ATM For Anonymous Online Payments

prichardson writes "The New York Times has an article about a way to anonymously transfer cash online (NYT registration required)." The inventor, Carl Amos, believes the target market for his newly-patented 'Aunty IM' ATM machine "..might be teenagers.. [who] do not usually have their own credit cards, they usually have cash and are more than willing to spend it to download music or games", as well as "those who were worried about identity theft on the Internet, or who simply wanted the privacy it provided."

google linkage

heh. No reg required ;) [nytimes.com]

Yay

Now we can secretly fund the legal defense of mp3ers and linux users ...

Power to the people! Vivé la transaction!

Perfect.

This would be perfect for when you want to buy something without being tracked... but there is still a trail. You could use one of these machines, but if the feds got involved, they could probaqbly find you (from the camera, etc). It would leave some sort of a trail. Still, not bad for buying that fake vagina you always wanted.

How can I pay you?

So how would I go about paying someone online? Today I could use
a credit card or Paypal at someone's web site...how could this be
done from an ATM? (No, I'm not gonna try to punch in the recipient's
URL!)

That's a rather critical detail not mentioned in the article.

Re:How can I pay you?

It could issue a "temporary credit card" - maybe it could spit out a tempporary card with the number on it, etc, that had the balance of the cash you put in. Basically an anonymous, pre-paid credit card

. You could then use that number like any other card (visa/mastercard/etc). Jsut a thought. The article didn't really specify.

Re:How can I pay you?

Doesn't American Express have something like this? It's called Private Payments [americanexpress.com]. It gives you a unique number that's lets you obscure your identity.

Now there's probably a market for teenagers and such. But I'm thinking pre-paid cards will take care of that...

Money Launderer's dream

'nuff said

Re:Money Launderer's dream

OK, I'll show a very concrete way this could be done. Create an online business that sells access to content, like porn. Or perhaps you could have an online casino. Or software. Anything.

Now typically you would have records of credit card transactions, that could be traced back to the card's owner. With this system, you would have records of transactions that cannot be traced to anyone.

You could then simply pump a buttload of cash into the system and report legitimate profits.

Too Much Freedom?

Ok, I'm normally a big proponent of identity freedom on the internet, but I'm having a little trouble justifying this one. I think you need to be able to trace the money trail. I just think there are too many bad uses to justify the few good ones.

Arguments?

Re:Too Much Freedom?

Ok, I'm normally a big proponent of identity freedom on the internet, but I'm having a little trouble justifying this one. I think you need to be able to trace the money trail. I just think there are too many bad uses to justify the few good ones.

How about the fact that it's no different from cash?

Re:Too Much Freedom?

There is a money transfer system called hawala that allows two people in different locations with a means of communication, who trust each other absolutely, to transfer money without the aid of the banking system. Lots of people use it to send money from America to the the Far East - mostly because it is cheaper than Western Union, etc. However, I understand it is being cracked down on because terrorists were using it to move funds around. Still, it will be difficult to shut down completely since it only takes two people and a means of communication to operate. Most of the people who use this system today do so because there is no reasonable alternative (financial system is not good in their area), not because they are terrorists.

I have read that organized crime transfers money from country to country by wiring small amounts (under the amount that must be reported) constantly. Even though there is a paper trail of sorts, it is very hard to sort through. But again, most of the people who wire money are not organized criminals. Should we stop this practice because some of the people are?

Means of moving illegal money secretively already exist. I think the idea with this system is it could allow people to make online purchases, even if they are from an area of the world that does not have the financial systems and identification systems that we take for granted in the West. I am inclined to think the net effect of this would be good. Many people do not have any sort of identification or formal bank account (as required for a service like paypal, which is apparently unavailable in much of the world), but if they could get to a kiosk with some cash, they might be able to order something - provided someone was willing to ship it to them. This could be a big improvement in the lives of many people. It could also help economic growth, facilitating transactions at greater distances and of greater complexity than was possible before.

Should we not build any infrastructure because criminals could use it? Criminals can drive on the roads, too, but that does not mean we stop building them. We police them. This system would have to be policed.

The market

PayPal wont accept payment for "adult" related eBusiness now (ie; pornos).

Whoever steps in to fill that gap make a friggin mint. The frontrunner seems to be CitiBank's C2It, though I know nothing of such services.

Great!!

