Cashless society, forced banking, and the War on Cash

Banks are equally (if not more) innovative in all the creative ingenious ways to thoroughly enshitify a service while still retaining loyal patrons who accept it, lick their boots, and stay over the long haul to experience new developments in enshitification techniques.

Enshitification is the most abusive when it is forced on you. Banking is one such case in many regions.

In my futile attempt to capture it all, I began with a list of categories so the various varieties of shit can be anatomized and classified into a taxonomy of shit:

1. Direct snooping and overcollection of data
2. Indirect snooping, outsourcing, info sharing, digital footprint maximization across actors
3. Anti-competition (e.g. “relationship banking”; all war on cash actions are anti-competition)
4. Protectionism
5. Dark patterns with money
6. Tech incompetence
7. Tech-driven exclusivity and discrimination / forced use of shitty tech
8. Discrimination against who you are and your demographic
9. Diffusion of responsibilty (i.e. finger pointing mechanisms)
10. Suppression of info (e.g. outsourced entities, reporting thresholds)
11. Reduced protection of data at rest
12. Data breach “compensation” without remuneration that enlarges consumers’ digital footprint (and lost opt-out letters)
13. Reduction of services
14. Automated decision making logic without human intervention
15. Penalization of enshitification avoidance

Of course the problem is immediately evident: most instances of enshitification fit into multiple categories. I cannot think of a useful way to reduce and broaden the categories to a point where instances of enshitification can each map to just one single category.

The itemized list enshitification instances is crazy long:

(EC → Enshitification Category)

