Google Wallet May End Up Inside Your Actual Wallet 190
Several outlets are reporting, based on screenshots posted by Android Police that Google is (or "may be" — CNet calls the report "loosely sourced") about to introduce a lower-tech variant on its smartphone-based Google Wallet payment system. Instead of transferring payment information from an NFC-equipped phone, this would mean a physical payment card (like a conventional plastic credit or debit card), but one linked via Google's databanks to the user's existing bank or credit accounts. Upsides: less to carry, a simple way to suspend or cancel service on them (should the card be lost or stolen), and doesn't require you to carry your phone to make a credit or debit transaction — handy, since NFC readers are still thin on the ground. Downside: while perhaps no worse than putting the same information on your phone, it's one more step toward giving a third party all of your personal information in one place. A card that fits in a wallet probably makes a lot of sense: I live in a city with at least three pay-by-phone options in trials or fully available (CitiBank, Isis, and Google Wallet), but I can't buy ice cream or coffee with them yet. And there's no reason a card-shaped token couldn't use mag-stripes and NFC, too.
cash (Score:4, Insightful)
why you can't just pay in cash your coffee?.
Re:cash (Score:5, Funny)
why you can't just pay in cash your coffee?.
Using currency is so last century. Might as well tie an onion to your belt grandpa.
Re:cash (Score:5, Insightful)
cash gives us privacy over our transactions.
"we can't have that, now, citizen! be a good little sheep, agree to the Shiney(tm) we give you and stop questioning what our end goals are."
hey, if you are too dumb to realize you are being played, maybe you deserve to be played. come back in a few years and tell us how good it was for you to surrender your buying habits to google or some other behemoth.
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Most places have security counters watching the tills.
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be a good little sheep
Unfortunately, a sheep that behaves abnormally ends up in someone's dinner rather quickly.
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be a good little sheep
Unfortunately, a sheep that behaves abnormally ends up in someone's dinner rather quickly.
"They've got you by the balls!"
- George Carlin
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cash gives us privacy over our transactions.
"we can't have that, now, citizen! be a good little sheep, agree to the Shiney(tm) we give you and stop questioning what our end goals are."
hey, if you are too dumb to realize you are being played, maybe you deserve to be played. come back in a few years and tell us how good it was for you to surrender your buying habits to google or some other behemoth.
I use cash whenever possible. Most people I find don't understand the value of using cash. But I think they'll miss it when it's gone.
Re:cash (Score:4, Interesting)
I've used a credit card for every purchase that I can for several years now. Not only that, I signed up with Mint to explicitly track my purchases. Not only credit cards, but loans and bank accounts too.
If you had asked me a few years ago to "come back in a few years and tell us how good it was for you to surrender your buying habits to google or some other behemoth" -- well, I would be coming back right now to let you know. So here it is.
It's great. My purchases are automatically organized into categories for budgeting purposes. I get targeted ads that give me suggestions for saving money or making more money. For instance, Mint might say something like "Your savings account pays X%, you could make more if you switched to Y Bank." I ignore 90% of these because after switching the first time, it's not worth switching again for a tiny bit more.
Do you have a reason for thinking that the next few years will be worse than the last few years?
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Cash is anonymous (Score:5, Informative)
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Perhaps if it weren't so hard to get change from a Krugerrand, maybe your "suggestion" isn't such a bad idea, after all (you know, considering history and all that. What's that? Oh; nevermind, then.). :p
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DATA (Score:2)
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I buy my coffee in 4 seconds by having the cash ready to go in exact change ahead of time. It's not that hard really.
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If this is using the same system as is being promoted (but isn't yet widespread) in the UK, then it is quicker than cash. It's closer to 1s than 10. The cashier hits the "total" button, and "£2.99" shows up on the screen (start the clock!). That activates the reader, and you touch the card against it. Done. (No signature, no PIN -- the maximum is £10, I'm not sure who takes the fraud risk, but it's not the customer.) Alternatively, you hand over cash, the cashier counts it, types in how mu
Merchant Fees (Score:2)
As if I'm going to accept $100/m + x% transaction fees so you can buy a $1.00 icecream without cash.
