How to Make Private Payments - The Sovereign Computing Show (SOV008)

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Whenever you pay for things with a debit/credit card, you're exposing yourself. In this episode, Jordan and Stephen discuss tools you can use to regain some control and privacy with your payments. They cover using Bitcoin & Lightning, virtual debit cards, gift cards, and cash.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Reframing Privacy
00:29 Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show
00:45 ATL BitLab Sponsorship
01:46 Introduction to Private Payments
02:32 Using Bitcoin for Private Payments
03:33 Challenges with On-Chain Bitcoin Privacy
07:11 Exploring Lightning Network for Privacy
11:36 Why Payment Privacy Matters
22:15 Using Bitcoin and Lightning to Buy Gift Cards
25:59 Using Bit Refill for Instant Gift Card Purchases
26:29 Exploring The Bitcoin Company
28:12 Introduction to Privacy.com
29:25 How Privacy.com Protects Your Information
37:56 Privacy.com Pricing and Downsides
43:59 Listener Boosts and Feedback
48:14 Contacting and Supporting the Show
50:49 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

[00:00:00]

Jordan Bravo: Really, I think it's good to reframe it there. This is not shady, this just makes sense. We've kind of walked down the path of giving out all of our information by default, which is the approach that doesn't make sense. I think we're trying to reel it back in and approach this in a more sane fashion.

Stephen DeLorme: It's actually the world we live in where we're no longer in this easy cash-based economy. We're losing that very much where you can have these kind of ephemeral interactions with other people in the world.

Jordan Bravo: Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show, presented by ATL BitLab. I'm Jordan Bravo, and this is a podcast where we teach you how to take back control of your devices. Sovereign Computing means you own your technology, not the other way around.

Stephen DeLorme: This episode is sponsored by ATL BitLab. ATL BitLab is Atlanta's freedom tech hacker space. We have co working desks, conference rooms, event space, maker tools, and tons of coffee. There is a very active [00:01:00] community here in the lab. Every Wednesday night is Bitcoin night here in Atlanta. We also have meetups for cyber security, artificial intelligence, decentralized identity, product design, and more.

We offer day passes and nomad passes for people who need to use the lab only occasionally, as well as memberships for people who plan to use the lab more regularly, such as myself. One of the best things about having a BitLab membership isn't the amenities, it's the people. Surrounding yourself with a community helps you learn faster and helps you build better.

Your creativity becomes amplified when you work in this space, that's what I think at least. If you're interested in becoming a member or supporting this space, please visit us at atlbitlab. com. That's A T L B I T L A B dot com. Alright, on to our show.

Jordan Bravo: Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show. I'm Jordan Bravo and I'm here today with Stephen DeLorme.

Stephen DeLorme: What up?

Jordan Bravo: Today we're gonna talk about private payments, how we can [00:02:00] spend money privately, and the tools that we can use to achieve that. but first we'd like to remind you that you can boost into the show.

You can let us know what your thoughts are on these topics. If you'd like to hear any other topics or you have any comments on what we're talking about, you can do that with either Fountain FM as your podcast 2.0 app, or you can go to atl bitlab.com/podcast and you can send us a message there

Stephen DeLorme: Alright. Let's get into it.

Jordan Bravo: All right, so the first thing I think we should talk about when we're thinking of how we can pay privately is. We can use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a much better payment system when used in a private manner, and as huge fans of Bitcoin and lightning on Bitcoin. Uh. That's gonna be my preferred method of paying whenever possible. However, we know that we [00:03:00] do not yet live in the glorious hyperbitcoinized future that we all yearn for. And so today, in this world of dirty, dirty fiat, how do we pay with fiat and pay more privately with fiat, which most of the time is gonna have our name attached, and it's going to have a bunch of KYC, that's know your customer. Regulations attached to it. And that typically involves us doxing, our information such as our name, driver's license, or government ID of some sort, uh, as well as a bank account and that kind of information. So first, let's talk about Bitcoin and how we can use Bitcoin to spend more privately. Um, it, it is possible to use Bitcoin in a non-private manner. The most obvious example would be if I buy Bitcoin in a KYC manner from a typical exchange. That could be something like Coinbase, but it could also be something like Strike or [00:04:00] Swan and that Bitcoin is, is, uh, purchased, and if that's an on chain UTXO, that's gonna be associated with my identity. And so there's a record of that. Uh, by, by law any company that's gonna be selling you bitcoin. Is going to have to keep a record of that. So if you were to just spend that somewhere, you're gonna be achieving some privacy. It's, I think it's still better than linking it to a bank account depending on the manner in which you, you're spending it. But at the same time there, if somebody wanted to go back and trace that, they could link that to you. Uh, any

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: Thoughts there, Stephen?

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, for those just listening, I've got mempool.Space pulled up and for anybody who might be newer to Bitcoin, I'm basically just looking at the, the, the ledger of Bitcoin right now. And, uh, I'm gonna click into one of the pages of the ledger, as I like to call it. It's a block really, and I'm gonna [00:05:00] go through and I'm gonna just look at all the transactions that I'm gonna see that. This address right here, BC one QR, uh, YHG, so on and so on. Uh, sent 2.56 Bitcoin to BC one QDK. And you know, they also sent some to another address down here.

We can probably imagine that this was the change address. It was sending the change back to itself. So we can look at this ledger and we can actually determine a lot of things. So. We say this sometimes that Bitcoin is a, um, a pseudonymous, uh, you know, payment system. It's not an anonymous payment system though.

