Privacy stalwart Nicholas Merrill spent a decade fighting an FBI surveillance order. Now he wants to sell you phone service—without knowing almost anything about you.
A direct debit is a contractual agreement, they have zero access to the bank account, just the unique identification number and an automated system that requests money from that unique identifier once per month.
And that if there’s no money in the account, they don’t take you into credit, but instead just pause service until you pay
These services usually have the ability to debit whatever your bill is, and then suddenly their system fucks up, or you get hacked and someone commits fraud, and before you know it a $5000 payment comes out of your account instead of the expected $30.00.
It’s better to have that set up on a credit card in case something happens and you get a much better chance to dispute it.
That’s literally impossible, it’s not how it works
At the very least it’s literally impossible in UK and EU.
The system isn’t actually taking any money from you at all, it’s merely sending requests to the bank to ask for the money.
Some banks automatically will go “okay!”, some need human confirmation for every transaction, ALL need human confirmation for any transactions over £200 (by law)
That’s definitely a UK/EU thing then. If you get a $5000 cellphone bill in NA because someone did long distance fraud and you have pre authorized debits set up, $5000 is coming out of your account in Canada and USA.
Edit: assuming you have 5k and or have overdraft on the account. Not sure what happens if you have less than 5k and no overdraft. Like I don’t know if it’d take you to $0, or fail and charge you a insufficient fund fee.
Depends on where you live of course. I always find it very disconcernibg linking bank accounts even I countries where it should be ok. The fuck ups are way too many for me. I don’t want any of that.
I had to give a fingerprint and a picture of me holding my passport, plus copy of the passport to get a Sim in Peru…plus a half hour of my life in the process
Wait, they ask for your details when setting up a phone in America?
I thought y’all lived in the land of the free!
The most I’ve ever been asked for to setup a phone is my bank details, and that’s it, so they can setup direct debit for my contract
Every EU phone number has to be connected to an identifiable person or company.
By name, not by anything else
Yes, by name. And that name has to be verified. They know everything else by default.
They still think I live at my parents house even though I moved out 25 years ago, it’s wildly inaccurate and easy to circumvent
ironically that is the last thing i would want to give to a phone company
The ability to pay money for your contract?
Edit: they only ask for that if on Contract, if pay-as-you-go they ask for no details at all
I like the ability to pay, I just don’t want to allow them access or even knowledge of my bank account.
A direct debit is a contractual agreement, they have zero access to the bank account, just the unique identification number and an automated system that requests money from that unique identifier once per month.
And that if there’s no money in the account, they don’t take you into credit, but instead just pause service until you pay
These services usually have the ability to debit whatever your bill is, and then suddenly their system fucks up, or you get hacked and someone commits fraud, and before you know it a $5000 payment comes out of your account instead of the expected $30.00.
It’s better to have that set up on a credit card in case something happens and you get a much better chance to dispute it.
That’s literally impossible, it’s not how it works
At the very least it’s literally impossible in UK and EU.
The system isn’t actually taking any money from you at all, it’s merely sending requests to the bank to ask for the money.
Some banks automatically will go “okay!”, some need human confirmation for every transaction, ALL need human confirmation for any transactions over £200 (by law)
That’s definitely a UK/EU thing then. If you get a $5000 cellphone bill in NA because someone did long distance fraud and you have pre authorized debits set up, $5000 is coming out of your account in Canada and USA.
Edit: assuming you have 5k and or have overdraft on the account. Not sure what happens if you have less than 5k and no overdraft. Like I don’t know if it’d take you to $0, or fail and charge you a insufficient fund fee.
Depends on where you live of course. I always find it very disconcernibg linking bank accounts even I countries where it should be ok. The fuck ups are way too many for me. I don’t want any of that.
Why?
Because they misunderstand how banking works
I had to give a fingerprint and a picture of me holding my passport, plus copy of the passport to get a Sim in Peru…plus a half hour of my life in the process
Jesus, that’s fucked