freedomPusher

joined 3 years ago
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Do any credit reporting agencies in Europe give consumers control over creditors access? in c/europe@feddit.de
[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

So not what their running debt is but only whether they can take on a new, specific one.

I knew the criteria was out of the hands of EU-based lenders, but didn’t realise the data is also out of reach to the lender. I suppose it makes sense that the lender would get no info other than a yes or no, if lenders have no discretion.

I noticed A shop had a rediculously priced phone (like €800+, something I would never buy) but advertised something like €9 if you take a contract. So it’s effectively a loan factored into a locked-in phone service plan. IIUC, the phone shop must arrange that with a bank and does not have the option of taking on risk, and then the bank asks the central bank if customer X can handle that loan, correct?

You can reverse payments through the bank in the EU as well but it’s seldom necessary, since the companies tend to revert the charge willingly when confronted by the consumer protection bureaus.

I’ve only had to resort to bank reverse a couple if times.

One was when I ordered a pair of shoes of what appeared to be an Italian website. It later turned out it was a scam site that listed popular models that were not made anymore and then sent you a ridiculously poorly made knock-off copy from China. I explained the issue to my bank and showed the knockoffs I got and a week or so later the charge was reversed.

That’s quite a surprise. I heard SWIFT/IBAN transfers were permanent and irreversable. I heard of mistakes being corrected but it required the two banks to collude and the bank of the recipient to do a money grab on their account, which I suppose would be impossible if a criminal closes their account. I wonder if your bank took a loss or if they colluded with the other bank. IIRC, banks have a minimum “investigation” fee of like €25 plus an hourly rate to pay bankers to deal with bad transactions. Did your bank offer that service for free?

Do any credit reporting agencies in Europe give consumers control over creditors access? in c/europe@feddit.de
[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The only similar things I know is the central bank keeping a listing of “unpaid credit” which make ban you from getting any new credit for a certain time.

Indeed that’s what I’m talking about. In Belgium it seems consumers have no control over whether a creditor can access the central bank’s records. Apparently the central bank simply trusts that creditors are checking records in response to an application for credit. I would like to know if any EU countries make use of an access code so consumers can control which creditors can see their records.

Do any credit reporting agencies in Europe give consumers control over creditors access? in c/europe@feddit.de
[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I don’t mean to imply anything about scoring, but certainly there must be some kind of mechanism to expose bad debtors to lenders.

In Belgium, there are no private credit bureaus but there is a central bank. Belgian banks are obligated to report loan defaults and cash transactions to the central bank, and creditors are obligated to check the central bank’s records. Consumers have no way to control creditors access to their records in the central bank. It seems to be trust based. The central bank apparently trusts that a creditor is checking a consumer’s file in connection with an application for credit by the consumer.

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Do any credit reporting agencies in Europe give consumers control over creditors access? (sopuli.xyz)
 

In the US, consumers can freeze their credit worthiness records and receive a code. When the records are frozen, the only orgs that can access the records are those already doing business with the consumer. If a consumer wants to open up a new account, they share the code with the prospective creditor who uses it to see the credit report.

So the question is, how are access controls on credit histories done in various EU nations? Do any use unlock codes like the US, or is it all trust based?

Ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software in c/foss@beehaw.org
[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 months ago

eclic.ro is an exclusive Cloudflare site just like change.org is. Exclusivity is obviously quite lousy for democracy. Better alternatives are here:

https://codeberg.org/swiso/website/issues/140

Ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software in c/foss@beehaw.org
[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

privacytools.io always was shit show even before the infighting. They put their own endorsement site on Cloudflare. Despite a collossal pile of dirt emerging on #Signal:

https://github.com/privacytools/privacytools.io/issues/779

PTIO continued endorsing Signal non-stop, refusing to disclose the issues. That was also before the breakup. Dirt was routinely exposed on PTIO endorsements and it never changed their endorsement nor did they reveal the findings on their website.

Now both factions are hypocrits just as they were when they were united. The original PTIO site is back to being Cloudflared (nothing like tossing people coming to you for privacy advice into the walled garden of one of the most harmful privacy offenders), and Privacy Guides has setup on a CF’d Lemmy node. The hypocrisy has no end with these people.

Ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software in c/foss@beehaw.org
[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Interesting, but that does not help because Mint jails all their docs in Cloudflare.

Ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software in c/foss@beehaw.org
[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Also worth noting that #Ubuntu and #Mint both moved substantial amounts of documentation into Cloudflare (the antithisis of the values swiso claims to support). I have been moving people off those platforms.

BTW, prism-break is a disasterous project too. You know they don’t have a clue when they moved their repo from Github.com to Gitlab.com, an access-restricted Cloudflare site. There are tens if not hundreds of decent forges to choose from and PRISM Break moved from the 2nd worst to the one that most defeats the purpose of their constitution.

It might be useful to find dirt on various tech at prism-break, but none of these sites can be trusted for endorsements.

The prism-break website is timing out for me right now. I would not be surprised if they were dropping Tor packets since they have a history of hypocrisy.

Ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software in c/foss@beehaw.org
[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 months ago

If you look in their bug tracker, it actually reveals that they ignore dirt that has been dug up on their suggestions.

Ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software in c/foss@beehaw.org
[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

As others have mentioned there is little in the way of justification for these suggestions, and while I happen to agree with plenty of them, I’d personally like to see more reasoning, if not to appease people that already have opinions then to help newer users understand their options.

Indeed. In fact it’s actually worse than you describe. Swiso witholds negative information. They don’t want to inform people. They want to steer people. For example, swiso’s endorsements for donation platforms have some quite serious problems:

https://codeberg.org/swiso/website/issues/141

swiso is also aware of the serious issues with Qwant and the serious issues with DuckDuckGo. Not only failing to remove them but also failing to inform. Qwant and DDG are both Microsoft syndicates!

