Ask Slashdot: Should People Be Able To Shop Anonymously On the Internet? 125
dryriver writes: Picture this: You want to buy 3 small items from some online retailer totalling about 50 bucks. A programming book, a USB thumbdrive and an HDMI cable. But you don't want to give this online retailer your full name, credit card number, email address, home postal address, phone number or other data for this insignificant little 50 Dollar online transaction, nor do you want to bother with 'registering an account' at the online retailer's webpage with password hassles and such. You want to buy quickly and anonymously, just like you can from a bricks and mortar shop with cash. You now instruct your bank -- or another online shopping intermediary you DO trust with your data -- to pay for those 3 items, receive them, and send them on to your home address. The online retailer gets 50 bucks as usual, but does NOT get identifying private data about you. You just shopped online, without having to bend over and ID yourself in X different ways to some online retailer, and your private info didn't go into yet another who-knows-where forever-database that may some day be hacked or compromised. Why is this simple, simple service not really a thing in the real world? Why can you walk into a bricks and mortar shop in most countries, pick out some products, pay in cash and walk out, and when you want to buy the exact same (non-dangerous) items online, you have to tell some profit-oriented retailer all sorts of stuff about yourself? Why is real world store shopping pretty much anonymous -- as it has been for centuries -- and online shopping almost like being ID'd before boarding a flight at an airport?
You don't (Score:3, Insightful)
Go get a prepaid VISA card and use that. Of course it will need to be SHIPPED to you, so the retailer needs an address. You can get a PO box or something if you are paranoid. So I am not sure what the point is. Who cares if a retailer knows you like a particular brand of socks? I would rather retailers know what I like.
so, how do you get the stuff, then, Anonymous? (Score:1)
they won't ship to "second stop sign on Pitcairn Place, leave in bush". you need to leave an address. bus-ted! you have to give up information to get the goods.
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PO Box. Amazon locker. Your parents house. I mean really, what are you expecting?
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PO Box. Amazon locker. Your parents house. I mean really, what are you expecting?
The pro move is your neighbor's house. Just be there to pick it up before they do.
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And when someone steals your package, what're you going to do?
Hard to even make a police report when you're not "Fake Name" living at 12 North Street, Bedford Falls, NY 13243....
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And when someone steals your package, what're you going to do?
The same thing as when someone steals your shopping bag full of stuff you just purchased for cash while wearing a mask, sunglasses, and a wig?
Re: so, how do you get the stuff, then, Anonymous? (Score:2)
Thousands of parcels get stolen everyday. I've never once heard of someone getting mugged for their trolley of groceries on the walk from the supermarket to the carpark.
And if it did happen I'd expect the supermarket would probably reimburse you anyway, so you don't stop shopping there and because it's such a rare occurrence.
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Nobody will still your cash when you enter a store like that, in the USA, a junk yard dog law enforcer would simply empty their pistol into your chest and and half the surrounding neighbourhood.
Fraud is extremely problematic with any secretive payment system. Reality if want privacy, go to the shop and pay cash, sunglasses OK, mask probably not a good idea though. Security camera and facial recognition a problem and the store can ask you to remove a mask and face a camera or leave the store, so you would h
Re: You don't (Score:1)
I choose to have as few online relationships as possible. That means I use a stamp to pay utility and mortgage bills.
I don't want a hid and password with each organisation. Nor do I have that type of setup with any of my banks
It's just horrid! What will all the 'web prorammers' do if we all turn luddite on them?!?
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I don't get it. What happens if someone breaks into your utility account? I never understand people. They worry about the dumbest things while they are being tracked 24x7 online and offline.
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They would pay your bill. Or so the joke goes when you're asked to confirm who you are.
On a slightly more serious note, if someone does have access to your utility account they could have the account cancelled or, in the case of cable/internet, up the package you're buying and charge you the other arm and leg.
Since the changes came from your account, you were the one authorizing the changes. How can you prove otherwise?
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You can call the help line and explain that someone broke into your account and cancelled your utility. I mean really, who does that anyway? Hackers aren't going to bother. You guys worry about that while Google tracks your every move online?
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Many utilities want credit info supplied, which allows them to judge your deposit amount. Bad credit history? High amount, slacker. You also pay your bill with an electronic debit device, like a card, paypal acct, bank check debit, etc. Is someone interested in that data?
With electronic metering, utilities can track your appliance usage, including entertainment equipment, etc.
All this is juicy data, and no one I've heard has investigated whether utilities, like bureaus-of-motor-vehicles, telcos, etc., are s
Re: Bank wouldn't take cash. (Score:2)
Time to find a new bank.
