I'm so excited for this. It's the end of my physical wallet.
Is there something concrete you're worried about or is it you just don't like giving big brother too much of your info?
Is there something concrete you're worried about or is it you just don't like giving big brother too much of your info?
A dead battery and a virus on my phone stealing all of my data, identity, and then time to get it straightened out again.
And I forget my wallet (all the time) more often than my phone dies without a charger (maybe once every six months)
In China, ID cards have RFID and they have to be scanned when entering a train station or airports (or the old town of Lhasa in Tibet), so a future government here might abuse a similar system to track you and maybe harass you by saying "You were in this area yesterday, there was $SOME_BAD_EVENT, what's your alibi?". China also implements long distance travel bans by refusing you entry to the train station/airport, e.g. if you have a bad "social score", which, I imagine would be ripe for abuse in a Trumpian regime. (Although the FBI already abused the no-fly list for the purposes of harassing individuals)
Already are being tracked and bought and sold by third-parties without your knowledge.
Again, I'm not GP, who might be more paranoid about it.
And yes I have Google Maps Timeline active.
This system actually lets you only supply your age to the reader and no other info, to avoid the tracking. In other discussions of this, I've learned that many shops and bars in the US already optically scan IDs to verify them digitally (not trusting staff to verify security features), so this is actually an improvement on privacy compared to before.
I know if I drop my wallet, the cards inside will still work. They won't be out-of-service-area or forgot to be charged.
The wallet also caters to many use cases the phone will never support. That can be high-tech stuff like some obscure closed-loop fare card or keycard system that isn't NFC-compatible, or the paper punch card from the local burrito place.
And it lets me carry cash, which is still less of a production number for plenty of informal payments-- I'm not walking through a Apple Pay/Zelle/PayPal transaction at a yard sale.
Maybe it's because I'm fat and wear loose fitting clothes-- having a wallet in my pocket is not a huge frustration.
If you drop your wallet and lose it, someone has access to everything you have and any accounts tied to anything in your wallet. If you lose your phone, they get nothing.
If you have a physical card and it's been worn down, it will fail to scan. That's never an issue with digital cards.
Physical wallets have physical limits to how much they can carry without being a giant lump in your clothing. Digital wallets stay the same size no matter what you put in them.
Physical wallets are limited to what you put in them. If you forget a punch card, boarding pass, or ticket, you have no recourse. Digital wallets never lose anything and always have ways to retrieve the passes or cards within them.
We could go on and on but both options have advantages and disadvantages...