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I see people with a large, interest heavy balance on their credit cards doing just that.
We're basically talking about google becoming a credit card company, with all the historical cartel & usury evil attached.
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We're basically talking about google becoming a credit card company, with all the historical cartel & usury evil attached.
Um, no, we're not. That's almost as stupid as saying printing paper money with golden color ink is "basically talking" about returning to the gold standard. Just because you carry something in your wallet doesn't make it a credit card, even if you can swipe it in all the same places.
They have the info anyway... (Score:2)
Downside: while perhaps no worse than putting the same information on your phone, it's one more step toward giving a third party all of your personal information in one place.
If you use Google Wallet then Google has all this info anyway. The point made that it's easier to cancel this is also valid though, so I think on balance this may be a good thing. Presumably the information won't be stored on the card itself? Or will it? How does Google Wallet work? (I don't live in a country where we can use it)
Around your ass... (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, what's with everybody wanting to continue to make payment processors of all kinds, obscenely wealthy? Doesn't anybody think, that every time they use their plastic, that you're giving Visa/MC 2-3% of your purchase? I feel like the massive expansion of cards and payment processors (paypal, amazon, google, etc.) is an Idiocracy type of thing. It's freaking me out that people are so fucking stupid.
Re:Around your ass... (Score:4, Informative)
But that 2-3% is invisible to the customer. The only time I've seen any effort to point that out is with the few-and-far between gas stations that offer a cash discount. The only problem with them is that they tend to have a higher price to begin with.
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Pick up a little piece of these very large companies; use the 1% dividend they pay you to cover the 2-3% they charge you.
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They still make money even if you use cash. A business depositing cash pays around 1.5%-2% in fees due to handling. As a consumer the only logical thing is to only use a rewards cards where you draw some benefit from your purchases. The places you shop still take a hit for this, but that's the cost of doing business.
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Have you ever had refuse-smoked pigeon? Cook it low and slow, so the beer-soaked newspaper smoke can really get into the meat... nothing like it.
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You can also tell when stores have a minimum purchase requirement for credit.
In many states it is illegal to charge more for a credit transaction, however it is not illegal to offer a discount for using cash... it would be interesting to see stores offer a "2% discount on all cash purchases!" deal.
Generally I pay cash at independent stores and credit at chain stores... if the price is the same, paying cash is effectively subsidizing those who would pay by credit. The credit card charge is built into the p
Re:Around your ass... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Visa and Mastercard made sure that this was illegal in the US a long, long time ago. I wonder if Visa/MC buys their Congresspeople with cash, charge, or debit?
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Visa and Mastercard made sure that this was illegal in the US a long, long time ago.
Every time I go to a gas station I hope that what you said was a reality. Apparently lawyers are not very good with math and while prohibiting surcharges they are still allowing discounts, e.g. you can't ask customers to pay extra 10 cents for using credit card but you can charge "everyone" 10 cents "extra" and give 10 cents discount for cash payments.
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The only way I can see to get around this would be for everyone to protest together or for all merchants to implement credit card surcharges.
I buy most of the things I own online. Protest/surcharge/etc only work for your local brick-and-mortar merchant where paying cash is an option.
Buying something by mailing a check is a terrible experience which is worth 2%-3% surcharge to avoid.
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Cash is expensive to handle (Score:3)
Doesn't anybody think, that every time they use their plastic, that you're giving Visa/MC 2-3% of your purchase?
You think there is no cost involved in handling cash? Cash is expensive to count, sort, deposit, track and prone to theft. Sure you are paying the credit card processors a few percent but merchants incur pretty much the same cost due to the overhead of handling cash. Seriously, cash is a major pain in the ass for merchants and that cost gets passed on to consumers. There's nothing wrong with paying cash but there is plenty of overhead involved with it.