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Utility bills are used to prove residence/identity. So i can imagine it might be useful to someone trying to make a fake ID?
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Yeah, it happens. Someone stole my mail once to do just that. Life happens.
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That means I use a stamp to pay utility and mortgage bills.
I am willing to bet that the bank holding your mortgage already knows your name and address.
The utility company supplying electricity to your house also likely already knows where you live.
Re: You don't (Score:4, Funny)
Nope. I include a SASE and have them ship my electricity to a PO box listed by the name Mr. Pilkington.
Water is tougher, but you just send a large jar and cardboard box.
Still trying to figure out the sewage problem though.
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I would rather retailers know what I like.
Retailers *knowing* what you like might or might not be a good thing. Retailers *guessing* what you possibly liked some indeterminate time in the past is unhelpful at best, and probably irritating, insulting, or condescending.
I can think of one good example of "who cares" (Score:2)
It's disturbing what you can do with Big Data.
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Canada Post offers a similar service. Ship to the post office which is in a drug store and open till 11:00 PM 7 days a week.
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It is sort of like those people who talk about "how do I remain private when connected to a network"? You don't. A network works by knowing how to deliver information to the endpoint. Endpoints aren't anonymous. They can't be.
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Endpoints aren't anonymous. They can't be.
TOR can make endpoints anonymous.
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Wrong. All Tor exit nodes are monitored. How do you guys think network information gets delivered? There needs to be ultimately an endpoint address. The idea of endpoint privacy on a network is a bit silly.
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Wrong. All Tor exit nodes are monitored.
Monitoring an exit node doesn't tell you where the packet originated.
If enough nodes are compromised, and you don't use enough hops, it is possible you can be tracked. A simple solution is to just use more hops combined with end-to-end encryption.
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Eventually the exit nodes need to know how to reach endpoints. It really makes no sense. End to end encryption is a different issue. Networks are not anonymous.
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Eventually the exit nodes need to know how to reach endpoints.
I am not sure what your point is.
Of course one exit node can see the source, and another exit node can see the destination.
But neither can see both.
So if you are trying to hide the fact that you EXIST, then sure, TOR solves nothing.
But if you are trying to hide who you are communicating with, then TOR, used correctly, can do that.
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What privacy? That you like a particular brand of socks? I would prefer that retailers stock brands of socks I like rather than stuff I don't like. You guys are weird and worry about the wrong things in life.
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Maybe you'll be fed per-user pricing where your favourite socks are more expensive than those you perceive as less desirable?
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"What privacy? That you like a particular brand of socks?"
That's why you order sometimes random stuff, with no connection to your persona, that you later return. It makes the AI crazy!
Picture this: (Score:2, Flamebait)
You're on the internet, but you want things to be like they are in the real world...
Just keeeeep picturing that....
Fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
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If you're using electronic money at the store they want a signature or PIN, the only way to do it anonymously is with cash.
You can buy a prepaid credit card for cash, and then use it anonymously.
Stores may ask for a signature, but no one checks the signature for validity. Just draw a straight line. Or write "Donald Duck". No one checks. No one cares.
Cost and speed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Taxes and accountability. That's why. (Score:5, Informative)
When you buy in a brick&mortar shop it is at a fixed location and so are you. Tax collection, a seeming requirement of our modern society, is therefore automatically calculated at a fixed rate and you pay it. Not so with shopping on the Internet.
Additionally when you shop at a physical store it's likely they have some form of surveillance, so when you get those 50lbs of ammonium nitrate it doesn't ring a bell... and when you stop at the gas station and get some diesel it doesn't ring a bell, but later when the feds want to correlate the two, there's a picture of you buying both. Not so with shopping on the Internet.
Accountability is why these vendors try to cover their asses / protect themselves / reduce liability by [in most case] requiring registration.
Want to buy cigars without registering? Done and done. (cigarsdirect.com)
Want to buy alcohol without registering? NO YOU CAN'T.
Want to buy hardware without registering? Done and done. (acehardware.com)
E
Are you nuts? (Score:2)
When you shop online, any store, whether you log in or not, has 100% of your information if they want it. They can just buy it from Google, your ISP, or any number if marketing intermediaries. No matter how many TOR's and VPN's you use, you're tracked back to your ISP and your browsing history.
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Of course, the real criminals know better than to act suspiciously.
Because (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike walking into a corner store, buying with cash, and walking out again into the night, never to be seen again, when you buy online the retailer needs to be able to trust the payment sent to them - AND MOST IMPORTANTLY - needs to be able to send you your goods.
