I wanna sign up for Patreon. Reason is, to give money to some podcasters, musicians, OSS authors. Ppl I think are doing good things. That’s how they accept donations.
But was there a privacy clusterfuck? Of course there was!
In October 2015, the site was the target of a large cyber-attack, with almost 15 gigabytes of password data, donation records, and source code taken and published. The breach exposed more than 2.3 million unique e-mail addresses and millions of private messages. Following the attack, some patrons received extortion emails …
I tried to signup privately. I only want to give money to ppl. Well if you use a VPN you get a total cloudfare gauntlet. Every page load, prove you are human! You can sign up with a masked card and a VPN, but they insta-ban you. Before you can sign-in even once, acct is locked.
Has anyone signed up in a kinda private way? How?
I can’t “just use this one cryptocurrency bro” b/c the creators I want to give money to only are on Patreon.
FFS. I’m trying to give money away! I don’t have to, but I belive we should support ppl doing good things for the world. Can’t even do that privtaely I guess.
Anything having to do with money is heavily surveilled. And for some good reasons, in my opinion, although this is probably gonna be downvoted.
If you could donate money anonymously, then swarms of bad actors could launder money this way. No good options there, I am afraid.
Perhaps the creators could be more sensitive to this side of things, by offering more private ways to donate money, like cash or prepaid cards.
This is pretty much it, though it’s worth noting that the ones receiving money tend to get the bulk of the surveillance, it’s still fairly easy to send small amounts of money semi-anonymously
This is a good point though it’s often down to the payment processors, particularly when dealing with prepaid cards. They deliberately don’t make it clear how decisions are made so bad actors can’t catch on, but it can mean Person A using a prepaid card has their payment accepted but person B using the exact same type of card has their payment rejected and card locked, with no clear reason why
VPNs are probably the biggest triggers for card-locking. OP, try disabling the VPN (and go to a library or cafe with a secondary device if you can) and try the payment again. And choose one-off payments, most places won’t accept prepaid cards for subscriptions
I see your reasoning and it makes sense
But it seems that policy is very…one sided and not effective
Loopholes for the really bad shit. Regulations, penalties, and headache for the independent creator
I think that there is no way to tell between legit privacy-conscious folk and bad actors. I am also pissed about it, but from a server’s perspective there is no difference between us and malicious users.
I don’t think the creators themselves can receive money privately either. This also is a privacy risk, and a broader risk of doxing or extortion if they make “undesired” content.
But there is no way to receive money anonymously that it isn’t “technically money laundering”. That’s my 2 cents.
Not by me. It’s a reasonable answer. Couple things come to mind tho.
One, to this very day I can “launder” a $20 bill through a local family run mercantile.
And two, my online donation would not be untraceable when using a virtual card. That card protects my identity from the vendor, but NOT from the company that issued me the card. They know who i am IRL, real name, real addr, etc. If I do something bad with it, the authorities can still come knocking. I only want to be protected from Patreon, not complete inpenetrable Snowden tier privacy. I feel the same about online shopping. I want protection from the e-store. Not from the civil authorities.
That’s why cash in the mail is still an option (with some VPNs for example). No wonder the EU is cracking down on cash payments above a certain limit.
They do require a ton of sensitive data to issue these cards. I don’t know if they are themselves to be trusted. Probably members of the same surveillance network with banks, so this is perhaps more of a placebo effect. The men in black will still know what you do with your money.
Same goes with crypto. So there is no point really. The invasion of our privacy is not a matter of individual consumption choices, but a systemic issue. No matter my privacy beliefs, I choose to do a number of things normally, because doing otherwise can come off as very malicious to banks and other institutions.
Yah I’m sure they could if they want. But I still think it gives me protection from the commercial tier data brokers. The company is putting its own rep on the line as a privacy broker. When it comes to their private emails, I have never seen the slightest sign that they’ve sold me out.
I figure nothing’s ever gonna be perfect. My threat model isn’t the NSA tho. It’s commercial data brokers hoovering up everybody’s purchase and donation history. Plus the constant everyday site hacks that compromise ppl’s activities.