Re:Cash is expensive to handle (Score:4, Informative)
You're completely wrong. As a merchant, cash is the cheapest way to get paid. Cash doesn't cost 2-3%. Nowhere close.
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Cash takes extra record keeping. Cash takes somebody counting the drawer. Cash requires somebody to drive the deposit to the bank (or an armored car staff to pick it up). These may not be charges per transaction, but they're still things you'll have to pay someone to do when handling cash.
Re:Cash is expensive to handle (Score:4, Informative)
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I understand that. I'm a brick and mortar merchant. All that doesn't come anywhere close to 2-3% of sales.
Do you have an estimate of how much it does cost you as a percentage of the cash revenue?
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You are missing one of the greatest upsides of cash - you can keep a healthy percentage of your income totally off the books. Using cash means taking money out of Uncle Sam's wallet, which I think many can agree is a good thing.
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You don't have employees? Or you just don't pay them for doing all the aforementioned tasks?
And don't forget the cost of "shrinkage".
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I do not pay these 3% myself, so I do not care too much about it. Also, all these transaction give me back 1% of the transaction. Finally, it allows me to have an automatic log of everything I buy which simplify my (rough) personal acconting.
Why should not I use a credit card? There is no downside for me.
If the shops cared about that fee, why do not they offer me a disconut for cash payment? (maybe that's illegal?)
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"No downside unless you find having a complete record of where you shopped disturbing. A record that can be hauled into court, or at the very least used to target you for mind-control, i.e., advertising."
I must say I do find it somewhat disturbing. But what are the other options? Carrying two hundred dollars on me at any time. That's a call for being robbed. So I guess I could not pay expensive thing cash, but just small things. Then what is the point?
My record can be used in court. Please do, it is more l
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> My record can be used in court. Please do, it is more likely to save me than to convict me.
Ahem. http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/424729/auscert_2012_virtualization_security_needs_improvements/ [computerworld.com.au]
> "The only reason he was caught was that he paid for his McDonald's coffee with
> a credit card and the FBI used that information to track him down," Reeman said.
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Sure, knowing that you bought gas or coffee is probably not that interesting to anyone. But never buy anything interesting with a card if you can use cash.
There is another reply just above with words "this is more likely to save me than to convict me." The point is that this system can be gamed. Not only the prosecution can access your records, but the defense can do that as well. If someone wants to steal an item from a faraway location he can do at least two things. First, he will not buy fuel with the
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Cash works fine.
At least in the present world, cash is sub-optimal. Not only is it less convenient, but you miss out on a lot of potential kickbacks.
For example, I have an AMEX card that pays me 6% cash back on grocery store purchases. Given that I have four teenagers and an insane monthly grocery bill, that's real money, to the tune of about $800 per year I get back. I get 3% back on gas, which pays me another $150 annually. I get 3% back on Amazon.com purchases using my Amazon card. I get 1% back on everything els
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I don't have to carry around coins and notes
I get an automatic record of my transactions making it easy for me to monitor my spending
I get the protections that come with buying with a credit card but pay the same as I would with cash (the retailer is giving Vise etc 2-3% and it won't change unless there is a mass shift to cash by everyone)
I get cashback on the majority of my spending
I can understand the
Re:Around your ass... (Score:4, Insightful)
Cash doesn't leave a record. Some of us like the record.
you miss the point, I think. the point is that you get to CHOOSE, even on a per-trans basis, do you want a record or not?
I guarantee you that you don't want 100% of your transactions recorded. are you really that open with your life? really? and you don't ever see any misuse coming from this info farm you are providing?
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I don't think that there is a clause with Google Wallets (or with any credit/debit/whatever card) that you have to use that form of payment for ALL of your purchases. If he has a transaction he doesn't want recorded, he is perfectly free and able to pay for that transaction with cash.
I like the record keeping functions of my debit card, but there are some things that I still pay for in cash. You don't have to make one or the other a way of life.
