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Europe has opened a door to a universal wallet

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11–20 of 44 posts

Re: Europe has opened a door to a universal wallet

#11
The Nazis were literally a European organisation and still in living memory. They've still been prosecuting a few of them here and there. It is quite distressing at how quickly people start talking about the virtue of these grand centralised identity systems. They are a huge threat to minorities, dissidents and troublemakers.

A messy, badly communicating shambles might well turn out to be the optimum approach to this problem. There is reason to believe that efficiency is a bad thing when it comes to being identified and tracked.

Re: Europe has opened a door to a universal wallet

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stealing it and having an exploit to unlock it

Wonder how long until people get desperate enough to steal phones and the owner's thumb...

Easier to force them to unlock it then and there. Less bloody.

Re: Europe has opened a door to a universal wallet

#14
There’s no way this is an improvement over cash when it comes to privacy. It’s an onramp to a vast surveillance state that might be benevolent now but can’t be counted on to stay that way indefinitely. In fact, building the infrastructure to make authoritarian control easy, also makes it more likely.

It’s not hard to imagine a future where Dutch farmers go to a gas (or charging) station on their way to a protest find they suddenly can’t use their money.

Re: Europe has opened a door to a universal wallet

#15
Bernners lee is being a useful idiot on SOLID. It's a pipe dream that doesn't help anyone but companies trying to own your data INSTEAD of google. Basically replacing one evil with another, not solving the problem.

It is 100% a worse option than a cloud drive.

Anyone in the digital ID space knows there's a war going on. States will adopt digital ID. And everyone is rushing to own it.

Re: Europe has opened a door to a universal wallet

#16
It's nice that the EU is giving room to such innovation, but I wanted to point out that stuff like this is quite widespread in India:

Every shop on the road nowadays has a QR code you scan to make a payment using any UPI[0] compatible app. Thus, the age old problem of a shop not having change is quite rare nowadays (if you're not a minor that is, because all UPI apps are 18+). UPI is centered around your phone number, which is linked to your bank account as part of KYC. Thus, you can make a payment to anyone who doesn't even have UPI using their phone number, thus transferring funds directly into their bank account.

DigiLocker[1] is gaining popularity, with some airports allowing you in without physical ID if you have your ID on the app and scan yourself in. I've only been to one airport that does this before, and I sadly was not aware of it at the time.

It's nice that more and more countries are realizing the usefulness of this as tech becomes more and more ubiquitous and accessible to everyone.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiLocker

Re: Europe has opened a door to a universal wallet

#17
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder how long until people get desperate enough to steal phones and the owner's thumb...

Easier to force them to unlock it then and there. Less bloody.

On my phone it requires a new fingerprint validation on transaction. So still bloody. Depending on the fingerprint scanner "no blood present" might also not work.

Re: Europe has opened a door to a universal wallet

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stealing it and having an exploit to unlock it

Wonder how long until people get desperate enough to steal phones and the owner's thumb...

this has been fantasized about since the first widely available smartphones with fingerprint sensors, and to date the number of cut fingers has kept pretty low

Re: Europe has opened a door to a universal wallet

#20

It's nice that the EU is giving room to such innovation, but I wanted to point out that stuff like this is quite widespread in India: Every shop on the road nowadays has a QR code you scan to make a payment using any UPI[0] compatible app. Thus, the age old problem of a shop not having change is quite rare nowadays (if you're not a minor that is, because all UPI apps are 18+). UPI is centered around your phone number…

>if you're not a minor that is, because all UPI apps are 18+

I didn't know this, and neither do minors in India who use it for daily purchases.

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