Walk-in service without appointment is going away (EC 7,15) Some banks insist on an appointment; some have even dropped the appointment option and you simply cannot meet in person.
Banks are gradually removing services from their website (EC 7,13) This is to force more people to use their dodgy app.
All banks with apps impose closed-source software (EC 10)
Most banks with apps impose Google or Apple patronage just to obtain the app (EC 2) You must share sensitive info with surveillance advertisers in a country without privacy safeguards, and disclose to those untrustworthy corps where you bank.
Some banks have shutdown their website and closed their doors (EC 2,13) Thus making a dodgy app the exclusive means of access to your acct.
Some banks plainly write in their ToS that they log your IP; some don’t tell you (EC 1,10) When the ToS mentions this, it sometimes admits the purpose is to track your whereabouts.
Some banks refuse you an account if they discover you are US-born (EC 8) [outside the US] The ones that do not refuse an account still give adversely discriminatory treatment.
Banks outsource and share your personal data w/the supplier to repudiate fault in data breaches (EC 2,9,10) This is extra insideous in the US because if you get breached from a 3rd party, the 3rd party has no legal obligation to disclose to you which of your banks hired them, and the bank has no obliation to disclose their partners to you.
Banks loosely share your personal data to minimize quanitifiable breach damages (EC 2,9) It’s hard to attribute damages to a specific breach if your data was previously “legitimately” shared all over the place anyway.
Credit bureaus break the law requiring disclosure of their sources (EC 2) [US] Credit bureaus conceal from people /who/ reported their addresses (physical and email) to them. It’s illegal but there is no penalty so the law is just ignored. Consequently, banks share that info freely.
Cash withdrawal limits are shrinking (3,4) There are daily limits and monthly limits. As they shrink, you lose the ability to escape as quickly as you one day might want to.
Reduction of ATMs (EC 3,13) Europe
ATM consortium monopolies forming (EC 2,3,9) Netherlands, Belgium. Many banks have removed all their own ATMs and joined a consortium. Competition is gone. Netherlands has whole cities that have only one exclusive ATM operator (“Geldmaat”). If it gives you bad service, you’re fucked.
Reduced ATM services (EC 3,13) Balance inquiry service is either being stripped away or limited to clients of a specific bank
Elimination of ATM receipts (EC 13) Germany
Elimination of larger banknotes from ATMs (EC 13) Netherlands and France
ATM arbitrary denial of service (EC 3,8,9,10,14) Unlawful use of automated decision making logic without human intervention and without disclosure of /why/ a transaction is denied. ATM messaging always faults the card or the issuing bank even when the ATM internally denies a transaction.
Undisclosed ATM withdrawal limits (EC 3,10,13) ATMs have different withdrawal limits depending on whether a card is foreign or domestic. They never disclose the limit.
ATMs that eat cards if PIN entry is wrong (and conceal the confiscation risk) (EC 3,5,10,14) Netherlands
ATMs that eat cards if “fraud” is suspected (and conceal the confiscation risk) (EC 3,5,10,14) Netherlands
ATMs that eat cards if it cannot read the EMV chip (and conceal the confiscation risk) (EC 3,5,10,14) Netherlands
ATMs that take a fee without disclosure or consent (EC 3,5,10) Germany
Some banks disable your card after ~3 ATM refusals (EC 3,14) They think it’s “suspicious” if ATMs refuse you in as few as 3 times consequetively despite you having to guess at what the undisclosed ATM limit is for foreign cards when visiting a foreign country.
Some banks freeze your account if your ID card on file expires (EC 1,5,10) It’s a way of communicating with customers. Instead of making the effort to inform you that your ID docs will expire, they just set the machinery to block access to your money on ID card expiry (even if that lands on a Friday and the bank is not open until Monday). It’s comparable to the method of communication used in Office Space to tell Marvin he was fired (no paycheck).
Some banks send an annual “welcome” letter (EC 1,5) It’s a sneaky way to check whether you still live at your current address. They send a useless letter periodically at your expense. If the letter is returned, they know you moved without telling them your new address.
Some banks charge extra for analog operations like paper statements (EC 15) To avoid enshitified digital platforms you naturally must switch to analog operations. But that’s not gratis at shitty banks. Penalties for avoiding enshitification is in itself an instance of enshitification.
Some banks simply outright refuse to send a paper statement (EC 1,15) Digital banks simply break the law requiring them to issue periodic statements. If you’re not on their digital platform, they will not communicate with you despite legal obligations. Tagged in cat.1 because forcing you onto their digital platform entails excessive data collection (IP address).
Some banks refuse cash deposits (EC 1,3,13) It’s a blunt refusal at some banks, and at others cash deposits impose an intrusive process of submitting proof of source (or be refused)
Some banks refuse cash withdrawals (EC 1,2,3,4,13,15)
Some banks report cash withdrawals to the police (EC 2,3,4) [Europe] Someone tried to simply withdraw a few thousand euros from her own account. The bank called the police to detained her for interrogation.
Some banks block Tor (EC 1,13) Banks can justify blocking Tor if they lack the competence to securely handle Tor connections -- but can they justify the incompetence? It’s enshitification nonetheless.
Some banks let you login over Tor, then instantly close your account (EC 1,5,13,14) [US] Some banks go to the insideous extreme of allowing customers to reach the login page over Tor only for the fucked up undisclosed purpose of discovering which of their customers use Tor. Then they close the account instantly and irreversably. To recover from this, you must open a whole new account from scratch.
Some banks refuse cash payments on a mortgage (EC 1,2,3,4)
Relationship banking→ forced account opening (EC 3,8) [Europe] Banks refuse to give you a mortgage unless you open other types of accounts. If the bank refuses you an asset account on the basis of where you were born, then they also refuse you a mortgage for not having your asset account with them. It amounts to discrimination in a housing transaction on the basis of national origin (a human rights violation). US banks do not take relationship banking to this extreme, which gives a strange inversion of what you would expect between the US and Europe.
Alcohol purchases tracked for mortgage denial (EC 1,4,8) [Europe] Some Scandinavian banks track your alcohol purchases, assume you’re drinking alone, and tag you as having a drinking a problem which then leads to mortgage denials. This showcases the stupidity of cashless bars in Netherlands.
All debits processed first in daily batches (EC 5) [US] Regardless of the sequence of your credits and debits throughout the day, at the end of the day the bank processes all debits first, then all credits. This increases the number of overdrafts, thus bank fees.
Credit cards send a paper check to refund a credit (EC 5) [US] The credit line is more profitable for banks if you are in debt. To increase debt (thus fees and interest) they disallow accounts from carrying a credit by sending a paper check and zeroing the balance. At the same time the customer’s money is inaccessible while traveling as a paper check.
Some banks send malformed email (EC 6) They assume everyone uses a graphical mail client. Many banks do not send a plaintext MIME part. And worse, some obnoxious and incompetent banks send a plaintext MIME part that says “your mail client has a problem” or ”get a better mail client”.
Some banks embed tracker pixels in email (EC 1,5) Tracker pixels are injected into email so when you open it the bank gets a signal that tells them that ① your email address is valid and you read it, ② when you read it, and ③ your IP address (which reveals other sensitive info)
Some digital banks surreptitiously use Microsoft or Google for email (EC 2,5,6) And worse: they often make it the sole means of communication.
Some banks share your email address with others (EC 2) E.g. credit bureaus
Some banks reject email forwarding addresses (EC 1,10) If supplying an email address to a bank, it’s a good practice to use a unique address just for that bank. If the address is leaked and/or abused, it enables you to trace the malpractice to the bank. For that self-defense reason, some banks reject such addresses.
Many credit unions surreptitiously expose all your most sensitive data to Cloudlare (EC 2,6,7,9,10,14) CF sees your unhashed username and pw without your knowledge. At the same time, the ToS shifts responsibility for credential leaks onto the customer.
Most CUs outsource billpay (EC 2,6,9) And the service is “free” with free postage on mailed checks. Don’t ask how it’s paid for. The few giant suppliers obviously see all the transactions they handle.
Most CUs outsource e-statements and statement printing (EC 2,6,9) The few giant suppliers obviously see all the transactions they handle.
Most CUs outsource their webservices (EC 2,6,9) The few giant suppliers obviously see all the transactions they handle.
Most CUs outsource their phone apps (EC 6)
All banks and CUs have increasingly become KYC over-achievers (EC 1) [US] They collect much more information than legally required.
Some banks close your account if they suspect you are working in the sex trade or marijuana trade (EC 8)
Some banks close your account if they suspect you buy or sell a competing financial instrument (like cryptocurrency) (EC 3,4)

