@youmaynotknow is spot on. But consider this a very basic primer on just a small fraction of privacy abuse by banks:
So there’s 22 privacy abuses by banks to get you started. And that just barely scratches the surface.
You can somewhat ignore paragraphs 15 and 23 in terms of privacy. OTOH privacy is hand-in-hand with control and paragraphs 15 & 23 reflect control being in the wrong hands.
Banks abuse our privacy in countless ways. This could fill a book. This policy amounts to forced banking. I boycott banks. Banks have us by the balls and they abuse that power. A bank recently told me (in effect) to fuck off if I don’t have a mobile phone number to give them.
It’s impossible to define the amount in relative terms such as “average EU monthly salary +25%”,
It’s not impossible. Indexes are published. This is what they do with rent in places where rent is controlled. Landlords cannot increase rent more than an index. So they have to do the math. And in this case it’s not even a variable baseline like rent, it’s fixed, so the calculation can also be published so people need not do any math.
That’s net (take-home pay), not gross. Tax is high enough that you need to double that figure (€4,400) to get the gross pay. And just wait till you account for inflation, which the EU cash limits apparently fail to account for.
this poll shows it’s non-partisan:
https://layer8.space/@hyakinthos/112554837920009346
The left respects privacy far more than the right. But the left also has that high-taxation tendency. The outcome of that tug-of-war within left-leaning people results in ~73% embracing cash – just like the conservatives who don’t give a shit about privacy but have contempt for tax.
Beware on your next trip to Netherlands, where some bars refuse cash and conceal their contempt for cash (reference)
I just linked your post from that one because it fits well with the story.
(edit) BTW, I would like to see your workmate’s story published in a blog that serves better as a reference. It needs more exposure in a venue that’s not quasi temporary. I would even print hardcopies of it to distribute to cashless bar owners. So a nicely typeset PDF would be useful.
What country was that? I heard about a Belgian who tried to withdraw €10k from her bank account. They refused and also called the police who interrogated her and made a report. Belgian banks have cash withdrawal limits written in the contract. Even pulling out €3k raises eyebrows in Belgium. So withdrawing €30k trouble-free would probably require withdrawing €2.5k once per week over the span of 12 weeks. Is the car seller willing to hold the car for a buyer that long?
That’s not because of the cash. Even white collar workers getting paid electronically get audited because Belgium has a very high audit rate. I heard the probability of getting audited in Belgium is around 50%. Belgian auditors are extremely ambitious and highly motivated. They are employed in high numbers. The only way to avoid being audited in Belgium is to not work in Belgium.
This depends on the industry. Domestic workers and builders are often paid in cash in Europe. Belgium even writes it in law that cash wages are prohibited if you work in an industry where that is uncommon. Strange (and discriminatory) law, but indeed white collar workers are legally blocked from cash payment while other industries are grandfathered.
Indeed national laws don’t generally limit p2p cash, but the EU law encroaches on that AFAICT.
Enforceability varies depending on the scenario. Some countries have law that holds employers accountable for tax evaded by workers. Employers obviously won’t gamble, so they refuse to pay cash and cryptocurrency wages because they are scared shitless of being accountable for an employee’s evasion.
I demanded cryptocurrency payment and my employer refused on that basis. I intended to continue declaring it properly and just wanted a bit of freedom from bank dependency, but nothing could overcome the employer’s fears.
Cashier’s checks existed in Belgium a few years ago but I heard they are under fire and will be discontinued at some point.
Personal checks seem to be non-existent but I heard they can be requested but the banks give some resistance and try to steer people away from it. They only work domestically. I think if you gave a Belgian personal check to a Belgian, they would not generally know what to do with it.
Impulsive donations have been relatively killed off because cash donations are banned (I think because scammers impersonate charities). So that leaves check and electronic payment. Oxfam does not (AFAIK) carry payment terminals. Checks would make sense, but they are taboo. So they have to ask for a bank transfer, which gives donors a chance to be lazy and forget about it.
I recently read a complaint about the opposite. Someone deleted their Proton account and their handle was made available 1 year later. They were rightfully angry because the next user would potentially start receiving mail from things like the original user’s bank. The new user could perform password resets on accounts where the original user had not yet changed the email address on file.
Thanks! It’s rarely used so trying to find back a post that used it would be hard. Knowing the terminology (spoiler) was half the battle.
I don’t do MS #Github (#deleteGithub). Or MS (anything) for that matter. I am 100% #GAFAM and #Cloudflare-free. I will generally report issues to #Debian’s bug tracker but that’s only an option for pkgs that are in Debian’s official repos. #Lemmy is not – which in itself is a concern.
Debian requires packages to reach a certain quality standard. When a pkg becomes official Debian it suggests the package has enough popularity & quality to be taken seriously. Debian is quite popular¹ so Lemmy should try to put itself on the map. Until then I’ll have to file my bugs under the LemmyBug hashtag.
1: https://has-no.solutions/objects/5891cf49-163d-491e-900a-6b5af92fa9a0
I’m calling this a #LemmyBug. When an address is copy-pasted into a msg, you have no indication of whether the other account was properly recognized and that they will get a notification. When I view source, it just shows the body of the msg not the JSON record.
I’m using the stock web client of slrpnk.net (whatever version that is), and when I type @[email protected] … oh, wow, that worked. Strange. In the cases that failed me, I copy-pasted the user’s address. So apparently it must be typed out manually to trigger auto-complete. I see that the client just makes it a markdown hyperlink to your profile. That’s useful, but what’s more important is that the user get a notification. When i copy-paste the address (e.g. @[email protected]) there’s nothing to signal to me that the user was recognized and that they will actually be populated in the “mentions” field of the JSON record.
I get rid of them pretty quickly by saying I have no bank account. I might start adding to that “take cryptocurrency?” so they leave with the idea that maybe they should be open to cryptocurrency.