from FineCoatMummy@sh.itjust.works to privacy@lemmy.ml on 21 Oct 21:08
https://sh.itjust.works/post/68708109
I wanna sign up for Patreon. Reason is, to give money to some podcasters, musicians, OSS authors. Ppl I think are doing good things. That’s how they accept donations.
But was there a privacy clusterfuck? Of course there was!
In October 2015, the site was the target of a large cyber-attack, with almost 15 gigabytes of password data, donation records, and source code taken and published. The breach exposed more than 2.3 million unique e-mail addresses and millions of private messages. Following the attack, some patrons received extortion emails …
I tried to signup privately. I only want to give money to ppl. Well if you use a VPN you get a total cloudfare gauntlet. Every page load, prove you are human! You can sign up with a masked card and a VPN, but they insta-ban you. Before you can sign-in even once, acct is locked.
Has anyone signed up in a kinda private way? How?
I can’t “just use this one cryptocurrency bro” b/c the creators I want to give money to only are on Patreon.
FFS. I’m trying to give money away! I don’t have to, but I belive we should support ppl doing good things for the world. Can’t even do that privtaely I guess.
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Anything having to do with money is heavily surveilled. And for some good reasons, in my opinion, although this is probably gonna be downvoted.
If you could donate money anonymously, then swarms of bad actors could launder money this way. No good options there, I am afraid.
Perhaps the creators could be more sensitive to this side of things, by offering more private ways to donate money, like cash or prepaid cards.
Not by me. It’s a reasonable answer. Couple things come to mind tho.
One, to this very day I can “launder” a $20 bill through a local family run mercantile.
And two, my online donation would not be untraceable when using a virtual card. That card protects my identity from the vendor, but NOT from the company that issued me the card. They know who i am IRL, real name, real addr, etc. If I do something bad with it, the authorities can still come knocking. I only want to be protected from Patreon, not complete inpenetrable Snowden tier privacy. I feel the same about online shopping. I want protection from the e-store. Not from the civil authorities.
That’s why cash in the mail is still an option (with some VPNs for example). No wonder the EU is cracking down on cash payments above a certain limit.
They do require a ton of sensitive data to issue these cards. I don’t know if they are themselves to be trusted. Probably members of the same surveillance network with banks, so this is perhaps more of a placebo effect. The men in black will still know what you do with your money.
Same goes with crypto. So there is no point really. The invasion of our privacy is not a matter of individual consumption choices, but a systemic issue. No matter my privacy beliefs, I choose to do a number of things normally, because doing otherwise can come off as very malicious to banks and other institutions.
Yah I’m sure they could if they want. But I still think it gives me protection from the commercial tier data brokers. The company is putting its own rep on the line as a privacy broker. When it comes to their private emails, I have never seen the slightest sign that they’ve sold me out.
I figure nothing’s ever gonna be perfect. My threat model isn’t the NSA tho. It’s commercial data brokers hoovering up everybody’s purchase and donation history. Plus the constant everyday site hacks that compromise ppl’s activities.
If people cant receive my money in a way that is acceptable to me, they dont get it. I dont do recurring fees, i dont want platform accounts. If you cant just make a sale or receive a donation without those things, you are part of the problem.
I get where you are coming from.
Thing is, these are like… a history podcaster. My guy’s not plugged into the privacy community at all. Prob knows nada about any of this. And frankly it wouldn’t even be worth his time. He’d get what, a handful more donations? Wouldn’t even cover his time to figure out a private payment opt.
I want there to be more private methods too. But I gotta balance that against, I also want to support creators I like.
My drivers are more focussed on the proposition and payment profile
Private payment is harder. I dont have solution for that except that if i dont truat them enough to use a virtual card then they need to do more work to earn trust if they want paid.
Its not about making a channel that wont pay enough, just picking one with a respectful design that doesnt rely on dark patterns. That should not be that difficult. It is mostly satisfued with a simple one time transaction.
Might be unpopular in this sub, but I don’t think that’s that big of a deal. Sites get hacked sometimes. It happens, especially 11 years ago, especially on a site that stores financial info.
I think your problem is not the masked card, but the VPN. i could be wrong, but I bet if you don’t use a VPN, it will probably let you use a service like Privacy.com. There is very little way to detect it. Unless Patreon is selling your data, them having your IP once or twice for logging in isn’t the biggest issue. And their privacy policy states that they never sell any data to third parties for any reason, and do not share any data besides:
Up to you if you believe them, but Patreon tends to be uncontroversial as far as payment systems go.
It is also pretty common to have your site behind Cloudflare since Ai became a thing, especially for VPNs.
I’’m not saying any of this SHOULD be normal,, or that you NEED to accept it. If your limit is being able to use a VPN, you do you. But if I were in your position and wanted to donate, I would just do it. Privacy is never perfect. If you believe strongly in independent financial support, I think that’s reasonable, especially if you end up being able to use a masked card without a VPN. You may also consider contacting the creators. Hard to ignore “hey I want to give you free money please”
That is something worth thinking about.
I would probably be OK with that, if I can also avoid using my real name. And maybe I can? I haven’t tried that combo (masked card + real IP + fake name).
Yes, that combo is usually how I get masked cards to work. You might try using a different device too if that doesn’t work; it could be possible that your device info was flagged.
If the recipients are too lobotomized to accept donations other than through patreon, well you tried. Archive.org will accept crypto donations. Dunno about fsf.org but they will take cash.