Amid the non-stop increasing enshitification of banks, Bruce Schneier said: “cryptocurrency is a solution looking for a problem”. Really, Schneier? You can’t find any problems with banks and credit unions?

The ultimate refuge from enshitification (of any kind) is non-participation. Boycotts. But forced-banking has quietly become reality in some regions, like Europe. Enshitification is therefore forced. There is no right to boycott. Even living off-grid and self-employed does not solve the problem when the gov’s tax regime refuses cash payments and requires bank transfers.

Belgian banks have gone to the Orwellian extremes of outright refusing cash deposits without proof of source, even for small amounts as low as €50! The war on cash (war on privacy) is in full swing in Belgium.

At the same time, German ATMs are not producing receipts. My understanding of EU law is that the ATM must print a receipt if there is a currency exchange on the ATM’s side of the transaction (please correct me if I’m wrong). But I see no EU law requiring ATMs to print receipts generally. Some ATMs in Germany don’t even have printers; no slot for dispensing receipts. By extension, I suppose such ATMs must not be capable of offering dynamic currency conversion (which is bizarre because that’s where the most profit is in the ATM business).

In any case, it seems a bit off that you can get cash from a German ATM, get denied a receipt (you don’t know in advance that a receipt will not be given), and then you cannot deposit that cash in Belgium due to their nannying.

Or can you? What if you write down the ATM machine’s number, location, time, date, and amount. Would a log of that information serve to document the source of the cash to legal standards?

I just heard from someone who tried to deposit €50 in cash into his Belgian bank account. The bank refused to accept the deposit unless he could prove the source of the money.

Indeed.. on a desposit as small as €50. The guy didn’t say where it came from but such small amount could have come in a card as a birthday gift.

Grannies: before putting money in grandkids birthday cards, visit your local notaire and give a sworn testimoney as to where the money came from, get it notorized, and include that with the cash.

The war on cash (thus privacy) has really made some headway in Belgium.

If you never take your bank cards out of the country, for the most part shit just works. But you leave the country and try to use foreign ATMs and payment terminals, shit is broken. And worse, banks don’t even know why.

Netherlands: maestro-centric. That’s a mastercard-owned network but transactions are different. Transactions are processed with a single msg instead of multiple msgs spanning days. Even if your network logo matches that of the ATM or payment terminal, transactions that should work get declined. The decline msg is always vague and almost always lies about where the fault is (machines blame your bank, and your bank blames the other end).

Germany: a domestic network called giro dominates. There are shops that have a Visa logo but if you use a visa card and try to get cashback, their shit is broken. Instant decline. No reason given. The bank is clueless. Says nothing is wrong with the account and in fact does not even see failed attempts.

Electronic payment broken to the extent that banks, merchants, and ATM operators don’t even have a way of knowing whether the fault is on their side of the transaction, or the other. They always just blame the other side of the transaction. Consumers just see finger-pointing and no solutions.

How are so many people on board with a cashless society when electronic payment has this degree of incompetence on top of breakage? I am basically being told by machines to fuck off. And no one can explain it. Bankers have no access to the logs of their own ATMs. wtf. Why is this level of incompetence tolerated?

