Week 3 of separating our public and private personas.
This week, I'd like to look at making payments online and in person. How do we reduce the amount of information banks, credit card companies, and corporations have about our purchases?
Public Purchases
Some purchases will always be associated with our real identity. You can't pay the gas or electric bill anonymously; They know who you are. Unless you intend to create a trust that belongs to an LLC, your identity will be known.
The idea here is for your public persona to appear as normal as possible. Pay your bills on time using your card or bank account. Don't draw attention to yourself. Be ordinary.
Your data will be sold. Expect that. The data leaked, however, will be generic and minimal.
Private Purchases
How do we make online purchases anonymously? Spotify, our workout app, and even X memberships require a card to purchase. Is there a way to prevent our identity from being leaked during this purchase?
First, never purchase through the app store. That is a 100% certain way to give away your identity. Second, don't use your public bank account or card - unless it is a public purchase. If your name is attached to it, don't use it.
For complete anonymity, pull out cash and purchase a temporary visa debit card from a local drug store. Put on it the amount to make a particular online purchase, or the cost of a yearly subscription (make sure to include tax, if applicable). Once the purchase is made, cut up the card. Even if you forget about it, you won't be secretly charged again - or until you jump through the Byzantine hoops to unsubscribe.
A second method is to create an account with the Privacy bank (https://privacy.com). They allow you to create temporary cards, like your current bank does, but without your purchases being scanned by the IRS and sold to advertisers.
Offline Private Purchases
Let's suppose you want to buy groceries without giving up too much. Yes, many corporate store cameras are watching you. They're analyzing your behavior and purchases. This may require shopping at places where this technology isn't in use.
Otherwise, almost all retail stores still accept cash. For those that don't just buy a single temporary visa debit card each month. Load it up with how much you expect to spend and that is your limit. Not only will this help with budgeting, but each month, as far as the store is concerned, a different person is shopping at the location.
Summary
Our goal this week is to:
1. Use our public, identifiable payment methods to pay for services which have our real identity. We should look as ordinary as possible.
2. For purchases where our identity isn't necessary, use a temporary visa card from a drug store or a privacy dot com bank temporary card. Privacy dot com will allow monthly payments is that is the only payment option.
3. In person purchases can be made using the same temporary visa card, recycled monthly, or cash.
Once again, making this a beginning of the month pattern isn't easy. That's why privacy dot com is easier for some people. The choice is yours.
Remember, the idea is to deprive big tech and the ad agencies of as much data as possible. They can't leak or sell data they don't have.