On 6/9/22 3:10 AM, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
> not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) writes:
>> Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
>>>> On 07/06/2022 13:08, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>>>>> I'm trying to forget cash...
>>>>
>>>> Opinions are divided as to whether that is a really smart thing, or
>>>> a dangerously dumb thing, to do.
>>>
>>> It's situational l-) if you're buying something your government
>>> doesn't like then using electronic payments isn't a great plan.
>>
>> Also if you don't like them knowing where you've been. For example if
>> you don't want anyone to know that you drove to someplace to meet with
>> so-and-so, it's probably not a good idea to pay for fuel using your
>> card at the local petrol station there.
>>
>> But for that to matter you also have to not carry a mobile phone,
>> otherwise that will track you anyway (or the car itself might do that
>> these days), and "someplace" better not have traffic cameras recording
>> number plates. In my case I do in fact usually follow both of those
>> conditions without really trying.
>
> If you actually want to stop a motivated state from tracking you you’re
> going to need to do more than avoid phones and electronic payments,
> you’re going to need to avoid any business with security cameras, any
> road with ANPR, etc.

That's almost IMPOSSIBLE these days.

However you CAN do much of your biz with cheepo mom&pop
stores who aren't as likely to be linked to the global
surveillance web.

AND, do at least a third of your biz in CASH. This helps
screw-up the building of "behavioral profiles" by spooks
and biz.

On 2022-06-10, 25.BX945 <25BZ495@nada.net> wrote:
> On 6/9/22 7:02 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>> On 09/06/2022 00:11, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>>>> It's not just the privacy angle, but also that by trying to keep
>>>> use of the debit card to a short list of machines (in my case two),
>>>> you minimise the attack surface that's exposed to skimmers or other
>>>> EFTPOS hacks.
>>>>
>>>
>>> With contactless, how does that work anyway?
>>
>> Much better than with normal cards!
>>
>> My main debit card doesn't actually support contactless, and my
>> other cards are only used online with money loaded on immediately
>> before purchase, so I've never looked into it in much detail. But
>> there's plenty of evidence to be found:
>>
>> https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/jul/23/contactless-card-is-too-easy-says-which
>> Found via:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID_skimming
>>
>>> Online transactions more a problem, but you cant use cash online
>>
>> But I do use different cards with only enough money to pay roughly
>> what they claim to charge me. "Roughly" because the rule turns out
>> to be that, with 101 different fees from all sorts of things, I'm
>> almost always charged a little more than I expect for online
>> purchases. I've been caught out many times by not putting enough
>> extra money on, thinking I knew all the fees involved when I'd
>> actually missed a few, or they charged one twice, etc. etc.
>>
>> I's good to put a limit on exactly how much they can rip you off
>> that way at least.
>
> YEARS ago I lined my wallet with metallized plastic foil
> that'd bounce away the high-frequency signals that can
> covertly read yer cards. Good stuff - double-coated mylar
> expensive WD disk drives come in. Easy to use.
>
> Decidedly NOT in favor of "contactless" cards ... even
> more vulnerable. Stick 'em in the SLOT.
>
> Oh, and yes, I never keep more cash than I can afford to
> lose on the debit cards - and do manual, AT THE BANK,
> account xfers. Nothing like paper instruments/recipts.
> They can't disappear paper. Any issue and you can wave
> it in their faces - or better, have yer LAWYER wave
> 'em in their faces. You'll have no problems.
>
> And NEVER make big deposits thru the ATMs. If it fucks
> up they'll always say "Well, you SHOULD have used a
> teller ... sorry, we can't help". Banks are orientated
> towards MAKING money first and foremost. It's the biz
> model for the past couple millenia.

A company that calls itself Identity Stronghold
(www.idstronghold.com) sells metallic-lined sleeves for
credit/debit cards. At my former employer, after asking the
guard at the lobby if I could test the sleeve on my company ID
key-badge and the lobby reader, I put the badge in a sleeve. The
guard tried to scan it, but the reader saw nothing. I called
that a reasonably positive indication that the sleeves work.

HTH

--
Robert Riches
spamtrap42@jacob21819.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

On 6/8/22 8:52 AM, jan Anja wrote:
> 25.BX945 <25BZ495@nada.net> wrote:
>> I do use systemd for certain stuff. One of its best features
>> is the ability to 'watchdog' apps and re-start them if they
>> crash. This IS useful. Otherwise you have to write your own
>> watchdogs, and who watches the watchdogs ? However I'm not
>> sure this one feature is WORTH the extra complexity and
>> opacity. I'll see what I can do with Devuan and init.d ...
>> might not be so horrible (for me). Cron can start stuff on
>> time or at reboot (wrote my own a few weeks ago so I could
>> de-clutter the root crontab plus add some reporting codes
>> for each pgm run. It keeps track of when they start, when
>> they end, and can kill 'frozen' pgms after an interval).
>> Python proto ... another pass or two to tighten-up the
>> coding, then translate to 'C'.
>
> There are lots of daemon supervisers. I use `supervise-daemon` from
> OpenRC.