(if anyone is interested, one of the most privacy-respecting search services is Ombrelo¹, which is largely unknown to the world because PTIO, swiso, and prism-break don’t do the job they claim to do)

And swiso is aware because that’s their bug tracker.

/cc @Imprint9816@lemmy.dbzer0.com

¹ https://ombrelo.im5wixghmfmt7gf7wb4xrgdm6byx2gj26zn47da6nwo7xvybgxnqryid.onion/

Ethical, easy-to-use and privacy-conscious alternatives to well-known software in c/foss@beehaw.org
[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

There are a few good alternatives and swiso has been aware of them for ~4+ years:

https://codeberg.org/swiso/website/issues/140

First projections of EU Parliament election results in c/europe@feddit.de
[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

Young voters did this, ironically enough, according to BBC World News. Young people struggling to get jobs after graduation think that right wing parties will fix that.

So as older generations are trying not to hand-off a burning planet to the young, the young are signing up for a burning planet under some delusion that right wingers will get them jobs. Schools have apparently failed to teach kids that the jobs they get under conservative governance are shit jobs -- lousy pay and lousy benefits.

First projections of EU Parliament election results in c/europe@feddit.de
[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

My god… “Consumer power” is a myth, there’s no evidence of it working for anything significant.

I guess you are not following Gaza. McDonalds in Israel decided to give free meals to Israeli soldiers. McDonalds customers who boycott Israel impacted McDonalds’ bottom line. And it’s a franchise. The McDonalds shops in Israel had different ownership than McDonalds outside Israel (where the boycott was impacting). So in response McDonalds HQ directly bought out all Israeli branches in order to stop the support to Israeli troops, just to protect their brand.

Lidl and Aldi both started taking a hit in Europe because their produce from Israel was being boycotted. Aldi got caught removing the origin label from their produce when Israel was the origin. Lidl got caught falsifying the label by displaying a different region. If the boycott was insignificant, there would be insufficient motivation for a grocery chain to commit fraud against their customers. So I boycott the whole Lidl chain and Aldi North, not just Israeli products.

Organize your workplace

Or boycott without organising, as this person did:

https://slrpnk.net/post/4687232

Here’s what does not work: not boycotting.Boycotts only lack effect when in fact they are not executed. IOW, the apathy you advocate weakens the strength of boycotts. The shitty attitude that boycotts don’t work is the sole factor that disempowers boycotts from working.

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the wisdom of a Danish & German apartment buildings replacing coin-fed laundry machines with the cloud (yikes!) (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz to c/europe@feddit.de
35 comments fedilink
 

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/13133455

It used to be that you could insert a coin into a washing machine and it would simply work. Now some Danish and German apartment owners have decided it’s a good idea to remove the cash payment option. So you have to visit a website and top-up your laundry account before using the laundry room.

Is this wise?

Points of failure with traditional coin-fed systems:

  1. your coin gets stuck
  2. you don’t have the right denomination of coins

Points of failure with this KYC cashless gung-ho digital transformation system:

  1. your internet service goes down
  2. the internet service of the laundry room goes down
  3. the website is incompatible with your browser
  4. the website forces 3rd party JavaScript that’s either broken or you don’t trust it
  5. you cannot (or will not) solve CAPTCHA
  6. the website rejects your IP address because it is a shared IP
  7. the payment processor rejects your IP address because it is a shared IP
  8. the bank rejects your IP address because it is a shared IP
  9. the payment processor is Paypal and you do not want to share sensitive financial data with 600 corporations
  10. the accepted payment forms do not match your payment cards
  11. the accepted payment form matches, but your card is still rejected anyway for one of many undisclosed reasons:
    • your card is on the same network but foreign cards are refused
    • the payment processor does not like your IP address
    • the copy of your ID doc on file with the bank expired, and the bank’s way of telling you is to freeze your card
    • it’s one of these new online-only bank cards with no CVV code printed on the card so to get your CVV code you must install their app from Google’s Playstore (this expands into 20+ more points of failure)
  12. your bank account is literally below the top-up minimum because you only have cash and your cashless bank does not accept cash deposits; so you cannot do laundry until you get a paycheck or arrange for an electronic transfer from a foreign bank at the cost of an extortionate exchange rate
  13. you cannot open a bank account because Danish banks refuse to serve people who do not yet have their CPR number (a process that takes at least 1 month).
  14. you are unbanked because of one of 24 reasons that Bruce Schneier does not know about
  15. the internet works when you start the wash load, but fails sometime during the program so you cannot use the dryers; in which case you suddenly have to run out and buy hanging mechanisms as your wet clothes sit.
  16. (edit) the app of your bank and/or the laundry service demands a newer phone OS than you have, and your phone maker quit offering updates.

In my case, I was hit with point of failure number 11. Payment processors never tell you why your payment is refused. They either give a uselessly vague error, or the web UI just refuses to move forward with no error, or the error is an intentional lie. Because e.g. if your payment is refused you are presumed to be a criminal unworthy of being informed.

Danish apartment management’s response to complaints: We are not obligated to serve you. Read the terms of your lease. There is a coin-operated laundromat 1km away.

Question: are we all being forced into this shitty cashless situation in order to ease the hunt for criminals?

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The War on Cash is not just war on privacy, but war on the environment as well (www.wired.com)
 

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/7212221

Keeping $1k in a bank for 1 year is equal to the CO₂ emissions of flying New York to Seattle. Because banks invest in fossil fuels.

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