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and you like a company such a Google having the record. Google, where you are the *product*, the advertisers are the customers.....
This is what my banks card is for. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would I need another card in my wallet to duplicate what my banks check card does?
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The idea is that instead of carrying several credit and debit card, you carry one card
Channeling xkcd:
1. You have two cards in your wallet.
2. You get a Google card to combine the two cards into one.
3. Now you have three cards in your wallet.
Google is trying to solve a problem that does not exist.
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1. You have five debit/credit cards in your wallet.
2. You get a Google Wallet card to combine all the cards into one.
3. You now have one card in your wallet and five cards stored somewhere safe.
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There is, though, something that you will miss if you have only one card. You cannot decide what charges go to what card. For example, I have one company c/c, one personal c/c and one bank charge card. I cannot combine the first two, obviously. The latter is used for authentication when I visit the bank. This leaves me with the same three cards, plus the Google card.
Also, not everyone is so fortunate to have unlimited credit and infinite supply of money to pay it off. They know when billing cycles occur
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No, it'd go more like this: 1. You have five debit/credit cards in your wallet. 2. You get a Google Wallet card to combine all the cards into one. 3. You now have one card in your wallet and five cards stored somewhere safe.
In the end you will have to carry more than one card plus cash, because you cannot predict what payment method you will need, since not all merchants will accept your universal card, whatever card it might be, and not all merchants accept cards (thus the need for cash).
Re:This is what my banks card is for. (Score:5, Interesting)
Banks are better equipped. They'll just start issuing NFC cards (linked to multiple accounts) and G Wallet wil be out of business.
Heh. It's possible, I suppose, but about 10 years ago I spent a lot of time working with banks, trying to get them to agree to allow their credit apps to coexist on a single card. It was known in the industry as the "white card" concept. The card was intended to be a customer-owned smart card which could be loaded up with many credit cards as well as other apps (probably all ID and finance-related). I think it's a great idea, myself. I did 10 years ago when the idea was to reduce my whole wallet to a single card, and I think it's an even better idea now that we're talking about eliminating the wallet entirely and just using the phone -- which I always have with me anyway. I'm hoping my phone can also become my car and house keys, my driver's license, my loyalty cards, etc. Basically there's no reason the single device couldn't manage all of my personal and identity data, and do it very securely, thanks to the embedded secure element.
Think the banks were interested 10 years ago? No way! There was no way they were going to give up the opportunity to have a branded card in their customers' wallets. In fact, even for single-bank cards one of the advantages of smart cards that I touted to them -- the fact that smart cards are much more durable than magstripe cards -- was of negative value to them, because they like sending you a new card every two years. Why? Because their statistics show that sending you a new card gets you to use it more!
Banks have all kinds of incentives to oppose this sort of thing.
Of course, now that Google is making it impossible for the banks to successfully oppose card unification, on smartphones and -- if there's anything to this rumor -- on plastic cards, they might have to join it. That's what the ISIS consortium is about, but I notice that banks haven't been joining in droves. IMO, they fear the mobile network operators, who would like nothing better than to become the world's payment transaction engines, and the banks really don't want to lose that business. Worldwide credit/debit card transaction volume is measured in tens of trillions of dollars annually. Getting even a very small percentage of that sort of cash stream is worth a lot, which is why the MNOs are anxious to get in and banks are anxious to keep them out.
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, and much of my work is related to Wallet. I have carefully avoided saying anything based on inside information acquired while working for Google. I have a lot of knowledge about this space that was acquired during previous employment, though.)
Oh one note on terminology: It's only called "NFC" when it's embedded in a phone and combines contactless smart card technology with dumb RFID technology, and able to act as both card/RFID chip and reader. When it's in a reader-powered card it's just called "contactless smart card" technology.
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You must enjoy making an id thief's job easier. All that data and keys in one place.