Must be Linux - such a creative name :-)

But yes, 'supervising' daemons is an old and sometimes
vexing issue. Numerous solutions - OR - write your own
so you KNOW how it works.

Systemd is a conglomerate of such solutions. However
it's broad and deep to the point of being opaque.
For NOW I'd say it's fairly safe ... but it would
be too easy to slip in a bunch of nasty stuff.

init.d is crude - but obvious and comprehensible.

The cron I recently wrote CAN, with not too much
extra code, be a "daemon manager" that'd cover
most needs. Since I wrote it, I understand it
(most anyone could - and the Python proto isn't
really all that big (and 60% comments really)).
I even added @reboot in a fun funky way (it
writes a bash script that does what you expect
and executes it before self-emolation). The only
thing it doesn't do is "hybrid" crontab-style
items like "Jan-Mar,Nov,Dec" but I'll get to that
before I translate it into 'C'.

Systemd seems seconds-based, mine runs every
minute instead - but that's a choice for lower
CPU utilization.

In any case, to prevent Windersization, I strongly
encourage SIMPLER, transparent, controlability-
aware solutions both for daemons and software
installation/updates. Defaults should always be
in favor of user-level control -vs- automation.
Maybe only 10% of users can really benefit from
seeing the lower-level stuff that's being done
but that DOES help a lot in terms of spotting
bad/malicious/exploitable code.

And those capable - REALLY think about a Linux/Unix
successor - something different enough so MS and IBM
can not claim some kind of 'round-about "ownership".
Who will be the next Linus ?

There was, indeed still IS, a very old OS that
the old CoCo users really liked called OS-9.
It's still sold (MicroWare) and is a Near-Real-Time
OS mostly used for device control these days. But
the skinny was that while it reminded of Unix, it
was a lot "better" in many practical way - slim
and snappy because of the NRTOS intent. Punch that
paradigm up to 64 bits and .....

On 6/8/22 4:50 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 08/06/2022 03:07, 25.BX945 wrote:
>> On 6/7/22 6:40 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>>> Roger Blake <rogblake@iname.invalid> wrote:
>>>> On 2022-06-07, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>>> I'm trying to forget cash...
>>>>
>>>> Cash is freedom and privacy. I use it for all local purchases.
>>>
>>> Same here. No online banking either, for any account where
>>> significant money is kept.
>>>
>>> With things like PayPal's constant double-Captcha prompting (which
>>> mercifully disappeared recently), and different online store sites
>>> declining different cards for unknown reasons, cashless payments
>>> online already cause me enough trouble.
>>
>>    A few years back, I started to sign up with PayPal - but
>>    changed my mind about half way through it. A couple days
>>    later I started getting phishing mails claiming I needed
>>    to give my acct id and CC info so certain purchases could
>>    be dealt with properly. I hadn't even gotten to the credit
>>    card part and, backing out, the e-mail address SHOULD
>>    have disappeared too. This smelled of INTERNAL corruption,
>>    employees being very very naughty. I'll NEVER use it now.
>>
>>    And no, I don't do online banking either. I go TO a bank,
>>    get my face in front of HUMANS (and the security cams)
>>    any time there's important stuff to do. They know me, I
>>    know them. MUCH better.
>>
>>    In any case, use cash fairly often - it disrupts attempts
>>    to "profile" you - by biz or govt. And yes, todays 'AI'
>>    really CAN watch everybody all the time, looking for
>>    "something" ... it's really an unwarranted search .....
>>    waiting for some lawyers to pick up on that ..........
>
> I remember back in around 1995 going into a bank in I think Colorado to
> get some cash. I presented the cashier with my UK Mastercard. She looked
> at it dubiously "I guess we can try" keyed in the credentials and said
> in a surprised choice 'that worked!"

International stuff is always "iffy" - and the USA is big
enough to be self-centered too.

> UK is not the most advanced nation in the world but it is well ahead of
> the USA.

Ummmm ... I'd say "better adapted for its environment".
The USA is a different environment. We don't so much CARE
about making things easy for people in some other country.
Yea, we'll make it work in the end ... but you could spend
a little while getting to that end.