In one case the bank said: ”use a different card”. Not joking. They seriously said that. What happened to that “relationship banking” agenda to try so hard to make customers loyal?

We need more of these orgs. The front lines of the fight right now seems to be Europe. Every European country should have a payment choice alliance org fighting for our dignity, privacy, security, and autonomy.

See also ‘The tyranny of apps’: those without smartphones are unfairly penalised, say campaigners.

My data was breached from a company who I did not even know existed. When I asked them which of my financial institutions gave them my data, they ignored the request.

Attorney General: not our problem. Get a lawyer.
CFPB ← neutered by the GOP

There is zero consumer protection in the US for this scenario.

Indeed I cannot protect myself by pulling my money from the offending bank/CU because there is no law requiring the 3rd party to tell me where they got my data. And apparently no law requiring the company working for me to give me a breach notice if the breach notice came directly from the 3rd party who I have no contract with.

Interesting trivia along these lines: credit bureaus (and only credit bureaus) are required by law to tell consumers the source of their information. But they simply ignore this law because there is no statutory penalty for violating it. This is why your credit report lists your past addresses and other people tied to those addresses without stating the source of the info.

This is just to give an idea of the privacy shitshow with US banks. To have confidence in US banks is to be ignorant. It’s a good reason to shrink your banking footprint.

The CFPB has always been underpowered & under resourced. I reported malpractice by the finance industry many times and they could never fix a single problem while banks and CUs got away with murder in broad daylight. But it’s still good to have a watchdog around even if it’s toothless. If anything just to collect and publicize abuses, and advise consumers.

Now the Emperor of DOGE (Elon) is putting that toothless (yet mildly helpful) dog down.

The cherry on top: data brokers can keep selling your social security number, says new CFPB chief. This timing seems strategic. Recall that Trump overturned Obama’s policy that required ISPs to obtain consumer’s consent before selling their private data. I see a pattern.

Do you still want to participate in a banking system that exploits consumers? Consider these actions:

1. Draw down your bank balances by mostly cashing out. Keep the balance low.
2. Ask employers to pay you by cash or paper check.
3. Cash the payroll check at the issuing bank rather than deposit it. Bypass your bank. (Note that some Casinos give perks for cashing payroll checks in their establishment)
4. Stop using billpay, which enables an intermediary to collect more data on you (of course, because you have no protection from data abuses). Send paper checks in the mail with your own postage stamps. Unlike billpay intermediaries, USPS will not peek inside the envelope and pawn your data.
5. Switch to a bank or CU that is not a KYC overachiever (this may be impossible -- most banks demand more data on you than legally required)
6. Paycheck too big for this? You’re overemployed. Switch to part-time and quit buying silly tech garbage. Instead, pull your tech out of the dumpers, hack it and liberate it.

It used to be unlawful for anyone to turn right at a red traffic light. Cyclists broke that law so frequently that lawmakers decided to exempt cyclists from the restriction. And rightfully so.

Of course our adversaries (those who refuse cash) are leveraging the same effect. Merchants and organisations are refusing cash even in situations where they have a legal obligation to accept cash. They are getting away with it because pushover consumers simply pay electronically when given no other option. Because they just want to get on with their day. These pushover consumers are failing in their moral duty to hold oppressors to account. This tyranny of convenience is so widespread that everything is being setup for lawmakers to easily remove the cash acceptance obligation. They will justify it by pointing out lack of challenges or problems manifesting from unlawful anti-cash actions.

It’s because of defeatism. Most people I speak to believe cash will not prevail, so why fight it? That’s the widespread thought pattern.

How many debtors struggle to pay their bills when they can simply insist on cash payment? Most creditors are not calling the bluff because /they/ are too lazy to setup a cash register. People should be exploiting this. It’s a rare opportunity to put up a moral fight and also profit (in the form of an interest-free loan, effectively, because the money is still owed).

This is not just speculation. It’s working for me. But 1 person’s perpetual debt is not enough for a creditor to justify buying a cash register. There needs to be a critical mass of people doing this to reverse the forced-banking direction.

Warning about some regions, like Germany

An interesting case emerged in Germany whereby all residents in the country are required to pay radio fees (comparable to BBC fees in the UK). The radio authority refuses cash, which is obviously a reckless policy because in effect it imposes forced-banking on everyone. It was challenged by a couple Germans and they won.