So all these, these addresses here, these are kind of like pseudonyms. Uh uh, I don't necessarily, um, know the, the names of the people that, uh, correspond to these addresses, but I can see these addresses pretty transparently on the ledger and I can see how money. Moves between them. So when we're talking about native kind [00:06:00] of on chain, uh, bitcoin, um, uh, you know, it's actually, uh, somewhat difficult to use it privately.

Um, and, uh, which, which is gonna sound a little weird at first, but I just want to go ahead and lay that out there, that it's something, it's difficult to use privately and there's. Certainly a lot of techniques you can use, um, to, to pay with on chain Bitcoin more privately, but it's, it's, I'm not gonna lie, it's complicated and it, it's probably beyond the scope of what we're getting into today.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, that's right. And we'll get into no KYC Bitcoin in greater detail in another episode. But the easiest way, or the best way that I think that you can protect your privacy with Bitcoin is to simply. Buy Bitcoin or earn Bitcoin in a non KYC manner. And I'll just give a teaser for when we touch on, when we get to that topic in detail.

But that's gonna be using peer-to-peer exchanges such as robos or bis or, [00:07:00] um, hoddle, hoddle and that kind of thing. And, and you can also buy Bitcoin locally from people, you know, maybe a meetup group, you know, peer-to-peer, face-to-face kind of. Transactions.

Stephen DeLorme: And also would now be a good time to get into lightning maybe. Absolutely. Oh, let's, let's talk about lightning and the trade-offs, the benefits, the debt, the pros and cons, and. how, how we would approach that.

Lightning for anyone who's not aware, is just a second layer on top of, uh, Bitcoin. It's a, it's a payments network that, uh, interoperates and it, you know, works natively with bitcoin. Um, you know, it's a very, just like Bitcoin itself, it's a very deep thing you can explore. Um, but you know, there's lots of good lightning wallets out there that you can download off of the App store. Maybe what we could do is just, uh, go to ACINQ just to start with, and, whoops, uh, I don't know who that is. [00:08:00] Hold on. Can't remember their domain name. ACINQ.co. Uh, yeah. So ACINQ is, uh, a company that makes, uh, a product called Phoenix, uh, wallet. And, uh, you can, uh, it's open source. You can download it on the, the Android. Um, Store, uh, it's, it's pretty good, uh, lightning Wallet, uh, to start with. It's, uh, you know, kind of well regarded in the community. And, you know, without getting too deep into the, the how, how Lightning works, the, I I would say that in its current form, lightning typically offers pretty good sender privacy. Um, it doesn't always, uh, uh, offer the best recipient privacy. Um, um, uh, like, but in terms of just being a sender, um, and being able to pay someone without the recipient, uh, being able to, to figure out what your lightning pub key is, it's pretty good in that regard.

So, um, [00:09:00] again, there's always edge cases, there's always things that go wrong, but in general, my kind of rule of thumb is, is if you're gonna pay somebody with Bitcoin, if you're gonna pay them. Uh, with, uh, a lightning wallet that's gonna be a lot more private, typically, uh, uh, uh, more so than the on chain wallet.

Jordan Bravo: That's right. And I think it's a good use case for what we're talking about today because we're, we're mostly talking about how can we spend our money privately, right? Like, whether it's purchasing online or from a in, in-person merchant. So Lightning is a great tool in the toolbox. I did wanna point out that I think Phoenix. They, they no longer offer their app in the, to us customers in the Google Play Store, the App store. And I think this is, oh, yeah. In reaction to the Chilling effect in 2023, was that four? I think 20, 24 In the past year or so, uh, we had several Lightning and, and Bitcoin companies pull outta the US because of, [00:10:00] um. legal proceedings going on around Samurai wallet and tornado cash. I believe

Stephen DeLorme: There's also a Breez wallet. You can try. There's a lot of lightning wallets out there. So, um, you know, just look for Bitcoin, lightning wallets. Actually, that might be a good place to, uh, highlight. Uh. Uh, there Zeus Wallet.

How could I forget Zeus wallet. Um, a, that, that should work on iOS and Android as well. Another thing you can do is if you, you really want to go deep into this, you can go to wallet scrutiny.com and this gets into On Chain as well as lightning wallets. But, you know, you can see a lot of, uh, like security reviews of um, uh, Bitcoin wallets here, which is kind of nice. Um,

Jordan Bravo: And I, I'd like to point out that there are tons of merchants that accept lightning, uh, or, or just Bitcoin in general. So off the top of my head, I use it on a regular basis to pay for my VPN provider. Um, I know, so IVPN and [00:11:00] mold ad, they're both great VPNs that accept Bitcoin as payment. Uh, do you know if Proton VPN accepts it?

Stephen DeLorme: You know, it wouldn't surprise me if they did. So Proton does have their own Bitcoin wallet now. Um, but I'm not sure if they've started, uh, like accepting it for their services or not.

Jordan Bravo: I know that some domain name providers I use name cheap and they accept Bitcoin and we'll, we'll talk more about that in a future episode of how to privately buy a domain name.

But I've used that many times and it's great.

