What are the options for increased privacy in how you pay for things where you live?
Cash is the obvious answer, but what about buying stuff online?
UK here. Thinking of ditching cards/contactless for good old cash. No idea about online payments - not doing anything illegal so might persevere with cards for now. Zero experience with crypto.
Cash is pretty accessible where I live, but I’m always in for a surprise when I gravitate towards self-checkout and realize that it’s a card-only machine.
Prepaid cards used to be my go-to online, but it seems that fewer and fewer payment processors are letting them through their “security” checks. They were also next to impossible to obtain when I was in Europe. For a lack of better options on hand, I went with privacy.com’s virtual cards, which doesn’t really anonymize things in the eyes of MasterCard, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.
The only other thing I could think of is signing up for eBay or Amazon with a pseudonym, paying with gift cards purchased at a store with cash, and shipping to a PO box or Amazon pick-up location.
Ideally Monero, but it’s not as straightforward to obtain and there’s a very limited selection of vendors that accept it.