As for security, putting all that in one place makes the 'risk/reward' scale skewed to the point that short of some obtrusive id checks. Maybe as far as blood & dna samples to prove its 'you'. It will be hacked, Hacked within months of its release, and something the size of google will not be able to stop it. Because there is no way you can make it secure enough that such theft won't be rampant AND make the process fast,
Re:This is what my banks card is for. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been working with smart card tech for almost 20 years now. I've seen the breaks and countermeasures, and am fully aware that the technology can be broken given enough effort. That's why good security designers arrange to limit the damage possible, to a value which is less than that which can be obtained by breaking it -- and we have pretty good estimates of break cost. Off-device countermeasures are critical, too, such as the risk engines already implemented by all of the credit card issuers. ID-related data should be authenticated with off-device keys, similar to the way the authentication data in passports is already secured.
Obviously nothing is perfect, which is why the security engineers who design this stuff spread the risk. But that risk spreading doesn't mean you can't put everything in one device. In fact, it really doesn't even help to have a wallet full of separate cards, because they're all in one place. And having all of your credit cards in your phone is vastly more secure than having them all in your wallet, because your wallet has no locks and the cards in it have their whole frigging card numbers printed right on their face. It's hard to get much worse security than that (because, fundamentally, credit cards are horribly insecure -- the identifier and the authenticator are the same value? Really?)
You can certainly feel free to avoid putting everything in your phone if you like. But the vast majority of people who are willing to trust the security designers will not be disappointed in the results. Not that there won't be occasional problems, there are problems with anything, but they will be less common than the ID and payment fraud we have today.
Bottom line: It will be better security, not worse. I challenge you to find a serious security researcher who knows anything about the technology and disagrees.
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What a nightmare you are describing. Having a single device for everything is DUMB. It is the worth thing you can do. If you lose one, you lose all. If one is compromised, all is compromised. If one stop working, all stop working.
What if your phone breaks ? My GF phone stopped working for no reason last week, it just went dead. In your dream, you can not drive home. You can not call somebody to help. You can not pay a cab. And even if you manage to walk home, you can not open the door.
If you google account
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Re:This is what my banks card is for. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think the general plan is that you could unify different accounts onto this card and access them all just from the Google Wallet card. As well in the event of you losing the card, all it would take is the deactivation of this one card instead of multiple cancellations from multiple institutions.
True story: Last night I lost my debit card. I left it in an ATM after the transaction. I realized this less than a half-hour later after a little grocery shopping and called the bank to cancel it. It will be annoying not having debit card access to my checking account for a week or so while a new one is sent to me, but I still have my credit card.
With Google's card if someone had my card they'd have gained access to all my accounts at once.
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With Google's card if someone had my card they'd have gained access to all my accounts at once.
This is completely wrong, unless they also broke into your Wallet account at the same time.
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This is completely wrong, unless they also broke into your Wallet account at the same time.
My first though is: how difficult do you think it would be to socially engineer a Google support employee for the Wallet login details if you called with the card?
Okay, I guess I'm just confused then. If I can only use my Google card to access a single account, what does the Google card gain me over just carrying the pre-existing card I have for that account (besides letting Google collect my purchasing history for ad tailoring).
I can log into the Internet and change the account it draws from? That's more h
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you don't need this.
google *wants* this, though.
do we appease them and just roll over and feed them more info about ourselves?
cold day in hell! many of us already realize that companies like that have far too much info on us as it is. we already give too much info to visa/mc but we kind of have little choice since they practically own the card credit world. but there's zero reason to give google a new place in this market. more players is NOT going to make anything better for us serfs. no up side to th
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Why would I need another card in my wallet to duplicate what my banks check card does?
Isn't the point of Google Wallet to combine all your existing cards into one card? Thought, I doubt this will work for the ATM part of your card. According to the article I read at least, the card will have a magnetic stripe and will work on all existing credit card processing machines.
Security and abstraction (Score:2)
Why would I need another card in my wallet to duplicate what my banks check card does?