Stephen DeLorme: Um. You know, it might also be worth getting into the, the idea of like, why we would want to pay privately, or I shouldn't say that. Maybe I should say trying to like limit the scope of what we're trying to do here because, um, I, I think the idea of, um, privacy can feel a little bit overwhelming. Um, particularly when we start talking about things like. [00:12:00] Um, you know, you know, using, uh, services that are KYC free and how to get Bitcoin, um, you, you know, in a KYC free manner that can, that can feel a little bit intimidating sometimes. And one thing I think that is just good to think about is that a really great place to think, uh, pla place to start with payment privacy, I think is just trying to obscure your identity or sensitive information, um, from. The people that you are purchasing from, sounds like, okay, well I'm doing business with them. It sounds a little bit distrustful. Why do I wanna hide my identity from them? Uh, a lot of times you're not necessarily, uh, doing business, uh, directly with people who are your friends. Um, you're, you're doing a business with, you know, a business who might have, uh, employees, uh, who work there, who are not your friends, who you don't want, uh, you know, knowing.

Uh, where you live or what your credit card number is, or, or something like that. I remember there was a [00:13:00] rumor in, back in high school that there was this, uh, this, uh, girl who could, uh, memorize credit, like have photographic memories and worked at a, a pizza place and would just like, um, memorize people's credit card numbers and stuff like that.

But looking at them, I don't know if it was true or not, but it, it, you know, uh, it, you know, sets the idea that like. Every time you expose your payment information to somebody at a business, you, you know, run the risk that like, you know, a bad guy at the business intercepts your information. And then when you get onto the web, um, and you're, you're not even directly talking to a human being that you're doing business with.

You're just ordering something from. Uh, some store on the web. Um, you know, do you really want every single website you've bought something from to, um, know your home address, know your credit card information, know your email, know your phone number, all of that kind of stuff. Um, and so in that regard, uh, just, just, just limiting, uh, your payment info from being in the hands of the people [00:14:00] that you are doing business with can be a huge, like, kind of privacy and personal security boost.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, I wanna expand upon the problems with using your normal everyday ways of payment with your credit card or debit card and the, and the problems there. First of all, the whether or not it was true that that girl or woman could memorize credit card number I. Even if you don't have that ability, we know that scammers will like somebody who's working at a restaurant, you hand them your credit card, they can swipe it through a device called a skimmer, and it's meant to look like a regular credit card swiping machine.

But really what it's doing is it's recording all of the data from that, from the card, and then they use that and go and spend and use it for fraud. So even if, uh, this is actually pretty common, even if you don't have a incredible memory, another problem is buying things online. Like you said, maybe there's a malicious employee, but they could just be incompetent.

[00:15:00] You know, maybe they have the best of intentions, but do they really have the best IT cybersecurity practices? Is there database. Locked down, you know, are they unhackable? And the answer of course is no. And so a lot of merchants do get hacked and their customer database with all of the credit card information of all their customers gets hacked.

And then that's on the dark web or, you know, sold to the highest bidder. Um, the other problem is that even if a company does not get hacked, and even if they have employees that are not malicious, they might just do some kind of. Let's say less than ethical business practices, for example, how many times have you had a reoccurring payment? And suddenly you notice that they raised the price on you. Yeah, you didn't even notice. You know, maybe it's been several months and you go, Hey, when did they double my subscription fee? Or when, you know, I thought I was getting a low price, but it turns out that was just a teaser rate and they bumped it up and now they've been charging me every month and I didn't even realize it. So that's a [00:16:00] problem. The other problem is maybe you intended to cancel something and you just forgot and they were quietly charging you in the background and you didn't notice. So all of these are reasons that you might not wanna use your. Real credit card number, your real debit card number, and your real, um, personal information. So e especially let's, I wanna dive a little more into what you said about how it can feel shady that you're not giving your real information to these merchants, but it really doesn't make sense when you're interacting with a site that is serving, you know, let's say millions of customers. Let's say they're a giant merchant and they're delivering something to you digitally, let's say to your email. There is no reason that they need to know your real name, your real address, and your real phone number. Like it's just completely unnecessary to their business model, to your enjoyment or receiving of that product that they're giving you. And in fact, it's adding liability to them. If you were to ask [00:17:00] them, they would probably say, yeah, we would prefer not to have that data if we don't need it, because that's less of a chance that we get hacked or has some kind of liability on our part.

So. Really, I think it's good to reframe it there. This is not shady, this is just makes sense. We've kind of walked down the path of giving out all of our information by default, which in my opinion is the one, is the approach that doesn't make sense. So I, I think we're trying to reel it back in and, and approach this in a more sane fashion.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, it's like kind of just like imagine if, if, uh, you know, like saw your grandfather or something like that, you know? Back when, uh, you know, like 60 years ago or something is like buying a hotdog and like the person, you know, asks for all this personal information. Like how would he react? It's like, I was gonna hand you a dollar bill to pay for the hotdog and now you're asking me where I live.

Like, what the hell's wrong with you? Like that, that might be their reaction, right? Um, [00:18:00] nowadays though, we might buy a hot dog over. You know, DoorDash or whatever, we might be doxing all this personal information over a hotdog like every single day. That's the, the world we change in has lived so well. It might sound at first like, oh wow, that's a really paranoid worldview.

It's like, no, it's actually the world we live in where we've, we we're no longer in this easy cash-based economy. Uh, you know, we're, we're, we're losing that very much where you can have these kind of ephemeral interactions with other people in the world.

Jordan Bravo: Exactly. And I would like to push a new social norm, which is private by default.

