Two interesting things that relate to money and the internet happened in the past few weeks. Neither was in the U.S., but both give you a glimpse of what a dystopian future may hold.
Frozen Bank Accounts
First, the State Bank of Vietnam closed or deactivated 86 million bank accounts. That’s quite a few for a country of 101 million citizens. According to one article, owners can’t “log in, transfer funds, or use digital services.” The accounts were frozen as part of an effort to prevent fraud and abuse and to hasten the move to a cashless society. To regain access to their accounts, account holders must provide biometric data. Every transfer of more than $380 in their local currency requires facial recognition. It will also be required for customers to access their online accounts on a new device.
113 million accounts already complied with the biometric systems, but the change is expected to be a challenge for poor and rural customers without the appropriate technology.
While this approach may limit the number of people who open accounts with fake identities, it won’t stop banking-related crime. For example, I predict an increase in kidnappings so criminals can use their victim’s faces and their phones to transfer funds. Since the same rules apply to companies, the face of a CFO or treasurer may become the key to unlocking million-dollar wire transfers. Crime will still exist; it will just evolve.
No Internet Means No Banking
Second, the Taliban shutdown all internet service in the country on Monday and is in the process of shutting down most cell phone coverage, leaving only G2 service, which does not carry data. These actions were reportedly done to crack down on immorality. One can only assume the Taliban thought too many Afghans were watching porn.
Besides cracking down on immorality, the internet outage has crippled banking and finance, shut down airports, disrupted medical services, stopped people from working at home, and cut Afghans off from the rest of the world.
If anyone knows how long this intentional outage will last, they aren’t saying.
You could look at what the Taliban is doing as censorship. Instead of stopping people from sending a message, they are stopping people from receiving a message—any message. Whether this is being done to stop pornography or prevent women from being educated doesn’t matter as it is stopping every other transaction or communication within the country that uses the internet. About the only solution is to use Starlink.
The Backbone of the World
We tend to think of the Internet as the browser on your phone, tablet or computer, but it is far more. The internet delivers your audio and video streaming services and your social media. It carries financial transactions when you use your credit or debit card and is the backbone that makes PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, and similar services possible. It beams medical data around the hospital and every piece of data from your cell phone to its destination.
If the internet or a portion of the backbone goes down, so does your ability to fill your tank with gas or use a public charger, buy groceries, order food, communicate with your friends and family, watch TikTok or send a tweet, or check your bank balance. In fact, without the Internet, your paycheck won’t reach your bank account, and if you walk into the bank, they won’t be able to tell you your balance.
What can knock out the internet? A hack by enemies or black-hat hackers. A regional or national power failure. Strategic attacks on undersea cables or critical internet hubs. A super virus. Government action. Even a careless backhoe operator could know it out for a city or state.
By eliminating cash and moving to a system that relies on facial recognition, Vietnam is setting itself up for disaster. As Spain found out in April when a country-wide power outage struck, it pays to have a way to pay offline.
Control versus Access
Both Vietnam and the Taliban seek to control things. The Taliban limits access to things Americans take for granted. The Vietnamese want to control how their citizens spend money, and to collect taxes on it. They do this by making it more difficult to spend money without the government knowing who spent it, on what, and when and where. Most Americans would be angry if the government tracked how they spent every penny, but that’s happening in the background.
Tracking and data collection take place every time you make a purchase. For example, when I shop on Amazon.com, it knows every purchase I have ever made using that email address/account. So do Walmart, Palmetto State Armory, and every other store I frequent. Walmart even ties together my online and in-person sales, unless I pay cash, and that assumes their facial recognition cameras don’t recognize me.
We all know our phones track us, but did you know your car probably does, too? Many newer vehicles have many cameras and advanced computer technology that track where you go and all sorts of other data.
Even if the government doesn’t collect this information, they can buy it from a data broker or subpoena it.
About the only good thing to come from an internet crash is they will no longer be able to track you.
Five Basic Steps
Here are a few basic steps you can take to help protect yourself and enhance your privacy:
- Carry cash and use it often. Not only will this make your spending harder to track, it will ensure you have some cash on hand if electronic payment methods fail. Consider storing some extra cash or perhaps some silver dimes or quarters in case the outage lasts for weeks.
- Use a VPN. I use a VPN on my phone, PC, and FireStick. On my PC, I switch up the cities and/or countries from which I am connecting two or three times a day. It’s less important for my Firestick because I am logged in to most apps, so they know who I am regardless of what my IP address is.
- Use complicated passwords and never use the same one more than twice. My favorite way to develop passwords is to open a book and pick a word on the page, the page number, a random symbol, and then switch pages and use a different word. Here is an example I created using a book by Thomas Perry: Harder83^runWay! or the slightly more complicated HarDer83^rUnW@y!. You can also use a random word and/or random number generator. These passwords will help you avoid dictionary attacks and hackers using lists of the top 10,000 passwords to break into your account because HarDer83^rUnW@y! won’t be in there.
- Hand-in-hand with a complicated password is the recommendation to always turn on second factor authentication, or 2FA. You can use the method where they text you a code, but the one where you use an authenticator app is a better option.
- Use a privacy app like MySudo.
MySudo App
Let me first state that I am not an affiliate of MySudo and this recommendation earns me nothing. The free app allows you to create three pseudonyms, and you get a free email address for each one. This allows you to register with online sites using an anonymous email, thereby protecting your “true” email. You have to log into the app to get and send mail. For $2 a month or $20 a year, you can also get an alternate phone number and can create three virtual credit cards. These allow you to make online payments using a valid credit card that cannot be easily tied back to you. You can create onetime numbers or use one for a while and then discard it and get issued a new one.
I have set up one pseudonym for prepping purchases, one for gun purchases, and a third for random contacts. For example, if I fill out an online form and expect it to generate spam emails and texts, I use this pseudonym, which MySudo calls “a profile.”
A Few Final Words
Government-sponsored or issued cryptocurrency will take the Vietnam plan and make it even worse. Not only will they know what you are buying when, where, and for how much, they will be able to stop you from spending the currency if they don’t approve of what you are buying. California, for example, might decide its citizens should not be allowed to buy bullets. If you are on Medicaid or Medicare, they might decide you can’t buy soda, candy, cigarettes, or weed. This is another reason it is in all of our best interests for cash to remain king.
Of course, MySudo, a VPN, and a complex password won’t matter if the internet is down. That’s why we prep, so you can survive when you can’t buy gas, groceries, or a hot meal. So take steps to protect yourself, your privacy, and your spending power, but don’t forget to build your prepper pantry and address your other prepping priorities.