This will allow me to assist my Nigerian friend, Joseph Mbuto, in his attempt to free the $21 million dollar account his uncle once controlled.

What can it do?

If you pay cash for your (legitimate?) music/movie/pr0n download, does the machine have a CD/DVD burner and a disc pops out, or does it have to re-direct the download stream to an e-mail account (thereby identifying the user, damn!).

Some more details on capability would be cool. Google here I come.

Going to need alot of work

I can see the US government blowing a gasket
about quick and easy anonymous money transfer...

Re:Going to need alot of work

correct. and once some dumb criminal discovers he can use it to buy a gun (insert 1,000 $, get the card with amount on it, give to gun seller then go bang-bang) and then uses that gun to say... kill a high political figure (no insinuations there!!!) or popular person etc. BAM! instant ban or regulation.

it's nice but this, I fear, will go the way of big hair and mullets... unless you live in the south.

Re:Going to need alot of work

correct. and once some dumb criminal discovers he can use it to buy a gun (insert 1,000 $, get the card with amount on it, give to gun seller then go bang-bang) and then uses that gun to say... kill a high political figure (no insinuations there!!!) or popular person etc. BAM! instant ban or regulation.


Yes, and since you have the anonymous purchase card you don't have to register the gun or go through the other processes. "Here's my anonymous cash card!" "Right, here's your pistol and ammo." You do know that you have to register to buy a gun, right? You also know you can buy a gun with cash, right?

Anybody who accepts these cards will accept cash, and you have no benefit over them. For some reason I doubt that most private gun sellers will offer support for these cards.

Actually,

The conversation really goes like:

I'd like a gun and ammo
Here you go. That'll be $342.22
Here's my anonymous cash card!
Right, here's your pistol and ammo.
Oh - I won't be needing a bag...

What is happening to the English language?

From the article: "N the 1997" N?! Now even the New York Times is slipping into Net-speak. *sigh* My old high school English teachers must be in agony. So much for the American education system....

This is old hat in Japan

Sorry to disappoint Mr. Amos, but for at least the past twenty years, you have been able to make anonymous cash payments at any bank ATM in Japan.

You just key in the bank name and account number to transfer to, insert the cash, and it's on its way. The ATM will even make change for you.

Re:This is old hat in Japan

Hmm.. How very innovative of the inventor. So an "invention" as obvious as this may exist in Japan for 20 years, and still the US "inventor" gets a US patent? Did the PTO know this while issuing the patent? So prior art is only prior art if it is prior art inside the US?

Funny

The New York Times has an article about a way to anonymously transfer cash online (NYT registration required)

Why to I find this sentence funny ?

So, finally banking can be anonymous (yeah right, in your wildest dreams [whitehouse.gov], but we still need to register with NYT?
No wait, you can't do do banking with a hotmail account ...

Is there an identity verification system?

How does it perform identification to verify that the person picking up the money is the person you paid. I don't really see this serving any use since there already is a cash transfer system. It's called postal money orders.

Already been done.

Good ol' R, S , and A made quite a while back a system to digitize money into extremly long numbers to represent money. Each number would be encoded the bill amount alone. They also proved it would be untrackable and unbreakable.

They also made into the system a way of determining real-time if any "bill" was being used more than once.

Wow. Anonymous atm. It's a real shocker if it hasnt already be theorized up to the top.

boring.

Good Luck

Its already big pain in the ass (for an American)to get some money online to bet on a football game.

The way they crack down on the gambling industry, you can bet they'd scream "terrorism" and "drugs" and all the other things they have wars on.

Not to mention the Tax Evasion uses, and we all know that taxes are #1 when it comes to the governments concern.

Been Done.....

https://213.132.35.90/

sounds good

This sounds like a very good idea to me. Being one of those teens that has money, Its a pain to buy stuff online through my parents. Although I could also see this being used for bad, i.e. kids anonymously buying pr0n, alchohol, or other illegal/immoral things.

Amazed no one has mentioned ...

The sticker on the ATM that says "please ignore the camera". Oh and the finger prints you're leaving on the keypad.

Useless invention

This sounds fine in principle, but the state banking authorities all over the USA are clamping down on "anonymous" funds transfers rather ferociously, specially after Sept 11.

This is not hearsay or speculation, I work in the financial services industry, and I can tell you that the financial laws are going the other way - less anonymity and higher identification requirements for money wires.