If it's some ephemeral thing like buying access to an online service, you can do that anonymously with various payment methods from cryptocurrency to prepaid Visa cards or gift cards. But when you expect a physical good from the transaction, unless you can somehow show up to their distribution center and pick it up, it can't be anonymous because they need to actually get it to you.
pick up? (Score:2)
at the distribution center, you need to present ID to get your package. bus-ted!
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No you don't. You just need to show the receipt. I pick up stuff all the time for other people.
Apple may be the only ones to do it (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not sure about you but most of the places I shop online actually offer guest checkouts. Including ebay.
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What retailer requires anything other than a shipping address and a payment?
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I'm not sure what you're getting at with that question. Even if all online retailers required no more than shipping address and payment credentials, shipping address and payment credentials alone are already too much personal data for submitter dryriver.
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UAND MOST IMPORTANTLY
...needs to be able to hound you relentlessly to buy more stuff
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I must be really special! I buy things, I don't try to keep my ID secret from the people I'm buying from, and I don't get hounded relentlessly to buy more stuff. And, even worse, I don't see an advertisement and think "I MUST have this
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All easily solvable. Give them a one time code to print on the box that the courier can match to your address. The retailer only gets the worthless code that can't be used to locate or spam you.
Similarly for payments a disposable credit card number works.
Reason: high extra cost. (Score:2)
It costs money for the extra shipping, it costs money for that middle man to receive, print out a new address and stick it on there and do the the extra work to get it into the new delivers system.
Unless you have a special cases people are not going to pay that extra money for their shipment of peanut butter filled pretzels.
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Exactly. This is extremely common if you're outside the US. There are plenty of people who will
Absolutely (Score:4, Informative)
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"anonymously, just like you can from a bricks and (Score:2)
HAHAHAHAHAHA omfg how can you be so clueless
https://behavioranalyticsretai... [behavioran...retail.com]
Pre-paid payment cards are... (Score:2)
... ideal I would think. It allows one to buy cards with cash at a local store. Or someone could setup a service that purchases items on behalf of others though most people who didn't have a lot of money wouldn't use it.
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...
Yes you should be able to buy things anonymously, precisely because corporations and governments now have the tech to monitor us 24/7. So any privacy we can get is good.
Well, they need your address to send it to! (Score:2)
You already can lie in all the other fields.
Also, here in Germany, payment options always include advance payment (you transfer money from wherever you want) and cash on delivery.
So if you want to stay anonymous, you use some delivery address that is not your place, pay cash on delivery, and make up stuff for all the other data they are asking.
Since Germany explicitely has a law, stating that you must be able to use a pseudonym to use a website, one can even argue that that lying is protected by law.
(Yes, t
Oh goddammit, Slashdot! (Score:2)
"cash on delivery" had a <strong> tag around it. Apparently, <em> tags work, but <strong> tags don't. /.
Also, the <em> tag should obviously only include the word "must". Apparently I forgot the
Many Banks (Score:2)
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Do offer online credit card numbers that evaporate after use.
Sadly that service has been slowly evaporating due to lack of interest by consumers.
What makes you think PO box is anonymous? (Score:2)
but you can either get a PO box, or use a service like MailBoxes ETC to deliver goods to.
What makes you think a PO box is anonymous? Did you ever get one. The post office really wants I.D. info before they'll rent you one.
(I have no experience with the post-drop services. But I bet they're striding a fine line between giving their customers the appearance of anonymity and doing a CYA if somebody uses their service for a criminal enterprise and the cops come by looking for info.)
Should vs can (Score:2)
Why are we trying to answer a moral question
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Building a consensus on policy drives investment in mechanism to implement that policy.
Remember COD (Score:1)
I just fax them cash (Score:2)
Several reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
Except most brick and mortar shops nowadays have CCTV, so while you're anonymous, your personal data can be recorded forever and you can be potentially identified later as well. The banknotes you use for a purchase also have your fingerprints.
To avoid credit cards scam. It's all too easy to use someone else's credit card to use to purchase anything you want (within rational limits but then you can make many purchases).
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There is no central place where those CCTV videos are constantly checked and cataloged. There is no compiling of CCTV feeds from multiple stores to make a profile of you.
You scam worries have technological solutions, it is entirely possible to have anonymous electronic "cash" that only you can spend. Viabuy prepaid cards have some of that idea as far as merchant not knowing about you though of course the credit card company in that case knows what you are buying.
Can't you just buy drugs ... (Score:3)
From the street corner like a normal person?
