a festering turd which exists only to help maintain the status quo in this redneck shitbrick little hole of California. The local high mucky mucks are attempting to gentrify or depopulate the county (they don't care which) after literally taking money as part of a deal to take prisoners and mental patients in the seventies. They deliberately populated this mudhole with loonies and psychos and now they aren't happy with how it turned out. If I actually want any real news I have to visi

  • The biggest problem with mass anonymous payment is that it will facilitate criminal transactions. The people most to watch would be the people receiving those payments ie electronically stealing that money and then anonymously paying themselves. Want true anonymous services, do it for free, do it voluntarily and no money need change hands.

    • by ptaff ( 165113 ) on Tuesday September 06, 2016 @11:30PM (#52838863) Homepage

      The biggest problem with mass anonymous payment is that it will facilitate criminal transactions

      True, but individual human privacy should always win over war on criminals. There are other ways to catch criminals; there is absolutely no need to put on file all transactions made by citizens.

      I'm getting so tired of all that "security" theater going on to excuse more and more data collection. My favorite these days is the "give us a primary key to merge our datasources across the net" by the name of two-factor auth and phone numbers.

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        How about when politicians steal billions and starve millions or corporations cheat on taxes crippling social services or organised crime or terrorist organisation or mass bribery in government. Privacy or mass death a tougher question to ask and answer.

    • Even in places that try to crack down on cash, it's generally fine to carry small quantities of the stuff. One possible compromise would be a fully anonymous payment network that can only handle small quantities from each sender. For this kind of thing, you want a few million people to be able to pay a few dollars a day each. That's not likely to be very useful for money laundering, but would be enough to keep anti-establishment news outlets in business doing investigative journalism.
  • The bad part about lack of anonymity in our transactions is that Big Data actually gets us some reasonable legal use cases for privacy like why should my credit card company and everyone they share data with know what kind of porn I buy or what books I read or whether I go out to lunch often and who knows what kind of automated algorithms farther down the chain might do with that info like deny me employment surreptitiously.

    I think unfortunately the cat is out of the bag in terms of protecting that kind of

    • The bad part about lack of anonymity in our transactions is that Big Data actually gets us some reasonable legal use cases for privacy like why should my credit card company and everyone they share data with know what kind of porn I buy or what books I read or whether I go out to lunch often and who knows what kind of automated algorithms farther down the chain might do with that info like deny me employment surreptitiously.

      We all need to admit that the privacy war was lost long ago. But we have plenty of use cases for all the Big Data too. So instead of ranting about privacy, we need to change laws to make everyone who tracks us give us copies of all that Big Data in real time and in a useful (i.e. machine readable) format.

  • by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Wednesday September 07, 2016 @02:11AM (#52839195)
    Cash in a brown paper envelope. If it's good enough for our politicians then it's good enough for me.
  • I make all my questionable purchases using bull sperm. It's like liquid gold.
    http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi... [bbc.com]

  • The summary asks if there is a truly anonymous way to pay for news. I say, turn it around. Is there a truly anonymous way of getting your news for FREE?
  • It has to be said (though granted, I do not know yet if it has actually already been said)...

    Cash, grass, or ass.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I made a contribution to an organization I like and added a note that I didn't want them to call or release my name. It was with a check and didn't include a phone number. They looked up my phone number and started calling me for donation. What I found particularly irksome is that they proceeded to sell or exchange my name and phone number to dozens of other organizations and I was getting calls every day from people begging me for money. Because of this I don't give money to many charities except when

  • Anonymous (if you do it right) and saves you money at the same time. There's the moral dilemma, of course, but if you're paying for something anonymously you must be a terrorist anyway, so...

  • by ElectricHellKnight ( 4011689 ) on Wednesday September 07, 2016 @11:36PM (#52845817)

    Well if it really is that big of a deal...

    Rest stops, gas stations, and bars sometimes have those little dispensers for condoms in the restrooms (so no fear of being on camera). Just drop in a few quarters. I don't know why that's so embarrassing anyway. If you're buying them, it means you're the one getting laid, not the cashier.

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