In other words, this guy will have to keep transactions down a ridiculously low upper limit to avoid ID requirements.

I have seen people wiring money for very fraudulent puposes, so I don't really share people's feelings that wiring money should be anonymous.

As for this guy's plans to use the technolgy abroad, he should take into consideration that the USA is requiring other countries to follow USA-like laws and he might have the same issue abroad.

Again, this is from first-hand experience, not hearsay.

Very useful if properly implemented

I run a couple websites and a large portion of my user base is kids in the range of 14-17. Collecting cash from them has always been a problem. Some would opt to send in cash, but this has problems as well. I can see this becoming very popular if it gets implemented well.

The breakdown of user demographics:

10% paranoid tinfoil hat community.
15% teenagers buying from ebay.
60% preteens buying drugs and pr0n.
15% illegal transfers of hijacked subnets.

Thank you tinfoil hat freaks. You have made the world safer for us all.

As a teenager, I can definitely see a use for this

Obviously this system is not perfect, but as a teenager who has a good deal of cash but no credit card, and doesn't like to go to his parents to buy stuff online, I think I would definitely use this if I thought it was safe. I am security-minded, but the main reason I would use this is convenience, not privacy. However, rather than buying music and games online, like the article suggested, I would probably use it to buy real merchandise (band shirts, etc)

Somethings not right...

Although I really support the idea of being anonymous for protective purposes, I don't quite understand how this product helps very much.

Sure, you don't have the logs of cash coming out of your account (credit, savings, etc), but there is cash being sent somewhere, and that somewhere has to be well-defined for the cash to get there.
Also, the product, assuming something is bought, has to go somewhere, again a well-defined location, even if it is a mail-drop.

AFAIK, all wired money transactions are logged in some fashion, and for this to be approved by the government, it would have to be as well. I still don't see how super-beneficial this gimmick might be.

disposable credit card numbers

I had my account number stolen after buying computer equipment from small online stores (pricewatch). After having to change my account number I started using disposable credit card numbers from American Express [americanexpress.com]. These numbers can only be used once and expire at the end of the month. Also, if someone were able to crack the Amex system, at least I will be notified. I was not so lucky before. If you are really paranoid, I imagine that you can call and get these numbers over the phone as well.

Something like that must be done at a global level

Not in all countries is easy to get an international credit card that can be used to pay things online. There are requeriments like age, minimum of transactions or salary, maybe not previus debts, and things like that.

Something that enables to pay directly with cash, no risks involved (like the fear of many of using their credit card number online) and really for everyone (well, with the cash and with that kind of ATMs near :) could do a real boom for online payments (at least, for the things that don't have a phisical good attached, like program registrations, online donations, domain buying and things like that).

Visa Electron and friends

"..might be teenagers.. [who] do not usually have their own credit cards, they usually have cash and are more than willing to spend it to download music or games"

A Visa Electron debit card (and probably some others, I don't know) is currently the best solution for those who just can't get a credit card. It's basically a credit card that takes the money directly from its owner's bank account (if there's anything to take :). This requires a direct connection between the bank and the seller though, so most smaller sites don't support it.

Easily Bypassing NYT 'Registration Required'

1. Click on URL, you're redirected to registration/login page
2. Go to URL bar, replace "www" with "archive" in the URL, leaving the rest alone, and hit ENTER
3. The system will bounce you around a few erroneous URLs, before returning you to the homepage
4. All NYT links will now work without registration, thanks to a special cookie set by the bouncing process

David Chaum is the guy we should be watching

As soon as his patents on his excellent e-cash protocols expire we can get down to business.

No way in Hell

With all of the anti-terrorism tasks in effect there is no way this will happen and/or last simply because it's an anonymous way to move funds. This goes directly against laws being implemented to stop all forms of money laundering, transfering funds with maximum anonimity, and fake store fronts of which to move the money through.

There's so much more to this but the only way this idea would make it is for it to not be anon but that defeats the purpose right?

Many problems this solves are *already* solved...

by systems like e-gold.com [e-gold.com], e-bullion.com [e-bullion.com], pecunix.com [slashdot.org] etc.

These payment systems are worldwide, do not suffer the chargeback problem, and seem to be fine with gambling and adult sites. They are also not linked to any particular national currency so should appeal to more libertarian among us.