And if a company just, I. The, the person at the Starbucks counter or whatever, when they ask for my phone number, I don't launch into a whole spiel and give them a sovereign computing episode on the spot about why society, you know, asks for too much in, uh, information. Instead, I just give them a fake phone number, I mean, 99%, or I say, no, no thank you.

You know that my first response when somebody asks for my phone number when a merchant asks for my [00:19:00] phone number is. Oh, no, I'm not gonna give that out. And if they, if they literally cannot proceed with the transaction, without it, first of all, I'm gonna question whether I want to go back to that merchant.

But let's say I, I just really need to get through it in that moment. I'm gonna give 'em a fake phone number because 99 times outta a hundred, it doesn't matter. It's just like. Them walking through their procedure by memory?

Stephen DeLorme: Well, I usually find if I give them a sovereign computing monologue, it actually shuts down the interaction a lot quicker. Like it's a really good way to make them be like, fine, sir. And then type in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, like, yeah.

Jordan Bravo: Actually, wanna tell a story. So I, I was invited to be a part of my friend's wedding, and therefore we had to get all matching outfits, you know, tuxedos and all that. And so he, he sent us to a store.

I won't name the name of it, but I go in there and they take my [00:20:00] measurements. And I had already created an account online beforehand. And usually when I'm gonna create, and they have a, a required field for phone number, I'm using some random phone number generator thing to, to create a random phone number.

But I think it was failing to load or I was just in a hurry. So I just put in (987) 654-3210 as my phone number. So I get to the store and they, they take my measurements and they're like, okay, sir, we're gonna check you out right here at the register. So I go up there and the, the gentleman helping me starts typing on the computer and he says, huh, that's weird. The system froze. Oh, well I'll try, try it on this other register over here. So he says, come on over here. So we go to the other register and he types it in info and he says, huh, that's weird. This one's frozen too. he goes to another employee and he says, can I try your terminal? And he tries to bring up my information and lo and behold, it's frozen. So he says to me, I'm, I'm sorry, sir. Uh, it looks like we're [00:21:00] having some IT issues with our system. Let me call the IT professional and get this straightened out. So after waiting for a ridiculously long time, he comes to me and he says, I'm really sorry about the wait, sir. Uh, it turns out it, it was this weird issue where when I typed in your phone number. It all, like thousands of other users had that exact same phone number and it tried to load them all and it kept crashing the app. Oh my God. And so I thought that was hilarious. Uh, it turns out thousands of people for the, with this company had put in the exact same (987) 654-3210 phone number. And so, uh, I wanted to say to their IT department, you're welcome for finding that bug for you.

Now you can go fix that because that's absurd. Your, your app should not crash. That's terrible. Software engineering practices. But of course, I didn't say it to this guy helping me out at the store. I said, oh, sorry to hear that. Anyway. He, they were able to check me out and, um, that's the end of that story, but I just thought that was [00:22:00] funny and I thought of that when we were talking about this.

Stephen DeLorme: Okay. You heard it here. Just that's the magic number you need to, uh, crash, uh, every, uh, retail software system. 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 4 3 2 1.

Jordan Bravo: Yep. while before we get onto the topic of virtual cards. And, uh, private fiat payment methods. Let's talk about where we can use Bitcoin and Lightning to buy gift cards. The first place we're gonna talk about is bit refill.com. That's B-I-T-R-E-F-I-L- L.com. And for those of you watching, we've got it pulled up on the screen here, but what Bit Refill allows you to do is they have, uh, digital gift cards for. Many, many merchants, I wanna say hundreds of merchants. And you can buy them all with Bitcoin and lightning specifically, which I think is great.

Stephen DeLorme: Oh, and it looks like they brought this back. I thought, I think it disappeared for a while. But the digital prepaid Visa, so now on this screen [00:23:00] here, I've got a digital prepaid Visa card. I can buy it between 20 and $500. So. That means if you don't have a, if the, if you need to use a service that does not have a gift card present on, uh, that refill, you can buy a Visa gift card instead.

And then it should, uh, in theory just function like any other debit or credit card number.

Jordan Bravo: Yes, and I've used this before. Um, I use this to buy my Mint mobile. Um. eSIM and it was great. It was, it was very private and very quick. Uh, I did notice at the top of this page just now looking at the Bit Refill site, they have a section for eim, so I'm not sure if that's a new feature or what, but that's kind of cool.

Stephen DeLorme: I've seen it here for a while. Um, but I've never actually used it. Huh. is pretty cool though.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. 'cause in a previous episode we discussed. Private phone numbers and how to get privateSIMs, and I was not aware that Bit [00:24:00] refill was an option. So I am going to keep that in mind for the future.

Stephen DeLorme: I'm just going through the alphabetical list of, uh, countries and locales.

Uh, it's a lot of 'em, so that's pretty cool. Do they have United States? Oh, let's see. Uh, do, do, do, do. So there's so many countries who would've thought, uh, we're still in the tease. Uh, you No, they do not. It goes from UAE to United Kingdom to Aay. no. USA there it is. USA. They just abbreviated it. Yeah. A hundred gigabytes or one gigabytes.

Seven days. A hundred gigabytes. 30 days. That's pretty good.

Jordan Bravo: Click on it. I wanna see the pricing.

Stephen DeLorme: Let's see. Uh, estimated price three 90. But if we want to do the big one, a hundred gigabytes for 30 days, it's a hundred. Ooh, that's 188 bucks.