To a POINT that's maybe not such a bad thing, keeps
foreign scams/crimes from spreading to the USA
efficiently.

On 6/10/22 12:21 AM, Robert Riches wrote:
> On 2022-06-10, 25.BX945 <25BZ495@nada.net> wrote:
>> On 6/9/22 7:02 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>> On 09/06/2022 00:11, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>>>>> It's not just the privacy angle, but also that by trying to keep
>>>>> use of the debit card to a short list of machines (in my case two),
>>>>> you minimise the attack surface that's exposed to skimmers or other
>>>>> EFTPOS hacks.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> With contactless, how does that work anyway?
>>>
>>> Much better than with normal cards!
>>>
>>> My main debit card doesn't actually support contactless, and my
>>> other cards are only used online with money loaded on immediately
>>> before purchase, so I've never looked into it in much detail. But
>>> there's plenty of evidence to be found:
>>>
>>> https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/jul/23/contactless-card-is-too-easy-says-which
>>> Found via:
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID_skimming
>>>
>>>> Online transactions more a problem, but you cant use cash online
>>>
>>> But I do use different cards with only enough money to pay roughly
>>> what they claim to charge me. "Roughly" because the rule turns out
>>> to be that, with 101 different fees from all sorts of things, I'm
>>> almost always charged a little more than I expect for online
>>> purchases. I've been caught out many times by not putting enough
>>> extra money on, thinking I knew all the fees involved when I'd
>>> actually missed a few, or they charged one twice, etc. etc.
>>>
>>> I's good to put a limit on exactly how much they can rip you off
>>> that way at least.
>>
>> YEARS ago I lined my wallet with metallized plastic foil
>> that'd bounce away the high-frequency signals that can
>> covertly read yer cards. Good stuff - double-coated mylar
>> expensive WD disk drives come in. Easy to use.
>>
>> Decidedly NOT in favor of "contactless" cards ... even
>> more vulnerable. Stick 'em in the SLOT.
>>
>> Oh, and yes, I never keep more cash than I can afford to
>> lose on the debit cards - and do manual, AT THE BANK,
>> account xfers. Nothing like paper instruments/recipts.
>> They can't disappear paper. Any issue and you can wave
>> it in their faces - or better, have yer LAWYER wave
>> 'em in their faces. You'll have no problems.
>>
>> And NEVER make big deposits thru the ATMs. If it fucks
>> up they'll always say "Well, you SHOULD have used a
>> teller ... sorry, we can't help". Banks are orientated
>> towards MAKING money first and foremost. It's the biz
>> model for the past couple millenia.
>
> A company that calls itself Identity Stronghold
> (www.idstronghold.com) sells metallic-lined sleeves for
> credit/debit cards. At my former employer, after asking the
> guard at the lobby if I could test the sleeve on my company ID
> key-badge and the lobby reader, I put the badge in a sleeve. The
> guard tried to scan it, but the reader saw nothing. I called
> that a reasonably positive indication that the sleeves work.

Really doesn't take too much to block such scans. It's
fairly high-frequency radio waves and any metal barrier,
even quite thin, bounces them away. Even metallized
plastic can do a pretty good job - you don't have to
spend $100 on a special wallet.

At THIS point though I'd say the main risk lies not in
somebody reading the cards in your wallet but where you
USE them. A few years back there was a huge scandal at
Home Depot (and a few others, according to a bank guy)
where hacks managed to penetrate the little card-swipe
units at the checkout counters. The main system was well
protected, but nobody thought about those "terminals".
Gas-stations are nefarious for people adding "skimmers"
in the middle of the night, full fake card readers or
extra read-heads attached over the real ones. Always give
those readers a good pull or something - if they seem
loose/flimsy .......

3D printers make it FAR easier to construct a passable
fake front for any gas pumps card reader. I've even
heard of people making ones for ATM machines. Do yer
ATM stuff during daytime biz hours !

Oh, online ... fifteen or so years ago there was a CC
issuer that let you create a "fake" card for online
purchases - you could set the value limit and X date
without any trauma. I think it was eventually bought
up by Wachovia and then BOA - and the handy feature
went away. It was a *great* idea though - but I guess
refusing to refund what you claim are bogus charges
is more profitable ........

These days I only buy online from ONE source.
Easy to trace anything bogus that way.

On 11/06/2022 05:33, 25.BX945 wrote:
>
>
>> UK is not the most advanced nation in the world but it is well ahead
>> of the USA.
>
>   Ummmm ... I'd say "better adapted for its environment".

like a monopoly on rural broadband such that many people still use modems?
Road repair status that is even worse than France?

--
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on
its shoes.