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A comment on “People have asked if we'll adopt this system for WhatsApp. The answer is no.”. Parent comment

Re:“People have asked if we'll adopt this system for WhatsAp... by AshamedCaptain on Friday August 06, 2021 @06:23PM (#28093457)
The reason I consider Google a public enemy is not because they collect data or have a poor privacy policy or whatever (because I don't think they are particularly bad at that). The reason is because I think they are "unavoidable". It's very hard to do anything online without it leaving a fingerprint on some Google server. Even governments seem to be ready to endorse Google services (e.g. recaptcha, Android) for fulfillment of basic services.

Apple, Facebook, etc. may have (or not have) worse privacy policy, but it is much easier to avoid leaving fingerprints on their servers. Amazon & Microsoft are on the other hand particularly dangerous, though.

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Re:“People have asked if we'll adopt this system for WhatsAp... by cgio on Friday August 06, 2021 @09:25PM (#28094816)
You hit a nerve. I have to go through two reCaptchas to prove that I am not a robot so that I can pay my children’s school activities. Why would they care if I am a robot that wants to pay them? For some time checking in for COVID in NSW Aus took 3 reCaptchas if you were in private mode on your browser. Similar in many government services where they are pervasive and injected right in the middle of potentially very private workflows.
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Re:“People have asked if we'll adopt this system for WhatsAp... by leesalminen on Friday August 06, 2021 @11:26PM (#28095422)
> Why would they care if I am a robot that wants to pay them?

I’ve seen scammers find obscure payment portals and run through a bunch of card numbers to see if they approve/deny. Recaptcha prevents that. It’s obviously not the only way, but it’s low dev effort and it works.

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Re:“People have asked if we'll adopt this system for WhatsAp... by withinboredom on Saturday August 07, 2021 @05:30AM (#28097185)
This is an easy fix. Just require being signed in and only allow payment with a valid child attached to the account. You can allow anonymous payments only if you have a valid child account code.
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Re:“People have asked if we'll adopt this system for WhatsAp... by MertsA on Saturday August 07, 2021 @05:49AM (#28097270)
>Why would they care if I am a robot that wants to pay them?

Because payment systems that allow for cheap transactions are often leveraged to test stolen credit card data before making a transaction in person.

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