Jordan Bravo: How about, let's see, let's do 10 gigabytes,

Stephen DeLorme: $25 bucks for 30 days.

Jordan Bravo: Okay. That's pretty good. So that's, you know, [00:25:00] competitive with other providers.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, and they accept both Bitcoin on chain as well as lightning. So it's a, I mean, I found it to be a pretty handy service. They have a nice little, uh, mobile app too. Uh, I know the idea of using gift cards, um, sounds a little cumbersome and, um. it can be, um, you know, uh, but one thing they, they do to try and make it easier on their app is, um, like any gift card you buy, it just kind of like shows up in, you kind of have like a little gift card wallet on the app and, uh, you can, uh, just open it up, uh, you know, unseal the gift card in the app and it'll give you like a little QR code, uh, or a barcode or something.

You know, different stores are on different systems, but like at grocery stores, sometimes their, their scanners will have like QR codes. Um, or they'll have QR code scanners for their gift card system. So yeah, point is you can go to like self-checkout at grocery stores and stuff, and. Use, you know, just open up the Bit Refill app.

[00:26:00] And my one thing that's actually kind kind of good is that the Bit Refill app is very responsive and uh, I've actually bought the gift cards in the store before. So I'll go to like a checkout station start, you know, ringing up my purchase or whatever, figure out what the amount is, and then go buy a BitRefill card in the app immediately for the amount I need. That way you don't end up with a lot like leftover.

Jordan Bravo: That's, that's a good. I've done the same thing with the next service we're gonna talk about. It's, which is the Bitcoin company and that's the bitcoin company.com. Uh, I was in a, I think it was a DSW shoe store and I, I noticed that. The Bitcoin company had a good discount on, um, for DSW, so I was at the register, I pulled it up.

I used some Bitcoin to buy my DSW gift card and I paid for it right there and it, it worked out great.

Stephen DeLorme: Oh. And apparently they now have a [00:27:00] money transmission service as well. Send pesos to Mexico and send rial to Brazil. Huh, interesting. Yeah, no, I haven't used this one nearly as much. I remember. Okay. I remember trying this app out, uh, like when it was like brand new May, maybe it was even in beta still.

I can't remember. It's been a bit, but it's good to know it's, uh, still around and, uh, it's, it's working out there in the world.

Jordan Bravo: Cool. Any other thoughts on Bitcoin and or lightning?

Stephen DeLorme: No, I don't think so. I mean, that's the basic gist is, you know, if, if you need to pay in Bitcoin, try to use lightning 'cause it's more private and uh, you know, of course it's always easiest if the vendor directly accepts, uh, a lightning payment.

And if they, you know, don't, then you can use the Bitcoin company in bit refill to, uh. To fill that gap for you. So I think that that probably about covers it.

Jordan Bravo: And shout out to Silent link. Silent Link, which is in our previous episode where we talked about private phone numbers and private, [00:28:00] um, mobile data.

They are a e sim provider and they accept Bitcoin and lightning. Alright. Let's move on now to, instead of using Bitcoin and Lightning, how do we pay at sites that only accept US dollars, let's say, because we're in the US So we're, this is gonna be a US centric show, uh, because that's really all I have experience with. So, uh, feel free to correct us if we get anything wrong that doesn't apply to other countries.

But in any case, in the US I think an absolutely. Great tool to use is privacy.com. are also known as Pay with Privacy, but if you go to privacy.com and you can sign up for a free account, and the way this works is you, you, uh, attach your bank account, so a checking account and or your debit [00:29:00] card. And so you are, you are of course, by necessity. yourself to, to this company privacy.com. But that's not the point. The point is that you get privacy from all of the merchants that you shop with. And in addition, you can optionally get privacy from your bank itself because your charges can be masked or at least the, uh, not the amounts, but the merchant name can be masked. So what you do is once you've. Created an account and linked it to your debit card or your checking account, you can then spin up a infinite number of virtual debit cards and you can use these anywhere that you pay. So if you're, if you're buying something online, every single merchant that you buy from, you should spin up a separate virtual debit card. And to make this process easier, there is a browser extension that privacy has. And they have a mobile app for Android and iOS. And so what that would look like is, I'm at a, I'm [00:30:00] at a site where I haven't, I've never used it before or I've never bought from before. I'm just gonna throw out the name of a big retailer that everybody might know.

Let's say Walmart. Let's say I'm going to walmart.com and I'm buying something. Um, the first time that I'm, I'm buying something there, I am going to. I'm gonna click on my privacy.com extension button. It's gonna spin up a new card for me. It's going to assign it to Walmart. And then, um, I have full control over that card.

So one, I can see the purchases. Um, two Walmart is. Not going to know my personal information because when I'm at the payment page for Walmart and they ask like, what is your name, your credit card number, or your debit card number, expiration date, et cetera, et cetera, and your, and your, uh, I'm blanking on the other things that you need. Your three digit code and your address. So the only thing that that has to be real quote, [00:31:00] unquote number that you're getting from your virtual card is the credit, is the card number, the expiration date, and the security code, the three digit security code. The rest you, it can be anything, literally anything.