Example: Wanna gamble now [thegoldcasino.com] with them?

Suuuuuuure...

Getting a debit card and a checking account is trivial and legal for any 6yr old. That's NOT the target market.

But it's primary use will be for drug dealers to launder money. For married men(and women) to pay for hookers and strippers. For people to turn petty cash into petty lap dance...

Big market for those things tho ...

where's the anonymity?

The slashdot blurb talks about anonymous payments... Lots of comments in this thread talk about anonymous payments whether how it would work or whether the gov't would cry foul, etc...

A search on the article itself does NOT have the word "anonymous" anywhere in it.

So... given that the article is very short on implementation details, how does one come to the conclusion there is anything anonymous about it? Because no credit card is involved? Not saying it isn't... but it just seems there's a big jump to conclusions.. unless I'm blind.

An easy way to implement this would be...

I think a good way for them to implement this would be to allows customers the ability to print out a "Bill", It would have some number on it tying it to the person's purchase. The "Bill" could then be paid at an ATM machine just like many other bills such as utility bills are. After probably a day or two of processing time, when the seller gets confirmation of payment of the bill, the product could be shipped. This may not be as anonymous as other means, but only uses existing infrastructure to process payments. This would make deployment of such a system quite easy, and low risk if it doesn't catch on.

It's a Trap

<TINFOIL>Don't do it, it's run by the FBI/CIA/NSA!</TINFOIL>

Two words...

...drug dealers.
(or money launderers)
[or hot items]

nothing to do with MONEY and ONLINE are anonymous

when will you paranoid biased slashdotters stop posting blatantly false headlines. Anonymous money transfer? Yea fucking right, the bank will always know what you've purchased and I'm sure they'll dispense that info to any law enforcement officer that asks for it.

I like it

Gosh, everyone is so negative on this.
Well... I like the idea of anonymous cash transfers.

It's a step in the right direction.

Although I didn't see any actual mention of anonymity in the article, it's not hard to imagine that this device does create a more private way to do business.

As for all of the posts about drug dealers, money launderers, adulterers, and terrorists, you're right, those people would use an anonymous method of payment/transfer if it were easily/readily available, but so would political disidents (are they terrorists if they dissagree with you?), persons worried about identity theft, and people like me, who simply resent the governments attempts to count every roll of toilet paper I buy and every book or magazine that I read.

illegal

Unfortunately, this is illegal. I work for one of the companies listed in the article.

It's against the law. The feds say that all ATM transactions must have positive ID of the cardholder (PIN number, driver's license swipe, etc) As far as electronic money transfers go, there has to be some positive identification on the person sending the money, but curiously from what I can find, not on the person receiving it.

Nice idea, just not legal here in the US.

The Reality of Assassination Politics

Does anyone remember Assassination Politics by Jim Bell?

A few months ago, I had a truly and quite literally "revolutionary" idea, and I jokingly called it "Assassination Politics": I speculated on the question of whether an organization could be set up to legally announce that it would be awarding a cash prize to somebody who correctly "predicted" the death of one of a list of violators of rights, usually either government employees, officeholders, or appointees. It could ask for anonymous contributions from the public, and individuals would be able send those contributions using digital cash.

I also speculated that using modern methods of public-key encryption and anonymous "digital cash," it would be possible to make such awards in such a way so that nobody knows who is getting awarded the money, only that the award is being given. Even the organization itself would have no information that could help the authorities find the person responsible for the prediction, let alone the one who caused the death.

Read more [jya.com]

less here than meets the eye

This requires that ATMs be retrofitted or custom-built to handle inputs of cash, and that banks be willing to handle cash transfers from individuals to individuals and be willing to accept a far lower ATM reliability level and increased service/maintenance costs at the same time. (i.e. if the cash ID/counting machinery is down, so's the machine)

The potential profits are too low for the risks involved. Also, there are already ATMs that have been retrofitted to accept cash for the purpose of paying bills for defined (telco, utility) customers. Ever see one?

There are cheaper and more cost-effective ways to do this than via ATM, I filed a provisional patent app for one years ago.

teens today

I have been hearing so much about how younger teens are growing up faster than they use to. So I bet a lot of them do have credit/debit cards and checking accounts. So i am sure this will be a target for the new product.

NYT Registration gets us AGAIN!

"The New York Times has an article about a way to anonymously transfer cash online (NYT registration required)."