What’s noteworthy here in addition to the win is that they paid their radio fees as cash into an escrow account. It’s unclear how necessary it was, but it was a gesture to ensure that their opponent could not claim that they were just looking for an excuse to not pay. So the take-away is that in some countries (certainly not all) freedom fighters should consider whether the escrow account is needed.

Is it civil disobedience?

Normally civil disobedience is a form of protest that entails breaking a bad law. But this is a bizarre scenario where the establishment is actually breaking the law by refusing cash. Insisting on paying in cash is our right (of course, lawfullness depends on region and also circumstances). Feels like civil disobedience but in any case it’s safer than that because a court has an obligation to take your side.

The linked article covers Sweden and Norway’s rethink. The spolier below is the full article covering Dutch banks.

full article on the Dutch banks story

Banks advising people to keep cash at home as “geopolitical threats” worsen
WEDNESDAY, 11 DECEMBER 2024 - 13:40

Dutch banks are going to advise consumers to keep cash at home because of the increase in geopolitical tension in the world, said a spokesperson of the Netherlands Association of Banks (NVB). It will be the first time that the banks give this advice.

The bank association is going to discuss this after the Christmas break with the Maatschappelijk Overleg Betalingsverkeer (MOB). Social organizations, such as elderly organizations and the Consumers' Association, but also the Dutch Payments Association, and interest groups, such as Koninklijke Horeca Nederland and MKB-Nederland, work together in this.

“We are giving integral advice about how you can have your financial affairs in order if there are problems with payment structures. This can be about cash money, the denominations needed, and how much that should be. But also about keeping an extra bank account or credit card,” said the NVB spokesperson to ANP.

Minister of Defense Ruben Brekelmans said on WNL op Zondag that the Netherlands should prepare for all possible war scenarios due to the threat from Russia. He also advised people to have cash at home.

The NVB does know whether people have already withdrawn money from their savings. “We have no view of this. But if everyone withdraws some money from their savings account, you will not immediately see it come back in huge numbers," said the spokesperson.

He emphasized that banks are very well prepared for all kinds of threats like cyber attacks, which means that customers' savings are always safe. "Cyber ​​resilience has been a top priority for banks for years. Banks inform each other about incidents, analyze them jointly, and share effective countermeasures," the spokesperson underlines.

The advice of the Maatschappelijk Overleg Betalingsverkeer is expected to be published in the first quarter. A specific date has not been announced for this as of yet.

The Dutch Association of Insurers reacted skeptically to the advice to keep cash on hand. It can be difficult to prove the amount of cash that was actually in the home at the time of the burglary, which can make it more complicated to submit a damage claim, a spokesperson for the insurance association said.

Compensation for stolen cash usually varies between 250 and 500 euros, depending on the insurer, she said. “If you have large sums of money in your home, this can lead to distress in the event of a burglary.”

The association also warns that the risk of a break-in increases when burglars know that there is a significant amount of cash at the location.

“Cash in the house is covered by your home contents insurance in principle, but there are limitations,” said a spokesperson for the insurance association. She said people should review the terms of their insurance policy to familiarize themselves with coverage for stolen cash.

Reporting by ANP

Indeed it is absolutely foolish for people to make themselves 100% cashless, needlessly exposing themselves to the vulnerabilities of being helpless when electronic payments fail. The advice from Dutch banks is inspired by Putin’s war, but we should be smarter yet, and realise there are many other peacetime situations as well where you are fucked if the bank has nannying power to control your money (e.g. recall what happened to Wikileaks; and recall the last time your bank card just spontaneously quit working unexpectedly).

The advice of the article does not go far enough. Of course you should have a stash of banknotes. But that’s not enough because merely having the cash does nothing to fix the dismantling of our cash infrastructure. Suggestion: for 4+ months straight, pay for everything with cash, including utility bills, mortgage, etc. Suppliers who never receive cash payments are dropping cash acceptance. They need to be made aware that cash feeds them -- make the metrics proper. It’s also important for both payer and payee to become aware of payment incompatibilities and injustices. Payees need to know they have cash payers. And cash payers need to become informed of which suppliers are subjecting everyone to forced-banking.

(BTW, I discovered the Dutch bank article was in Cloudflare and has no free-world reports; so instead the full text was nested in the post and the link goes to the Scandinavia story)

All banks are shit but suppose you have a bank that is insideously over-achieving their KYC “compliance¹” and for whatever reason you cannot switch (likely because all the other options are too repugnant). One small thing you can do for every document they demand (id card, utility bill, bank statement, etc) is to fatten the storage footprint of that file as much as possible while simultaneously reducing the quality to barely legible.

