Comments on Nicholas Weaver's Random Thoughts: Personal Financial Security Protocols

i can understand why you've drawn to this conclusi...

2008-01-09T17:51:00.000-08:00

i can understand why you've drawn to this conclusion regarding credit card processing vs. debit card processing. though, even though you insist it "isn't your money" being used for fraudulent charges on your credit card, what if you cannot prove your case? what if you end up being responsible for your the fraudulent charges on your card? if the theif uses it at a gas station local to you with no cameras before you can report the card missing...

then, it seems, it would NOT be "their money."

this has happened to me before.

when my purse was stolen, i had better luck getting my debit card charges reversed over my credit card ones... the "investigation" stage took a lot longer than with my local bank.

but hopefully you won't ever have to deal with it!

You see financial security from a purely IT standp...

2007-11-06T23:31:00.000-08:00

You see financial security from a purely IT standpoint, which is good but incomplete. You must also consider the economics standpoint. The most secure way to store money is not to deposit it into any bank account, ever. Use current bank accounts for everyday transactions, but don't trust your savings in banks. Deposited money is not yours, it is the bank's money which becomes their liability to you. This is evidenced by the fact that the bank pays you interest (if it were your money, you should pay the bank for keeping it). There are other more safe ways of storing your money. You can store your money in safe deposit boxes. But even this is not so secure against inflation and war. Actually, storing your savings in currency, any currency, is a completely flawed idea. The perfect security lies in having no ATM savings and preferring pure gold in bank vaults or bank safe deposit boxes. It's even tax-free in EU, and most national banks happily sell gold OTC (over the counter). You don't need to be rich to enjoy the security of gold, as nowadays gold savings and the fees for bank safe deposit boxes or small bank strongrooms are within the reach of the middle class nowadays.

Thats the problem with Knoppix, and why I need to ...

2007-06-22T05:18:00.000-07:00

Thats the problem with Knoppix, and why I need to look at a replacement. Konqueror doesn't render my brokerage account correctly, but Firefox does.

But I've also gone out of the way to minimize the online banking I need to do, as there is already so much literature showing that actively-traded brokerage accounts are a good way to just lose lots of money.

My only concern with using an alternative operatin...

2007-06-22T00:20:00.000-07:00

My only concern with using an alternative operating system for brokerage accounts would be the occasional incompatibility with non-IE browsers. I've encountered this problem a few times, but thankfully the issues seem to resolve themselves quickly, and I'm able to use Firefox/Safari a few days after calling the bank's tech support.

~Jesse VanWay