The Federal Trade Commission issued orders to eight companies offering surveillance pricing products and services that incorporate data about consumers’ characteristics and behavior.
After reading such news I have an obvious question. Does anyone know a PayPal-like service, that allows to hide the destination of my transactions from Mastercard / bank, but with a good privacy policy? Or how else can I restrict the usage of my financial data by mastercard or bank?
You're right, I try to use {insert cryptocurrency that I'm heavily financially invested in} for my every day transactions as much as possible, you should too, and you can get amazing returns as well! It's win-win nobody loses ❤️
There is Privacy.com that gives you virtual cards to use for purchases. Money go from your bank account to them. Destination is visible on payment description still, but it may fool bank's algorithm. Or you can get paid plan from Privacy.com and mask destination completely.
Oh, sorry, I've assumed that you are in US since you posted an article about FTC.
I don't know if there is a similar service in Europe. I think you could get a virtual card linked to a crypto wallet, but this obviously comes with downsides
Unfortunately there are a very small amount of places when I can pay with crypto... I do not want to face also questions from AML officers. I'm not a journalist in the dangerous country or political activist, so Monero looks like an overhead for me.
Monero is for everybody. The most common things I purchase on a monthly basis in Monero are Domino's Pizza and groceries. And as far as I'm aware, neither of those things are illegal. Monero is money, just like a $100 bill is money (currently). It is perfectly legal to hold and use Monero.
Besides the other user's recommendation, have a look at coincards. Haven't used them yet, but they have gift cards for a lot of things, online and physical brands too.
This is not accurate. Monero offers a very high degree of privacy and anonymity. So does Bitcoin lightning, to a lesser degree. Lightning transactions don't go on chain and are known only to: sender, recipient, and intermediate nodes, if any.
Yes and no cash for the physical world does indeed protect your privacy properly. However, you do run into the issue that you have to trust. Your government's currency, which at least for me, I do not. So Monero is also a way of getting out from the government currency that I believe is being debased and devalued.