You could put Harry Potter as the name and 1 2, 3 Hogwarts Street as the address, and it doesn't matter because it's actually not checking that on the back end. So what I do is I just spin up a random, uh, I, I use a site called Faux id that's F-A-U-X-I d.com. But really just type in, do a search for random name generator or random user profile generator, uh, if you don't want to try and make something up on your own. Um, but anyway, getting back to privacy. So what that does is it masks your personal data from the merchant. And then going forward, you can pause that card, you can close that card down. You can even set a recurring spend limit. Mm-hmm. So you could say, I only want Walmart. Let's say [00:32:00] I'm getting some subscription from Walmart.

I, I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I. You know, maybe this is my Netflix subscription or something. Uh, you can say, I only want this to be able, this merchant to be able to charge me $5 a month. And then if they ever tried to charge me $5 and 1 cent or $6 a month, it would block it and I would see a notification that they tried to do that.

So that's really cool. That can give you a lot of there. Anything to add on on that?

Stephen DeLorme: I love the service. It's really great. yeah, it's very easy to use. And, uh, actually one time, well, I don't know if I should say this, but here goes like, so one time I know you, you bought something from one of my web stores and I was really confused because I was trying to figure out who it was and it worked.

I mean, it could, like, I, I, I was, so, I had Stripe hooked up as the credit card processor on my store and. [00:33:00] Like just drilling into like, uh, like going through at, you know, beyond just the backend of the web store into the Stripe backend. The amount of information I could figure out about this card holder was like, basically nothing. Um, I, I just had a guess at one point. I was like, maybe that's Jordan. I went and asked you, uh. But no, I mean, I couldn't figure out anything.

Jordan Bravo: Great to hear from the merchant's point of view, what you, you are able to see. So, the other thing that you can do, we, we talked about how you can mask information from the merchant. The other thing that you can do is mask information from your bank inside. Normally by default, your transactions will show up in your checking account or, or on your debit card as. The actual merchant name, but there's a simple box that you can tick in your privacy.com settings that says private purchases or mask my, my purchases.

And what that does [00:34:00] is, is anything any purchase made with that enabled your bank account statement or your uh, debit card statement, it will just show. Um, PWP like pay with privacy and that's all they can see. They can see the amount of course, but they, they won't be able to see the merchants. So you get privacy on both ends of the spectrum there.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, it's pretty handy. Again, 1, 1, 1 of the things that's always, uh, complicated about these things is that, you know, we create these, uh, parties. We have to, uh, these third parties that we have to trust. Um, so it's like, well, instead of trusting the bank with that, we trust privacy.com with that. But it's a, it's a, you know, kind of threat.

I'm personally willing to, um, deal with, um, if they seem like a good actor in the space for the time being. And I guess I definitely, being on the merchant's end of it, I have seen that as a merchant you don't really have much information. So I feel like for certain it totally defends against [00:35:00] having your data in the hands of. Merchants, um, and defends against, uh, you know, the bank knowing so much about you, so somebody knows something about you. But it's, you know, I guess, feels a little better to me to have that contained with, know, one company that kind of sells, you know, tr privacy as part of their product, a product offering and service, rather than having all that information distributed randomly amongst merchants,

Jordan Bravo: Right, distributed amongst merchants and your bank where. privacy.com. Their whole business is privacy, like you said. So they're, they're not, it's not impossible for them to lie and break that trust and sell your data, but we know that banks do it. I mean, we know for a fact that banks do it, so I. Go with the, I would say go with the one who at least is selling privacy versus the one that's not.

And then, like you said, you also have all that protection with the merchants regardless of what the bank is doing.

Stephen DeLorme: And on that note about what the banks do, I [00:36:00] mean, I remember, um, back in my former life when I, I did more like, uh, uh, agency, uh, like creative agency work. One client we had to work for was basically this, um. data analytics company that dealt with like banks and, and stuff like that. And, and basically what they did, their whole shtick was, I mean, they were like this, you know, whoa, cool hip tech startup or whatever, but they, um, uh, would sell software to very big banks, very well-known banks, uh, in, in the USA. and basically like, Hey, give us all the data that you know, you have about, um, you know, about what your customers are buying, like, which, you know, where they're using their debit card and all that. We'll, you know, run it through the data analytics processing engine and then [00:37:00] spit out recommendations for what your customers are interested in.

And then you can use that data to like. targeted advertising to, you know, like sell that data to targeted advertisers. And it was like, these are very big banks that this startup was working with and it was like, it was a little bit spooky. So I'm glad I don't have to work on that stuff anymore. But it's very real.

Like the banks are like already out there like selling your data to third party companies and he is like, well, you know, how could they do that? Stephen, that sounds like tin foil hat talk. Well, no, it's buried in. It's buried in a hundred, uh, uh, pages of terms of service that no human being has the time to read.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. Or, or the ability, unless you are a lawyer or legal expert.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: Okay. We've talked about the features

of privacy.com. Let's talk about the price and then we'll talk about the downsides. So we're on their pricing page now, and the [00:38:00] personal account is free. It's $0. Uh, I've been using that for a couple years now and I've never hit the limits of it. Um, it, they say you can create up to 12 new cards per month, which seems like a lot to me for the average person.

And, um, there's zero fee on it unless you're doing foreign transactions. But I've never hit that limit. And I think the paid accounts, I. Are for, are targeted more at businesses. So if I have a business instead of traditionally you might have to give a company credit card or a company debit card to your employees to be able to expense things.

Instead, you can get a, have a privacy.com enterprise account or business account and you can, it's, it's handy for categorizing spending and um, budgeting and expenses. So that's what it seems to me that they're targeting. But again, I'm using the free personal account and I've never run into a fee. [00:39:00] Oh. And it looks like the, the, the more expensive enterprise accounts and stuff, they have no foreign transaction fee, whereas the personal account has a 3% trans foreign transaction fee.