I start with a cover letter (“Dear Bank X, a copy of my ID card is attached”). This is not necessary but adding a page really amplifies the filesize. Let’s assume you have a 2 page PDF to start (which is black and white in my case).

Tools needed:

• GhostScript
• tiff2pdf
• ImageMagick
• exiftool

¹ scare quotes used because they are far exceeding their KYC expectations well beyond compliance. They are “taking the piss” because there are no consequences for them when their overcollection hits you harder in data breeches.

convert PDF to fax TIFF

$ gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=tiffg3 -r204x196 -sPAPERSIZE="$paperform" -dFIXEDMEDIA -sOutputFile=fax_format.tiff "$src_pdf"

Replace $paperform with either “A4” or “letter”, depending on where you are. And replace $src_pdf with your input filename.

This command actually has a practical use if you ever send a fax because the fax_format.tiff file is in the group 3 fax format so you can see an accurate representation of what the doc will actually look like on the receiving end without having to just hope that it is not downgraded too much. The significant change is to get it down to ~200 dpi. It can be surprising how decent fax quality is if you start with a good scan and use a good dither algorithm.

convert the TIFF back to PDF

$ tiff2pdf fax_format.tiff im_input.pdf

The output actually shrinks in that step because the PDF contents get compressed. But we do this because when ImageMagick processes a PDF source and produces a PDF target, it’s naturally extremely bloated for some reason. ImageMagick is just terrible with PDFs but this is to our benefit in this case. Add a few key options to really bloat the shit out of it:

bloat it out

$ convert im_input.pdf -quality 100 -colorspace CMYK -resample 600x600 fuck_KYC_assholes.pdf

This triples the number of pixels but it’s still bounded by the A4 or US Letter geometry. It converts the bilevel doc to color. In my test a 38k file grew to 26mb!

im_input.pdf → 38kb
fuck_KYC_assholes.pdf → 26mb

The quality takes a huge hit in this step. I have no idea why. The doc is like 715 times bigger and much worse quality, but the quality is still just barely good enough to be accepted as long as it’s not judged by an asshole with a reject button.

Of course YMMV.. might need some tuning if your bank has a filesize limit you need to target. The beauty of this is that since banks are like cops now, they probably treat these KYC files with forensic care. I don’t imagine that if they had excessively bloated files that they would dare risk reducing the quality by further processing in an effort to reduce the size.

cover your tracks

$ exiftool -all= fuck_KYC_assholes.pdf

That final step sanitises some or all of the metadata (e.g. removes Producer: …imagemagick.…). Of course there is an opportunity to tell them what you think in the metadata as well.

(optional) express yourself in the metadata

$ exiftool -author='(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻' -creator='┌∩┐(◣_◢)┌∩┐' fuck_KYC_assholes.pdf

The author in this case is doing a table flip.

Or more constructive:

$ exiftool -Subject='Please stop financing fossil fuels and private prisons' fuck_KYC_assholes.pdf

(optional) embed a hidden file

Suppose you want to add files that are not rendered when the PDF is opened, either to express yourself further but in a less visible way or to bloat it out a little more in a way that’s easy to control. E.g. your file is 10mb under the size limit. Use dd to make a 10 meg file of random chars then add that to the PDF. Or add a manifesto to the PDF.

$ dd if=/dev/random of=/tmp/extra_bloat.raw count=1 bs=10000000
$ pdfattach fuck_KYC_assholes.pdf /tmp/extra_bloat.raw screw_them_harder.pdf

FYI, if they are clever and nibby they can use pdfdetach to see what you did. So choose the filename accordingly. The reason for /dev/random as opposed to /dev/zero is the random bits don’t compress. Perhaps a good file to attach is a Banking-on-Climate-Chaos-$year.pdf report.

2021: 12mb
2022: 8.2mb
2024: 21.8mb

The preview text is a mess -- I suggest visiting the link.

Great story!

The preview text is a mess -- I suggest visiting the link.

The elephant in the room is the injustice of banks mandating disclosure of phone numbers (thus excluding people without phones and people who have a healthy objection to sharing their phone number with businesses). Then the fact that phone numbers are used as human identifiers. That bank is likely vulnerable to theft with their reliance on phone numbers as a unique identifier.

