I picked up a prescription yesterday morning and paid with a card I’ve had for a long time. Except the bank just sent me the new version of it and it’s “contactless.”<\/p>\n
I’ve never had and don’t want a contactless card. Even if I did, half the terminals in my town, includin the one at the drug store, still can’t handle the previous tech update (those sloowwwww chips), let alone tap-and-go. But the bank has a different view of my needs. The card still works the old-fashioned way, too, of course.<\/p>\n
So there I was at the counter, unwrapping it from its personal tinfoil hat and feeling a little embarrassed to be revealed as a paranoid weirdo.<\/p>\n
But the clerk was apparently up on the issue. <\/p>\n
“You know you can get one of those special wallets?” she told me.<\/p>\n
“I do. And if I had other contactless cards, I would. Meanwhile I’ll stick with my tinfoil hat even if people laugh.”<\/p>\n
Bless her heart. “Nobody should laugh,” she assured me earnestly. “I saw this F*c*b**k video where a guy had his wallet in his back pocket and it had contactless cards in it. And they just barely tapped his butt with this reader and it registered a transaction. I was shocked. It really worried me.”<\/p>\n
So don’t let anybody tell you that F*c*b**k isn’t good for privacy. At least .000000001% of the time, it’s useful for something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I picked up a prescription yesterday morning and paid with a card I’ve had for a long time. Except the bank just sent me the new version of it and it’s “contactless.” I’ve never had and don’t want a contactless card. Even if I did, half the terminals in my town, includin the one at the drug store, still can’t handle the previous tech update (those sloowwwww chips), let alone tap-and-go. But the bank has a different view of my needs. The card still works the old-fashioned way, too, of course. So there I was at the counter, unwrapping it…<\/p>\n