Oh boy, another “for some reason people do banking on their phones” thread!

1. Do not bank on a phone, if you have to, as @issei6969@futurology.today said, use a browser.

2. Attestation isn’t about trusting the device for transactions. It’s about knowing the user of the device and everything going on around them including what is currently going on inside their anus.

All these companies are doing is making excuses to justify metadata-harvesting at a necessary inflection point in human life: Money can be exchanged for goods and services. Since people need to buy things to live in this current version of our world, companies just want to take advantage of that inflection point because it has been made unavoidable.

Devices don’t need identities, a zero-trust model should always be used.

Mobile banking is pointless. Not 20 years ago it was still commonplace for paper bills to be mailed and paper checks to be mailed back. Settle up a dinner with friends? Break out the paper bills, or write a check, or just take turns getting the check. Need money? Go to the bank and get paper money.

No function of human society requires mobile banking, and it went on for centuries without it.

The solution is to not use Zelle.

https://clark.com/personal-finance-credit/banks-banking/zelle-things-to-know/

The bad thing about Zelle is that there’s no way to cancel a payment to another user. That means if you send money to the wrong person (don’t mistype that email address!), get hacked or your phone is stolen, you may be in big trouble!

…

But to be extra safe, Clark would rather you not use Zelle until they offer real protections. From your banking account website, he also wants you to unenroll from it.

“The banks do not care about you,” he says. “And that’s why you have to make sure this is turned off and understand the scams, stealing your money through Zelle, will keep morphing.”

How deep does the rabbit hole go? Read on!

A Zelle service agreement PDF: https://static.chasecdn.com/content/dam/legal-agreements/library/en/chasenet_la/versions/chasenet_la.pdf

Zelle is allowed to grab all the metadata about your, your phone, your IMSI, IMEI, everything, and share it with whomever they want.

Section 6:

We or Zelle may use information on file with your wireless operator to further verify your identity and to protect against or prevent actual or potential fraud or unauthorized use of the Service. By using the Service, you authorize your wireless operator (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Verizon, or any other branded wireless operator) to use or disclose information about your account and your wireless device, such as your mobile number, name, address, email, network status, customer type, mobile device identifiers (e.g. IMSI and IMEI) and other device and subscriber status and device details, if available, to us or to Zelle or its or our service providers for the duration of your business relationship, solely to help identify you or your wireless device to help prevent scams and fraud. See Zelle’s Privacy Policy for how it treats your data. See the “Disclosure of Account Information to Third Parties” and “Privacy Policy and Notice” sections below for how we handle your data.

❤️

They can’t when it means their sleep mask doesn’t exist anymore and they die in their sleep, for example.

Duh, and/or hello.

Another banking app thread, fun! Don’t use phones for banking. One just trades privacy for perceived convenience. For “safety” you give your bank:

• Unnecessary lower-level system access than normal apps, for SAFETY!
• Your location as often as they can harvest it
• What apps you have installed
• Any metadata they can exfiltrate through trackers in the app that can be mated with metadata from other app trackers
• Any personal information they can gather from your phone

Furthermore, if you use tap-to-pay, which some banks require their app be installed to use, you’re then giving every transaction you do, with or without tap-to-pay, to the operating system provider and any third parties along the way. Use your credit card at a store and the phone’s at home? That transaction still gets scooped up.

Finally, you have this object you always carry with you, that has access to all your financial information, that a bad guy just has to punch you in the face to get you to log into your bank and delete all your money. Bravo! With a card, it can be shut off afterwards, and the bank can mark any transactions happening afterwards as fraudulent. With a phone app, they can Zelle themselves your money and the forward it to some cryptocurrency and good luck. Then clean out your RobinHood, your DraftKings, your CoinBase, your 401k, and anything else they find along the way.

Use the bank webapp if one is desperate.

Banking. On. Phones. Is. Stupid.

You’re letting the bank know everything about you. What apps you have installed, how you use your phone, where you go, you’re just letting them have access to your entire life for mild convenience. Just use the web site and make an icon on the home screen to get to it.

There is indeed propaganda going on, but there is also a reality that many supply chains need conversion, and that money needs to come from somewhere. Not saying it is right, nor that it is unsolvable, just a reality. Most often, the smaller businesses are destroyed by expensive switches to new methods. Which is all we need, more megacorps owning everything.

In a world with functioning governments, processes, grants, tax breaks, and such could be set up to help companies switch.