I generally avoid credit cards but sometimes rare circumstances make checks or cash inconvenient. A contractor did some work for me. The contractor’s bill was essentially:

• $2500 if paying by credit card (actual result: I pay $2475, he receives <$2425)
• $2500 if paying by other means

It became stark how foolish that pricing is when I saw that I received $25 cash back. Most consumers are easily exploited as they foolishly think they are $25 richer -- without thinking about the big margin the MitM took. It means the contractor paid a fee of at least $25 but likely much more¹. Surely he would have profitted more if I paid by other means, like cash. Why didn’t the contractor offer a discount of ~$25—50 for paying cash? I know some do but it’s not as common as it should be.

The merchant agreement generally bans traders from surcharging credit cards (which govs tend to ignore when they accept credit card and add a surcharge). But there’s a loophole for everyone: the rules do not ban giving a discount for other forms of payment. It’s perfectly legit for a merchant to give a cash discount so long as up-front quoted prices match what is charged to cardholders. They should be doing this more.

When a consumer pays by credit card, it would be good for transparency & awareness to print on the receipt: “credit card fee of $75 paid by Bob’s Roofing”.

¹ ~1% is a fee cap in Europe but in the US there is no cap so fees are often in the 3—5% range. So the US contractor likely paid at least $75 in fees.

(edit) Would someone please ship some counterfeit money through there and get it confiscated, so the police can then be investigated for spending counterfeit money?

A Belgian woman told me she received a gift from a relative for €300 in cash. When she tried to deposit it into her bank account, the bank interrogated her over the source of the money, as if this one-time transaction is some kind of terror or money laundering.

In case no one is paying attention, it’s good to be aware of the extremes the #WarOnCash is evolving toward. Banks have become like police without training.. bullying people arbitrarily.

We are collectively like boiling frogs as cashless people are oblivious to what’s going on. Only cash users see the water boiling.

The article does not state how she paid and got caught, but this should serve as a situation that highlights the importance of cash preservation.

(update) prosecution seeks a 15 year sentence.

Invidious link

The EU guarantees most people a right to open a “basic”¹ bank account. Superficially that sounds good, but of course having a right to open a bank account implies that you can then be expected to have an account. It’s an enabler for the #warOnCash. The right to a bank account is a masquerade of freedom from which oppression manifests.

Anyway, you have to ask: do you really have a “right” to open a basic bank account if the procedure for opening the account is inherently exclusive? That is, if a bank only offers a basic account to people who are online, doesn’t a problem arise when this right to an account then leads to an assumption that everyone has an account?

Some banks take the requirement to offer basic accounts seriously by making the application a static PDF which can also be obtained on paper form. So the only thing you need is a pen (to open the account and presumably to use it). But it’s bizarre some banks put the application for their basic account exclusively in an interactive online format. Are offline people just getting “lucky” if a bank happens to offer a basic account application on paper?

¹ “basic” is not just common language here. It refers to a specific type of account that fulfills specific legal criteria.

The article is normally paywalled but I prefixed 12ft.io/ to it, which worked for me. Google supposedly quit caching websites but old caches are still reachable with 12ft.io.

The UK’s GDPR might make it hard for banks to use people’s purchase data to derive their alcohol & tobacco habits, so apparently banks have to rely on interviews. Still, it would be foolish to rely on the GDPR. There are also stories of banks looking at spending data to deny mortgages, which I would guess is happening in a place without privacy safeguards like the US.

I’ll quote the article here as well:

Homebuyers could be forced to provide detailed information about the amount of money they spend on alcohol each month to qualify for a new mortgage under a new clampdown on reckless lending.

In a sweeping review of the mortgage market published today, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said lenders needed to be far more rigorous about their financial checks of potential borrowers.

It said lenders should delve deeper into homebuyers’ personal spending including the amount they spend on alcohol and tobacco.

Spending on shoes, clothes and childcare could also be assessed under a new, industry-wide “affordability test”.

At present, the FSA does not prescribe rules about assessing a consumers’ ability to repay a mortgage and practices vary from one lender to the next.

In its document, the City regulator said: “There is clearly a responsibility on all lenders to extend credit only where a consumer can afford it and, in our view, a robust assessment of both income and expenditure is key to ensuring affordable mortgages.

“We propose to require all lenders to assess the level of a consumer’s expenditure in determining the affordability of a mortgage product, to ensure that lending decisions are based on a consumer’s free disposable income.”

It conceded though that there were some flaws with its plan with consumers potentially underestimating their spend or “failing to incorporate past experiences into their budgeting”.

