Big Brother

By GrahamLewis · May 27, 2019 · ·
  1. Getting ready to leave on our trip, I thought it might be prudent to notify VISA of our travel plans., since neither of us had explicitly done so. But when I gave the relevant card information, the computerized voice said, "I see you will be [going overseas] from[date to date]." They must have mined that from the fact that we paid for the tickets through VISA. Still, it's kind of scary that they would assimilate that information. I wonder what else of our activities are being tracked, by credit card companies, online services, and government. And how long they keep the info.

Comments

  1. Iain Aschendale
    There was a sketch on one of the comedy shows, maybe SNL, a couple decades ago that showed a faux bank commercial in which the bank noticed a large credit card charge at a casino in Vegas and put a stop on it as suspicious. Then it showed the customer explaining that she'd always wanted to go to Sin City and had been saving up for the trip. Then the bank representative came on again and explained that she had a good chance of losing all the money. Then she came back on and said that she was aware of that, but had budgeted accordingly. The bank rep said that they had tracked her savings and were investing it in an indexed mutual fund for her, and that she'd thank them later....
  2. GrahamLewis
    That's probably not far from reality these days. I sometimes feel we are all cattle going knowingly into the slaughter pens of government domination. And it gets harder and harder to even consider going off the grid in any real sense. Short, I suppose, of keeping all your money under the mattress and having any income sent to a mailbox rented in a phony name. And even then, large withdrawals get flagged, and everything and everyone is moving to a paperless model.

    We just might be doomed.
  3. Cave Troll
    Spooky stuff.
    Though I think things will be much worse if things go completely cashless. Then currency is literally just a series of numbers that don't technically exist, and can be manipulated at the will of whomever. Might cause a few problems that will get bigger as it will make the financial systems far more powerful and more ambitious about controlling how the numbers are when they feel like it. If it doesn't exist in physical form, it sure doesn't exist in any meaningful sense of the word. So 'money' at that point in time will have less value than it does now. An EMP from a nasty solar flare could actually destroy the monetary system entirely, rendering the whole purpose of paperless pointless. :bigeek:
    So yeah we would be up the creek without even a canoe. :p
  4. Some Guy
    Cash crime would evaporate?
  5. GrahamLewis
    Just after I read these comments I went to my news feed and got a teaser for an article about barriers to cashless society. Spooky.
  6. Iain Aschendale
  7. GrahamLewis
    @Iain Aschendale said" that could very well be the Baader Meinhof effect though."

    I'm familiar with that and it just happened when we bought our new car. But . . . . this was the only news teaser that showed up and it was immediately after I read these comments.
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