Yeah, didn’t want to hit every note. Medical specifically requires a higher tolerance and quality level that makes it more challenging to be replaced with alternatives like bioplastics. For most items, I’d be fine buying them in glass or cans again.

Could also reduce the shipping needed on these by requiring standard container shapes that can properly be emptied. So many consumer product containers, even food containers, are designed so it is difficult to fully use the product. Companies see it as an uptick in sales because you’ll be buying that soap/ketchup/whatever more frequently since you can’t use 4 ounces out of the bottom, rather than seeing the cost-savings of not shipping 4oz x thousands of containers of weight pointlessly. (Personally, I go out of my way to empty every container fully, but many see it as a waste of effort.)

Never said unsolvable by any means, but they need to be solved yesterday. Blows the mind too, for all those capitalism-minded people, they have all this untapped “wealth” they could be getting into on the ground floor instead of clinging to oil.

If the post is even accurate, that likely doesn’t factor in secondary needs. Roads, tires, shampoo, soap, lubricants, hydrogen, solvents, medical plastics. So many things made from oil and oil byproducts.

All of these industries have to be looking into alternatives in parallel, if they are even aware.

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And using tap or chip on a regular credit card does as well. Every tap rotates through a set of keys in the card. The periodic use of the chip refreshes the tap keys. It isn’t the first gen tap to pay on credit cards anymore, it is much more robust.

But beyond that, the retailer already saw your face when you walked in, already saw it at the point of sale, already tracked you as you traveled the store via WiFi, already saw the BT/WiFi profile of your rotating MAC address device as it only obfuscates, and in some cases, already had your phone join their WiFi network via EAP-SIM through your carrier, already scanned your license plate with Flock in the parking lot, and already saw your club/discount/points card number at the point of sale, so they already associated you with yourself.

Tap-to-pay also sets up so all your transactions, on-phone or not, are captured by the handset manufacturer for further resale of metadata.

There was a recent change in the last month or three that any tap transaction over $100 has to be chip or swipe. Likely what you are seeing. Which again goes back to how pointless phone tapping is when the ability to buy goods and services is already rife with hoop-jumping.

The plastic card can be shut off by the bank web site/phone call/app. Banks also have fraud protection, a quick call will shut off the card and undo any fraudulent transactions. The fear is not realistic. Also why it is good to use a credit card and not carry a bank card. A fiscal firewall.

Who cares? What is the obsession with banking apps? From a privacy perspective, one does not want tap to pay or banking apps on their device. Setting that up gives the bank/a whole pipeline of interim companies access to every transaction you make as well as phone telemetry, whether or not you use the tap to pay service. Carrying a card or paper money is so simple.

It’s a novelty, sure, but who wants tying their ability to purchase, drive, go through airports, and such, to an electronic stalking tether with a limited battery? Much simpler, as others have said, to use tools that do not require battery.

And yet still not as serviceable/durable as older ThinkPads. They don’t even have water spouts in the keyboard/chassis like the older ones. One could dump a beverage on the keyboard on the older models and it would route through the keyboard->chassis->even the docks had water routing ports so it would just keep traveling mostly harmless through to underneath.

Nor batteries externally removable like used to be.

Not a bad step though by any means, and great to see this return to user-serviceability.

Props though, on the removable RAM. Given the need for shorter circuit paths for higher performance RAM these days, that looks a bit of clever engineering.

Favorite little snippet from another take:

In 2019, the provincial government canvassed British Columbians through an online consultation and found that 93 per cent supported ending the time changes that have been in place since 1918. Much of Canada still follows the routine that largely synchronizes with the United States, so the B.C. government decided after the 2019 poll to wait until key trading partners California, Oregon and Washington State agreed to change as well.

This week, Mr. Eby said the provincial government is not prepared to wait any longer and that B.C. will be on Pacific time permanently as of November.

“We are done waiting. British Columbia is going to change our clocks,” Mr. Eby told reporters, adding that he hopes the decision will help nudge U.S. Congress to move forward on adopting a similar change.

Do not wait up for us. Gonna take some time to figure out our problems.

Additionally: Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brazil, Cook Islands, Falkland Islands, Fiji, Georgia, Hong Kong, Iceland, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macau, Mongolia, Namibia, Paraguay, Russia, Samoa, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Uruguay, Vanuatu, and most of Mexico have all abolished time changes, and Ukraine in 2024 switched to standard time.