The new measures, which aim to stamp out risky lending that has been criticised for compounding the financial crisis and tipping hundreds of thousands of homebuyers into negative equity, also include a plan to ban self-certified mortgages, dubbed “liar’s loans”, and to stop lenders from exploiting consumers who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments.

It also proposed that the FSA should regulate mortgages for landlords for the first time.

Self-certification mortgages were aimed at self-employed people with irregular incomes. The mortgages, which did not require proof of income, accounted for one third of new loans in 2007.

Their proposed banning was first revealed in The Times last week.

But the FSA stopped short of ruling out “supersized mortgages” by introducing caps on loan-to-value, loan-to-income or debt-to-income multiples.

Such mortgages were typified by Northern Rock which, at the height of the housing boom, offered 125 per cent home loan deals.

Gordon Brown wrote in a newspaper article at the weekend that it was “critical we end reckless banking practices that have left so many people worried about their finances”.

Jon Pain, managing director of supervision at the FSA, said: “The mortgage market has seen extraordinary upheaval over the past 18 months and while it has worked well for the vast majority of borrowers, some have suffered great financial distress. We recognise that we need to bring about a step change in regulation.”

He said there had been a “mutual assumption by too many borrowers and lenders that the good times could not end.”

The new reforms, he said, would ensure firms “only lend to people who can afford to pay back the money”.

But mortgage experts questioned the ease of imposing some of the new measures and expressed concern about the possible impact on homebuyers.

Ray Boulger, mortgage expert at John Charcol, said the new affordability test could prove difficult to implement. “I think it will be very difficult in practice to go into too much detail,” he said.

Homebuyers, he said, often forget the detail of their spending. “They will remember the weekly shop but not the £3 they spend on a sandwich each day.”

Paul Broadhead, head of mortgage policy at the Building Societies Association, said he had “significant reservations about the possible unintended consequences of some of the ideas.”

He said: “We believe that home ownership is something that should be encouraged, and it is vital that lenders retain the flexibility to respond to the very individual financial circumstances of individual borrowers.”

He added that self-certification mortgages were suitable for a minority of people and that an outright ban was “not appropriate.”

The Council of Mortgage Lenders said it was “important that the principle of consumer responsibility is not lost in such a regulatory environment, as it is a basic tenet upon which transactions of all kinds between firms and consumers rely”.

The report said there was a “clear and non-controversial case” for banning self-certification mortgages, instead compelling lenders to insist that customers provide evidence of their income.

“Our analysis shows that self-cert borrowers take out larger loan amounts than borrowers with standard products and fall into arrears much more frequently. To address these issues we propose to require verification of income for all mortgage applications,” it said.

The loans have been vilified as a significant contributor to the banks’ toxic loans problem because some customers have lied about their income. Defaults on self-cert repayments have been at much higher rates than the industry average.

HBOS and Bradford & Bingley were among the biggest self-cert lenders. HBOS was sold to Lloyds TSB in a rescue deal in September last year and B&B collapsed and had to be partially nationalised.

The plan to bring mortgages for landlords into the FSA’s scope for the first time was necessary the regulator said because of the big part the industry had played in “fuelling property price appreciation”

The FSA said: “As well as being a general contributor, buy-to-let funding funding has particularly helped to inflate prices of certain property types and locations such as city centre apartments.

“The overall impact on house prices inevitably has implications for our interest in the sustainability of the mortgage market.”

The market for buy-to-let mortgages has grown rapidly. Gross advances grew from £3.1 billion in 1999 to £44.6 billion in 2007.

The paper has been put out for consultation until early next year with a “feedback statement” to be published in March.

A central bank digital currency (CBDC) is a form of digital currency issued by a country's central bank. It is similar to cryptocurrencies, except that its value is fixed by the central bank and is equivalent to the country's fiat* currency.

Many countries are developing CBDCs, and some have even implemented them. Because so many countries are researching ways to transition to digital currencies, it's important to understand what CBDCs are and what they mean for society.

*Most modern paper currencies are fiat currencies [for details here]

Note: I do not agree with how CBDCs are portrayed here, because it is actually the institutional point of view. Still, I think this article makes it easy to get a first glance on this topic.

from the article:

They are not allowed to avoid this amount by making several smaller payments in banknotes.

What does that mean for salaries? Every salary payment can be seen as a part of an annual income. I would demand more frequent pay days just to get some freedom back -- to be free from forced banking. Of course I would say the paychecks are not part of a whole payment but each are a whole payment for a specific amount of labor rendered.

#warOnCash