Seriously you trust your bank to know you're doing {insert taboo thing here} but not {insert provider of taboo thing here} who typically has a vested interest in maintaining your privacy lest dropping out of {insert taboo thing here} industry?
Cash is anonymous? (Score:2)
What about security cameras and facial recognition?
Why? Because almost no one cares. (Score:4, Insightful)
People are so uninterested in going down that path that temporary merchant specific credit card numbers are going away. Fewer banks/ccredit cards offering that service. And you think the banks / credit cards should get into re-shipping of physical goods?
Bad assumptions in your question (Score:2)
Why can you walk into a bricks and mortar shop in most countries, pick out some products, pay in cash and walk out, and when you want to buy the exact same (non-dangerous) items online, you have to tell some profit-oriented retailer all sorts of stuff about yourself?
Why is real world store shopping pretty much anonymous -- as it has been for centuries -- and online shopping almost like being ID'd before boarding a flight at an airport?
You ask "why can you?", to which I ask a counter question, "*CAN* you?"
If you desire the level of being anonymous a big brick and mortar store gives you, what is the problem with Amazon? The level of anonymous is the same - aka none what so ever.
Physical stores record your every move from multiple camera angles, track you by face-print through the store, attempt to triangulate this with your cell phone signals being blasted out in the air, and when paying by credit card now links all that to your name, add
We should but we can't (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, we should be able to buy stuff anonymously, but we can't, not the way things are currently set up.
I've said it before: Any meaningful privacy is dead. It's over.
Between social media mining, browser tracking/fingerprinting, NSA/CIA/FBI operations, license plate readers, Stingray gadgets, the GPS in your phone, cell tower triangulation, Amazon Alexa and similar devices, TPMS scanners, and the video cams in every store and on every power pole and stop light, the concept of 'privacy' or anonymous behavior is pretty much gone.
I'd wager it would be nearly impossible to travel between any two major cities or buy anything in a store without leaving a trackable signature.
You'd basically have to travel by bicycle with your head covered (leaving your cell phone at home, of course) and pay for stuff in cash while wearing gloves. I'm not sure even that would do it.
Or maybe get a throwaway Uber account and have them drive you back and forth while you wear a mask.
But to get an anonymous Uber account you'd have to get a phone and an email address and setup some form of online payment. At some point the gymnastics and complexity required to remain truly anonymous start to become ridiculous.
Stupidly expensive for $50 items (Score:2)
"You now instruct your bank -- or another online shopping intermediary you DO trust with your data -- to pay for those 3 items, receive them, and send them on to your home address. The online retailer gets 50 bucks as usual, but does NOT get identifying private data about you."
How much extra are you willing to pay the bank to add logistics to the services they already provide to you?
well - good question (Score:2)
A) is there a question in this?
B) I don't have a privacy angle. Rather a speed & hassle objective.
Like you said - I can walk into a store and buy something using either Cash or a credit card (or Apple Pay). I scan my items, swipe, and walk out.
Online though.... omg it's a different story. I have to sign up. create a password, answer a confirmation email... and and and...add to cart, okay, okay, yes, no, please...commit.
Although I will say that once I purchased stuff online and had a very Store like
Amazon (Score:2)
BTW...this is part of the reason I contribute to the Amazon empire. I could shop around and create different accounts at several different websites and spread my info to the wind....or I could just buy from Amazon, get free shipping, and only worry about one place.
There are also 'pitfalls' out there. I one time made the mistake of buying something from 'wish.com' One week and a hundred spam email later I was doing everything I could to scrape my information from that page. (Another reason to stic
IRL cash purchases are not necessarily anonymous (Score:2)
Its called a reseller (Score:2)
now instruct your bank -- or another online shopping intermediary you DO trust with your data -- to pay for those 3 items, receive them, and send them on to your home address... Why is this simple, simple service not really a thing in the real world?
They exist... for example: Amazon.com is such an intermediary.
For such commodities you can easily shop online with an entity you DO trust with your data -- pay for those 3 items, they have already received the items and fill your order against them, and the
Not the same (Score:2)
>"You want to buy quickly and anonymously, just like you can from a bricks and mortar shop with cash. You now instruct your bank -- or another online shopping intermediary you DO trust with your data -- to pay for those 3 items, receive them, and send them on to your home address. "
You are making an invalid comparison. With a cash transaction in a "brick and mortar" store, *NOBODY* has any data. You don't have to instruct your bank or some other entity to pay and ship things. I know I wouldn't want th
Already solved, not by banks but shipping company. (Score:2)
Such a method already exists and it is not banks who do it. Wikipedia "packstation" for a sample service from DHL in several countries or "paczkomat" for Poland.
