Re: Store Oddity/Bug Report

On Jul 19, 4:06 pm, Fred Stone <fston...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
You can get an account for $10 [rest ignored]

You mean, you can get an account if you have $10, a credit card, and
willingness to jump through God knows what hoops (likely including
currency conversion, or even spoofing what country you're actually in
if they decide to discriminate on the basis of geography like some pay/
ecommerce sites do).

I have the $10 but not the rest -- sorry. Until there's an easy*,
safe**, universal***, and non-credit-requiring**** way to buy stuff
over the 'net any price above zero zeroty-zero is more than I can
afford to pay online. :P

* As in, anyone in the world who has $X and a net connection can
easily set it up and put the $X in.
** As in, you risk at most the $X you explicitly put into it, and
there are ways to dispute charges or it ensures you see before you hit
accept the real amount that will be deducted, say using strong crypto
of some sort. Also, no personal information is required to simply
put money in and later spend that amount online. You go to their
branch office and hand over the money in exchange for some crypto
codes. Later you use these on a site to pay, and they can charge up to
the amount of money less some small transaction fee, and your account
is decreased by the charged amount and the transaction fee. No mess,
no fuss.
*** As ubiquitous online as, say, interac is offline, plus
nationality- and currency-agnostic, doing any needed conversions
behind the scenes for customers and for merchants.
**** As in, you don't need to apply for or receive a credit card, line
of credit, or anything of that sort, or pass a credit check, or you
only do if you want to be able to overdraw/buy now and pay in
installments/whatever.

Basically what's needed is an online and fraud-resistant version of
interac. Banks should probably do it -- offer to all customers
existing a new the ability to put a certain amount of money into an
"online wallet" which they can (subject to a bank service fee) then
use online, and merchants' debiting of this money doesn't expose the
bulk of your account to risk (or even reveal any information about
your main account or your real identity). I'd like to see strong
crypto used for this, where an electronic transaction authorization
with a particular amount is sent to you, and you digitally sign it
somehow and send it on to your bank, which then performs the
transaction by transferring funds from your account to the merchant's.
In this scenario, the amount and who it really is paid to will be
visible to you. You add your own account number and digitally sign the
whole thing; the merchant never even sees your account details at all
with this implementation, nor can they ever get money from you without
you knowing and authorizing the exact amount, nor can they retain some
number that can then fall into the wrong hands, or be used again
without your explicit further authorization (so, no risk of sneakily
"agreed-to" opt-out recurring charges without you realizing what's up
and opting out after at most the second, and first unexpected,
billing).

I suspect the way the only e-merchant payment option that is close to
universal is credit cards, full of woeful security problems and
requiring getting credit and risking debt to use, must be some sort of
conspiracy, given we have good crypto and a kind of "secure e-chequing
account" functionality would be a natural system for banks and
merchants to adopt yet they don't...

.

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