So if you happen to be buying stuff that's outside the United States. You'll see a 3% fee tack on there.

Stephen DeLorme: It doesn't look to me like there's also like ramp, which is a lot of bus, uh, companies use for like spinning up virtual cards for their customers and stuff. It doesn't look like this one's nearly as feature rich as something like ramp, but I mean, I agree.

You certainly could use it, especially if it was a small business. You could um, you know, make stuff. I think another thing too is with the plus plan, it's like it's got this like category locked cards features. Which I think the idea with that would be like, I don't know, uh, you know, if you buy computer parts from New Ag and Microcenter and you know, a handful of other websites, maybe instead of, you know, generating a [00:40:00] card for every single um, site you go to, you want to just be like, we have a budget of $500 per month for computer doo-dads this card.

Uh, is scoped to the electronics category or something like that. It can be used anywhere as long as the retailer like belongs in the electronics category, maybe. Huh. I think that's what that means.

Jordan Bravo: I also noticed that the pro account, which is $10 a month, has 1% cash back on purchases, which is kind of cool.

Stephen DeLorme: That is neat. Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: Sort of makes it competitive with cash back credit cards where you're typically getting 2% or so.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. I, I'd rather, uh, just hold Bitcoin, but yes, certainly cashback on is, uh, nice if I'm already spending.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. I mean, I'm not gonna do it for the cashback, I'm doing it for the other features we've already discussed.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: But if,

Stephen DeLorme: but some people would, some people are like nuts about that cashback stuff.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I'm aware, uh, [00:41:00] personally, I, I. Just see it as a extra nice little bonus. You know, basically it's reducing the price of the, of the service, but I'm doing it for the other reasons. Yeah. Uh, okay. That, so that's the actual price that you're gonna pay for this, which in most cases is gonna be zero.

Um, are there any downsides to privacy.com? Well, we talked about kind of one already, which is they're, they become the central point of failure for your privacy, for your purchases. But you're really no worse off than if your bank knows everything and you're, you're protected from all of the merchants. So for me, I think it's pretty straightforward that this is a great benefit for people who want some privacy.

And, um, the other downside that I would say is that it is a, these virtual cards are debit cards and it's linked to your checking account. And I know that some people prefer to do all of their spending on their credit cards. And I get that I, I do some spending on my credit card [00:42:00] as well for various reasons.

You know, you get some consumer protections, you get some, uh, cash back, like we said, maybe some points, et cetera. But I really think that a lot of the benefits of using these virtual debit cards outweigh the benefits that you get from a credit card. So I think it's worth it in most cases. The other downside I would say is that there's.

This is only good for online purchases. Um, or even if you are like reserving a card, or excuse me, let's say you're making some kind of reservation over the phone, whether it's a rental car or a. A hotel, let's say you're booking, you can give them the number, but if you're actually in person and you're at a merchant that requires a physical card to be swiped, scan, um, swiped, tapped or inserted, that's where this is not gonna be applicable.

So in that scenario, it's, it's not useful, but I think it's a great tool to have in our sovereign computing [00:43:00] toolbox, and I highly recommend it.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, unfortunately, I don't think there's a lot of great options for in-person fiat payments that, you know, um, protect your payment information. You know, you could go buy Visa gift cards, but that's always annoying, juggling that kind of stuff.

And, you know, your best bet at that point is probably just, you know, good old fashioned paper cash. But ever since covid, a lot of businesses, uh, in the US have been, uh, you know, really. Um, you know, going cashless and, uh, I don't know. It's kind of annoying, but

Jordan Bravo: Yeah, it would be nice if I, I've used vanilla visa gift cards in person plenty of times, and it is a hassle.

That's why I don't do it on a regular basis. But if I could have some kind of reloadable gift card that I could get in a private manner, that would be ideal. And I would, I would use that wherever I could in person.

All [00:44:00] right, let's move on to our boosts.

Stephen DeLorme: Okay. Let's get over there. So I think we had, well, one also, uh, maybe we should from the last episode, I think we forgot to mention this on the last one, but I'll say, um, uh, a shout out to we, uh, was it. We had, uh, L Ray, I think was their name. The web interface is a little weird on Fountain, but did, uh, some streaming SATs last time.

So thanks for the, uh, streaming SATs. L Ray. There's no message attached. Um, in terms of boosts, we have this one. Is your web browser spying on you? This was from the previous episode, episode seven, and we have a boost right up here.

Jordan Bravo: All right. Justin Nakamoto son boosts in with 3000 SATs and says Relevant, and he gives us a link to a Wikipedia page called Four Horsemen of the [00:45:00] Infocalypse or Infocalypse.

Stephen DeLorme: Okay, let's uh, pull this one up. The four horsemen of the Infocalypse refers to those who use the internet to facilitate crime or pejoratively to rhetorical approaches evoking such criminals. The phrase is a play on four horsemen of the apocalypse. There's not a universally agreed definition of who the horsemen are.

Terrorists, pedophiles slash child molesters organized crime like drug dealers, intellectual property, pirates, and money launderers or cited commonly. One of the most famous definitions is in the Cyphernomicon by the cypherpunk writer and engineer. Uh, writer and engineer, uh, Tim, uh, may, which states 8.304.