Because then you can leave your debit/credit card at home. If your wallet gets lost you log into your google account and detach the credit/debit card from your google card. While you still have to replace the google card it provides a potential layer of security. Also the google card provides the same effect as having a forwarding email address. You can change the bank card behind the google card without having to go to 50 different merchants to change the card they have on file. Actually pretty conven
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Google has invented the credit card!
Google is usually pretty good about giving you something cool to encourage you to give them your information. This... hey, give us access to your bank accounts and let us track your transactions and you get this cool Google wallet card! How is that different from the credit and debit cards I already have? This one says "Google" on it!
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Many banks' cards are also similarly enabled, and have many terminals where you can just wave them. Indeed, those terminals are mostly where you can use Google Wallet in the first place...
It is more secure (Score:2, Insightful)
With the Android phone, you have to worry about a very large attack surface area. With a Google wallet device, you do not have to worry about your latest download of Angry Birds keylogging your PIN entry field and performing a man-in-the-middle to steal all of your money.
Let Google have access to my bank account? (Score:5, Insightful)
No thanks. I'm fine with my credit card company, who haven't, on even a single occasion sent an EULA update allowing them to harvest my information for whoever knows what reason, and do not try to harvest my phone number sugar coating with "security concerns in case I lose my password".
This company has grown too large and is WAY too much intrusive in its current form.
For those of you with nothing to hide, please try to picture the following scenario: Google opens an HR company, specializing in delivering EXACTLY the person you like for the job. By which criteria? ENDLESS! They can practically deliver a person who has no interest in porn, spends 30% of his online time reading /. and likes the color Blue! They have all this information owing to their damned tracking cookies and gmail reading.
Call me paranoid, but I'd like to fall into the category of "No known bank account" at Google inc. Do no evil my ass
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and do not try to harvest my phone number sugar coating with "security concerns in case I lose my password".
heh - you noticed that, too, huh?
"but puh-LEEZE, we NEED your phone number!"
"no"
"ok. here's your login screen. sorry we bothered you. (but not really)"
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I'm fine with my credit card company, who haven't, on even a single occasion sent an EULA update allowing them to harvest my information for whoever knows what reason,
I occasionally receive very thick updated "user and privacy agreement" from my credit card. It's in very small font and I usually get bogged down half way through reading it. But I am pretty sure they are talking about "occasionally" sharing info with affiliates and their affiliates' affiliates.
do not try to harvest my phone number sugar coating with "security concerns in case I lose my password".
My credit cards harvest my cell phone number by sugar coating it with "a way to contact you in case of suspicious activity on your account". Not to mention that they already have my home number from the application
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No thanks. I'm fine with my credit card company, who haven't, on even a single occasion sent an EULA update allowing them to harvest my information for whoever knows what reason, and do not try to harvest my phone number sugar coating with "security concerns in case I lose my password".
What bank is that? I want to join!
My banks all send me occasional policy updates which I have little choice but to accept since it is almost impossible to live without a bank account. They quite openly give me details to other companies with no opt-out, call me and stuff every envelope they send my way full of adverts for crap I have no interest in. They need my personal details, phone number, multiple passwords and pins, mother's maiden name etc.
And of course they know what stuff I own because anything exp
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For those of you with nothing to hide, please try to picture the following scenario: /. and likes the color Blue! They have all this information owing to their damned tracking cookies and gmail reading.
Google opens an HR company, specializing in delivering EXACTLY the person you like for the job. By which criteria? ENDLESS! They can practically deliver a person who has no interest in porn, spends 30% of his online time reading
It's funny. But I think I would find someone who has no interest in porn suspicious (unless they were married).
I've just seen too many movies where the mad bomber/murderer/antagonist is some wacko who "seems like a diligent, quiet person" to his co-workers, but is really obsessed with purity and cleanliness. And then the police go raid his house and find he's keeping the body parts of his victims in the fridge, or was stockpiling biological weapons or something.