You can make online order, paid via card, to be shipped to a nearby automatic pick up station, providing the shop with only your email or phone number plus ID of the station. Package gets sent there, you receive pick-up code via email or SMS, voila.
There are such networks in some of the countries, however law might require collecting of customer nam
Decent solution already exists (Score:2)
Basically it's a fully P2P market; nobody knows what you bought, how much it cost, or where it was sent to/from except the buyer and the seller.
All transactions are done in the anonymous cryptocurrency PART (similar to Monero).
All listings are hosted in a decentralized manner (not on a blockchain, so listings do expire and you tiny amounts of PART to post them and keep them alive).
No one person has c
Is shop getting the credit card number a US thing? (Score:2)
Is the shop getting the credit card number a US thing?
Where I live, almost all websites, uses a third party gateway to receive payments, and all the shop get is the money. Even for subscriptions. So it works exactly like if I use my card in a physical shop.
But then again: if you want to hide you bought an HDMI cable, you may have far larger problems.
Just the payment issue (Score:2)
Because the alternative wasn't an option before (Score:2)
You think the kings of old wouldn't like to know where every coin and note they issued was and who was in possession of it and to tax every transaction? Technology didn't create the desire, technology simply made it feasible. The world will make a lot more sense then, inventing contraception and abortion didn't make us want sex without having kids. The desire was already there, we made it possible.
The Joy of Buying Anonymously in a Retail Store (Score:2)
"Will that be cash or charge, Sir?"
This is the use case for PayPal (Score:2)
If your wife really, really wants those slippers As Advertised On TV from cheapcrap.cn, and it's a site you would rather not give your credit card details to, use PayPal. All of the problems that people have with PayPal are using it to receive money, when your account could be arbitrarily frozen for an indefinite time and there is no human to talk to about getting it back. There is no problem with using it to send money.
When one walks into a brick and morter shop (Score:2)
One takes on the task of carriage of the goods one has just purchased.
SO... When you go on line, not only are you performing this inconsequential purchase, you are tasking them with unsupervised delivery.
Yeah, you gotta tell them who you are and where you want it to be.
Grow up.
additional cost (Score:2)
I rarely buy anything online because there is always an additional cost on top of the item cost + postage.
And that cost is that every single online store assumes that even a single purchase gives them the right to spam me, sell or trade my name + address etc, and otherwise abuse my personal information.
And, sometime in the last decade or so, most couriers and delivery companies started making the same assumption - that because the online store gave them my email address that they were entitled to spam me wi
Trust, not anonymity (Score:3)
It seems like a decent idea, but let's be clear: the proposed solution doesn't give you any anonymity - it just means your bank/"package broker"/whatever is collecting the information for *all* your purchases rather than a bunch of different merchants collecting data for a few purchases.
It does fracture the data a bit, which helps: The "bank" *probably* doesn't know exactly what you bought (unless they make it a requirement for processing your purchase), while the merchant doesn't know who you are. The combination makes compiling a surveillance/marketing dossier on you considerably more difficult - which I'm all in favor of.
Just don't forget to include the surcharge for the middle man - you're asking for real-world services with real-world costs - that's not free for them to deliver, and you're going to have to pay them notably more than it costs for it to be worth it for them. Though that may not be a direct surcharge - some of the stores here offer themselves as a package delivery location, presumably on the hope that if you're there anyway, you'll do some shopping.
Idea has merit. Requires new services (Score:2)
Apple Pay already abstracts the payment mechanism from the vendor, so your credit card number and personal info are not provided.
What would be needed is a location anonymization layer. Something where I could generate some one-time-use hash or identifier that I would provide to the vendor to put on the shipping label.
The vendor has the shipper pick up the package. The shipper is able to turn this one-time-use hash into a deliverable address. The software routes it to where it needs to go, providing as littl
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boxholders need information on the rental sheet to get a key. bus-ted!
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So...commit a crime? Genius!
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First, last I checked, the Bitcoin network had a low transaction throughput (on the order of 400K transactions per day worldwide) as each block fills up fairly quickly. Second, what's the counterpart to Bitcoin for Internet parcel forwarding?
Re: Literally what Bitcoin is for (Score:2)
The throughput doesn't really matter to you as long as YOU can make a transaction. So, things like the Lightning Network (which bundle transactions to provide vastly higher throughput) free up capacity for the smaller number of people attempting to use Bitcoin without Lightning.
So far, this seems to be working pretty well at scaling the network. Fees have been significantly below those of MasterCard/Visa since Lightning came into wider use. We won't know until the next run-up if it's really enough though.
As