Like so many other computer hacker items as a tool for the four Horsemen drug dealers, money launderers, terrorists, and pedophiles, what limits on the net are being proposed?

Newspapers are complaining about the four horsemen of the Infocalypse, terrorist, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers. See, I had never, I've never heard of this term before. The before, horsemen of the Infocalypse. Interesting.

Jordan Bravo: Okay. So for some [00:46:00] context, for people who didn't hear the episode that Justin was boosting on, uh, we had talked about how the FBI wanted to backdoor encryption and they were invoking.

What we now know is called the four horsemen of the in info clipse, the pet of terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers. So it's kind of a, a trope I would say at this point. And now we know that it has a, a name.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. It's coined by Timothy May in 1988. Wow.

Jordan Bravo: Alright.

Stephen DeLorme: I mean, obviously I'm familiar with all, uh, Timothy May's writing and all of that, but I'm not familiar with, uh, this term, so that's cool to know that it, that's funny to know that it goes back, uh, that far in time.

It's like we're still dealing with like the same kind of, uh, FUD arguments, uh, again against, uh, cryptography like nearly 40 years later.

Jordan Bravo: Yep, that's right. And, uh, it's, it's good to [00:47:00] see that these things are repeated because it's, it's these same old, tired arguments that are debunked. Um. And I can't remember is Timothy May.

Stephen DeLorme: Oh yeah. Timothy May wrote the Crypto Anarchist Manifesto.

Jordan Bravo: Yes. So I wrote, we, we actually, uh, did a reading group discussion on that. This one at, uh, Atlanta BitDevs, uh, a couple years ago. Uh, so I've read that one in some of his other posts. I don't know that I've read The Cipher Noon,

I think The Cryptonomicon, which is a fictional novel by the author Neil Stephenson.

The name of the Cryptonomicon is based on the Cyphernomicon.

Stephen DeLorme: Sounds about right? Sounds about right. Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: Alright. Well, Justin, thank you again for that boost. If you wanna boost in, if any of you listening or watching, want to boost in, again, you can go to Fountain FM or download the Fountain app on your iOS or Android device.

And you [00:48:00] add some SATs to your wallet, and then you can boost in on any episode. You don't have to be listening live. You can be listening to any recorded episode all the way into the past, and you can add a boost and we will read it on the show and you can let us know what you think. Uh, any topics you're interested in.

Another way that you can communicate with us is you go to atl bitlab.com/podcast. And Stephen, is there a way for them to boost on, on that site yet?

Stephen DeLorme: Not yet, no. Okay. So, well, you could go to, uh, we have do have a link on there for a BTC pay server if you just want to donate to the show. Uh, I don't have a way to accept memos or comments on that yet, but I will one day.

Jordan Bravo: All right. And then do we want to give them any other ways that they could contact us? Maybe they don't have boosts set up or, um, you know, can they email us or can they join a matrix chat or a, god forbid telegram chat?

Stephen DeLorme: Oh, man, you're putting me on the spot here. Uh, well, the telegram, I [00:49:00] think I'm trying to wind that down.

Uh, so I don't feel like we should be giving out the link to that unless, unless we, unless we want to promote its further usage. Um, uh, in terms of email, uh, I don't know. We could have an email address for the show. That would probably be, uh, you'd probably be the one in charge of that, I would imagine. Um, I.

Uh, could always like, uh, yeah, I mean, you know, you could, uh, you know, DM me or Jordan on Twitter or Noster. Um,

Jordan Bravo: well, I, I wanna say, first of all, didn't mean to put you on the spot. We always have the ability to, uh, edit the recording.

Stephen DeLorme: No, it's fine. I, it's nothing sensitive or whatever. I just didn't have a good answer, that's all.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah.

Stephen DeLorme: But no, it actually, so everyone, I am actually fine if everyone hears us figuring this out live because this is only episode. Eight. So we're kind of figuring this out as we go. But uh, yeah, it might be the sort of thing where maybe we need some kind of, um, I don't know, uh, official engagement channel or recommended contact stream or [00:50:00] something like that.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. So maybe we make it easy for people by offering a couple different methods. We've already got the boost, like we said. Um, maybe we also add the ability for them to go to atl bitlab.com/podcast and there'll be a, a form there that they can. Enter in and then maybe we will add the matrix info coming up.

We have to get moving on that. And then lastly, maybe we'll add an email address for them to email into.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. Yeah, that'd be cool. So this is

Jordan Bravo: A teaser for next time you, you all listen, you might be hearing us talk about the email address, the matrix chat and the website that you can. Boost in or Message US app, but in the meantime, your best bet is to use Fountain FM or any other podcasting 2.0 app.

Stephen DeLorme: Cool.

Jordan Bravo: Anything else you want to cover before we get

outta here?

Stephen DeLorme: Hmm,

I uh, think I'm good.

Jordan Bravo: Alright everybody, thanks a lot and we'll see you next time

Stephen DeLorme: Later.

Hey, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this [00:51:00] episode. If you want to learn more about anything that we discussed, you can look for links in the show notes that should be in your podcast player, or you can go to atlbitlab. com slash podcast. On a final note, if you found this information useful and you want to help support us, you can always send us a tip in Bitcoin.

Your support really helps us so that we can keep bringing you content like this. All right. Catch you later.

How to Make Private Payments - The Sovereign Computing Show (SOV008)

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

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