XKCD (Score:2)
I for one find this cartoon incredibly insightful and disturbing (and I do use google services, although I wish I wasn't).
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The only good thing about Google versus, say, Facebook, is that there's always a way of taking your data out of Google's platform. I know I backed up my Gmail account a while ago, just as a test, and it worked fine. Likewise for Drive and all that. The worst bit would be working with an Android phone that doesn't have a Market link, but even that's possible, if inconvenient, by using sideloading.
Good luck getting your stuff out of Facebook, however!
It can't. (Score:2)
With all those stupid discount cards, there's no room anymore.
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> - It needs to be more universal ... not just iOS
Yeah, realistically, I don't think too much about standards created to promote the sale of a device. They tend to die off. Passbook (which is what I think you meant) seems like a great idea, but why would any vendor other than the Apple store adopt a system that only works with 17 percent of the market?
What problem does this solve? (Score:5, Informative)
What problem does this technology and initiative solve? Whose problem does it solve?
As far as I can tell the only problem these things "solve" is that some intermediary wants to take some of some other intermediary's free money.
There seems to be no benefit to the person they are trying to convince to use it, unless the competition lowers interchange fees to merchants and merchants pass some of it back. And that is about as likely as new developments in simian rectal aviation.
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Whose problem does it solve?
Google's. Their "anal probe" approach to acquiring customer information doesn't work for in-person purchases. They're trying to roll up the "affinity card" business. Payment is just something they handle to get their hooks into your transaction data.
Unless you have really crappy credit, why would you need more than one credit card? I have one personal credit card, one business credit card, and an ATM card. If you want to borrow money, credit cards are a terrible loan deal.
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Except that it won't reduce the number of such cards. If you stick your Google Card into a random ATM, will it work? No. What's the chance that it will work in a large number of places? Zero. Will it ever? No, because all the card acceptors which expect a single account number to come up won't know how to read something which has multiple account numbers and requires a choice from the user. All the varied card acceptor software systems won't be upgraded to allow this, especially if many of them come fr
the cellphone is replacing the wallet (Score:2)
it's pretty absurd a company that understands this future feels a need to move backwards
it's like early car companies building rocket skates for horses
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it's pretty absurd a company that understands this future feels a need to move backwards
It's really not Google's fault, though. They have to move backwards because the world is not moving forwards.
It is only corporate greed and their desire to own the system in a way they get a cut of everything that prevents any one NFC system from becoming that standard. They all think if they make enough retail
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exactly
if the standard protocols used on the internet were zealously guarded and a corporation attempted to control them and charge access for them/ require deals/ conditions to use them, we would have no internet today
a shame
Do. Not. Want (Score:3)
I like keeping things separated, and the idea of consolidating all services, databases, and resources into my smartphone scares me. As such, I'll be adding this technology to my "Do Not Want" list.
Right now, if I leave my phone at the beach or it drops from my pocket while getting out of the car, whoever finds it has nothing more than a couple of bucks worth of credit, and the dozen or so numbers in my address book. He won't even be interested in the hardware, which has no resale value.
I have interest in making my cellphone so valuable because it's linked into my credit line, etc. that people will want to kill for it.
The more I see how the 21st century is shaking out, the more I want to pay for things with cash and live in a cave in Montana with a weapons cash. And I'm only 41 - not old enough to tell you to get off my lawn yet, just old enough to see we're heading the wrong way.
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Right now, if I leave my phone at the beach or it drops from my pocket while getting out of the car, whoever finds it has nothing more than a couple of bucks worth of credit
What if you leave your wallet at the beach, or it drops from your pocket?
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I agree - I pay for everything with gold!
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Gold? Enjoy your totalitarian future! Real Luddites barter.
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no, the next step is all-electronic money so the money cartels can take a little piece of each and every transaction, and the governmetn can shut off your ability to buy or sell or get paid on a whim, and can track your movements and habits for anything they deem "suspicious"