You mean I actually have to register with the NYT to anonymously transfer cash online?!

WHEN. WILL. IT. STOP?!

Try CashX (www.cashx.com)

These are particularly great if you are near one of the locations where they are physically sold. It's a Visa card for online (and phone) purchases only, with a 2 year expiration. You have to activate it online, but you can do that from any internet cafe, or through trusted proxies. You have to give a physical address, but it can be totally spoofed. An e-mail address is required, but just use one of the non-obvious disposable ones (i.e. NOT Hotmail, Yahoo). You can recharge it by mailing in a money order.

Be warned, however--if you give a spoofed physical address, you may likely have problems ordering delivered goods to your real physical address (not to mention that such orders obviously compromise your anonymity).

Also, since it is a Visa card, it is subject to any restrictions Visa might adopt (for gambling sites, for example, although I don't know that they do have such restrictions).

What about paypal.com?

Paypal is a service that you can use to pay anyone online. Sign up, and you can send money from a CC or checking account to anyone who has a valid e-mail addy. They also have a Visa card that has great protection services.

Old news in Belgium

I can already do this in Belgium. I can pay for anything through my ATM, or through my computer, for that matter. Bank transfers are a normal way of paying for things over here, and ATM allow for such, as does my homebanking software. Most sellers on ebay.be will give you their bank account number, and you just transfer the money. C'est simple! Zo gemakkelijk is dat!

The big question...

I've spent the last five or so years wondering why someone hadn't invented something like this. It was always so frustrating that I could buy a freaking Piper Jet if I bought it cash, but I couldn't even buy stamps online without the consent and cooperation of my folks. And then, two weeks after I finally am old enough to own a Visa, someone does. I bet lots of people at slashdot had the competence to do such a thing; so my question to you are simple. How come noone implemented this awfully simple idea *years* ago?

Make This a Req. For Political Contributions

Maybe this system can become a requirement for political contributions. Give anyone you support any amount of money, or just claim that you did. Anonymous contributions woul take the "money talks" power of individuals away since no politician will know exactly where the money came from. Perhaps to make it more secure, force delivery into even-sized chunks over a period of time... obfuscating particularly large contributions, so that you can't tell who contributed by just seeing how much they did. Perhaps throttle the delivery of the money. This would be awesome for the US political scene.

Re:ATM machine?!

Yo dizzog, i is gonta go to da ATM machine and put in my PIN number so's i can gets some cash money so's i can go see 2 Fast 2 Furious. Wanna come wit?

Re:This looks like a good way to fund terrorists

The law is that if you transfer $10,000 or more to a financial institution it needs to be reported to the feds. Criminals will need to do a lot of micro transactions to pay their bills.

Re:This looks like a good way to fund terrorists

The law is that if you transfer $10,000 or more to a financial institution it needs to be reported to the feds

It's not even that simple, nor is the threshold that high. There are several levels of reporting requirements and the lowest explicit thresholds are at about $3000 for most states.

Additionally, funds transfers companies are burdened with detecting "suspicious" transactions, and you have to report those no matter what the amounts are.

I am not going to spell out how to do this, just suffice it to say that the methods are very sophisticated.

This guy ain't implementing his invention in the USA (and the non-triangle of terror countries) until he gets some heavy-duty legal compliance checking stuff into his system. The age of anonymous funds transfers is over.

Re:Hrmmmm, terrorist concerns?

How do you order something without leaving a delivery address? If you're going to go pick it up yourself, why not pay cash in person?

And besides, the interstate highway system could be used by terrorists to quickly move people and supplies around. Should we shut down highways because of this use?

Re:Potential users...

Any reason they don't get their porn from Kazaa now? ;-)

Re:Hrmmmm, terrorist concerns?

Everything in society is not about terrorism, yet it is the overwhelming topic. I want to make and addendum to Godwin's Law [faqs.org]:

Every slashdot discussion will eventually mention terrorism.

Re:Hrmmmm, terrorist concerns?

Everything is not about terrorism, but it's blazingly obvious to me that a machine that could transfer cash internationally, anonymously, and instantaneously would be a huge help to terrorists.

This is an extremely poor argument. Your argument would apply the same if we did not have privacy laws, and all of a sudden people proposed having privacy. Using the same logic, because privacy laws helps the boogey-man terrorist immensely, we shouldn't implement them.