blog: no, I won't buy a smartphone

[nikos]

here's the comment area for today's blog post found at
https://www.zabkat.com/blog/dumb-smart-phones.htm

[Kilmatead]

Normally, I'd be the first to agree with you and supply you with copious amounts of lawyers, guns, and money to make the bastards pay... but it's not actually a human "right" to have a bank account in the first place (I should know, having had more than a couple stripped from me in multiple countries ), so you can't really demand that private businesses operate according to your interpretation of the modern world (where, it's important to note, the customer no longer matters).

I mean, I have to fight you tooth-and-nail just to get even the least of my fetishes recognised - Kilmatead vs. Zabkat is a tiny battle compared to an individual vs. the banking system. God knows I've done my bit to feck-them-over every chance I get, but... as long as I keep them in a box and out of the rest of my life, I don't mind too much.

I also take great comfort in the fact that when using fingerprint-authentication ("biometrics"), that will continue to work when someone holds my recently stolen phone up to my recently deceased (and blood-soaked) body's finger. I think that's kind of cool. And very convenient for ne'er-do-wells, brigands, and other thievery-minded-entities - like the banks themselves. What do you think actually happens (and who actually benefits) when they claim to "write off" fraud? Exactly how complicit might the companies making the phones in the first place be? Cui bono, indeed.

Besides, banks don't play fair, so why should we expect them to do anything responsible? It's not in their nature.

I do, however, take additional comfort in the knowledge that the rise of the modern banking system essentially started with the Knights Templar holding the currencies of the wayward Crusading European hordes and issuing credit notes for their holiday stays in the Unholy Lands or whatever messy end their journeys amounted to (drownings, diseases, turning apostate, etc).

And what eventually happened to the Knights Templar? Ask a little lad named Jacques de Molay:

As European support for the Crusades diminished, the French monarchy sought to disband the order and claim the wealth of the Templars as its own. King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Templars, had Molay and many other French Templars arrested in 1307 and tortured into making false confessions. When Molay later retracted his confession, Philip had him burned upon a scaffold on an island in the River Seine in front of Notre-Dame de Paris in March, 1314.

One might think that dear Jacques had a wry smile upon his bio-metrically withered lips 705 years later come the 15th of April 2019. Funny how they never mention that part of "what goes around comes around" on the news of the proud Parisian decay.

Best not to rely on banks or bankers to begin with, for when they fall (as they all eventually must), reserve the wry smiles for your own amusement, as they take your civilisation with them, despite our best efforts in eschewing their pathetic wares.

[dunno]

The perceived progress in banking will never stop, bankers will always look for half a excuse to renege on their obligations as Insurance companies ALWAYS do. I'm not a luddite but I detest having one's life in a sole mobile device, it just screams "target over here", The issue is that if one's means of identification and payment is in a single phone how does one identify oneself to get a replacement phone, how to phone the bank and report it stolen, how to pay for transport to get home to get paper ID to present to the government official to change one's access to online ID theft, how to buy food etc.

My solution,
I have two different cards for currency transactions, Debit and Credit. Two phones for traveling.
I have a dumb phone for everyday use, no banking is done on this phone, I have a identical phone at home locked up, on this phone I have a different sim card and this sim card/number is solely used for banking transactions OTP's via sms.
I have a dedicated laptop for online banking only, monthly payments transfers etc. it only goes online for that. All banking/personal data is stored in TrueCrypt and I use a password manager to activate online banking portals, if laptop is stolen I don't care as data is safe. TrueCrypt is backed up up on different media stored in different places.

If I travel I take two phones and the laptop, at destination I only venture outside with my no data dumb phone which if lost wont be traumatic, I get a local sim card and new phone. My OTP banking phone never goes outside.

Maybe that's over the top, I dunno, but it gives me piece of mind.