Getting selfish with my selfie
What do you do when a corporation is holding your money and demanding your biometric data as a ransom? Ebay did exactly that. They still owe me but if they think I’m going to give them my photo for that they are wrong. I owe them nothing. If people are just going along with this then they aren’t thinking clearly. Find another way to do business. Our private data is the new gold. There will come a time when we will wish we hadn’t given it away so freely.
My online “borderless” bank did something similar. They wanted me to send a selfie on the smartphone I don’t have. They “couldn’t” process an incoming transaction without it. I said no. So they sent me a long email explaining why this was keeping me safe and I had nothing to worry about. It was necessary to prevent money laundering. Fear, fear, fear – give up your rights! They said it was no different to showing ID when you open an account at a high street bank: I disagree.
Here was my reply:
Thank you, ______________
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I understand the need to check ID. I believed I had already done this. The selfie thing is an escalation. All the same, if ___________________ is no different to other banks in this regard, please tell me where I can go to show my ID to a person and I’ll happily do that. I’ll even do it on a zoom if you want. I’m just not happy if it’s a robot.
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I don’t feel this policy is keeping my money safe. Just the opposite in fact. We are rapidly moving into a world where somebody could lose their house because some of the money they paid for it got linked back several transactions ago to something somebody said on social media. It behoves all of us not to allow the bricks in that wall to be assembled. Look what happened in Canada in 2022. Most people have no idea how far down this path we have already traveled.
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I don’t believe it is the job of banks to actively police money laundering, any more than it is a doctor’s job to police somebody’s illegal drug-taking. We should all resist the state turning us into unpaid police against each other, even if it hurts our immediate interests. I appreciate the need to act on suspicions, in which case you need to say in each and every case what those suspicions are, and give all concerned a channel to refute them. Misunderstandings occur in all areas of life and there needs to be an open and transparent mechanism to put them right. If you are happy for your systems to be left in charge and deem them infallible then you are dragging us all to a place we shouldn’t go.
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data security assurances are bogus. Rule number one in data security is that nothing is secure. The only way to keep information absolutely protected is not to gather it in the first place. I go to great lengths to protect my personal data and it behoves all involved in electronic commerce to respect that.
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Then there is the end usage. Contracts do get changed. Businesses change hands. New laws come in. British Telecom – once a company I trusted – sold 20 years worth of my private emails to Verizon in the USA, which has ties to the CIA. Sorry, but if you want to convince me your systems will keep my photo safe, you’ll have to try harder. I’m not at this stage even going to bother reading the links you sent. They won’t address the matter, and it’s yet another imposition to ask me to do so.
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a company offering “borderless” banking needs to have a range of options to reflect many different cultural and personal expectations. Not everybody wants a smart phone, not everybody trusts webcams etc. But we all need banks. Imposing these systems on the unwilling is social engineering.
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the doubling of data processing every two years is something that needs shouting from the rooftops because most people have no idea what repeated doubling can do. It means that data kept for 20 years can be processed with 1024 times the capability of when it was stored. In 30 years that’s 33000 times the power. After 50 years we are talking millions or billions times more power.
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please don’t send me any more assurances, that’s not what I want. I’m only asking you to consider the issues, and escalate them if you can. Whatever your assurances, you cannot possibly say what will be done with data gathered today even a few years from now. We can never be sure it is properly deleted either. Today’s encryption might be worthless by 2030. Unless you have a crystal ball then there is no way you can stand by any promise made today.
That’s enough. I could go on, but the issues are so huge that if you really don’t get them then I won’t convince you. As an early adopter of your service I’m just very disappointed. I may have to find another way to address my banking needs. Please kindly just remember that we are all building the shape of the world our children will have to live in. If _______________ can’t handle this, then I’d ask you as an individual to at least consider it. If I’m talking to a robot then please be sure this concern reaches a human with sufficient standing in your organisation to give it the consideration it deserves; not just for me but for everyone’s sake.
Yours etc.