ethan2

Yes, Pinzo, i really do have a problem giving my private financial and personal information online, and anyone who isn't concerned is, in my estimation - foolish.

i have been badly burned in the past providing private info online; consequently; i make it a practice of giving no private information online.

now, apparently, my government is forcing me and every ex pat to give all this private information online. and if we refuse - we are not issued a passport.

it is an irresponsible and shameful act by our government, knowing we live in an age when even the most sophisticated systems in the world are hacked daily.

and, perhaps more importantly, why we are putting up with such a blatant abuse of our privacy rights. baa... meh...

ethan2

i no longer use credit cards because my Visa was hacked 4 years ago,
and, if i did have a credit card, i most certainly wouldn't provide my account number online as the british government is insisting on.

thanks for the info on prepaid.

Novocastrian

Well, it's not the first time you've been told that.

BTW, in your first post more than 6 years ago, you stated that you were about to get PR. Has it occurred to you that you could be a Canadian citizen by now? Then there'd be no need to share your personal information online with the pernicious UK authorities.

ethan2

providing private financial and private information online to the british or canadian government or the mickey mouse club is, in general, in my estimation, a very foolish act because of the security risk.

and, yes, i could be a canadian citizen by now but wouldn't that simply be replacing one bureaucratic pernicious entity with another?

Novocastrian

If you say so. Do you consider yourself a bit paranoid at all?

britsnake

There is of course the option of applying in person. A friend of mine did this. He made the appointment, flew in and got his new passport the same day. He used the time to visit relatives in the UK. Of course it is more expensive.

https://www.gov.uk/get-a-passport-urgently

As you know, whether you apply online or use a form, your information will be entered onto a computer system somewhere; everything is. This is the nature of the world we live in now.

ethan2

paranoia concerns delusions.

i personally was charged thousands of dollars when my credit card was hacked.
this was real not delusional.
therefore, the term paranoid is clearly wrong. a more accurate description would be 'precautionary'.
i make a point of not putting personal information and credit card information online to avoid repetition, and while my precautions may not protect me 100% from having my credit card stolen or identity theft, it can certainly reduce the possibility.

obviously, Novocastrian, you think such precaution is paranoid, perhaps, then, you could prove you don't suffer from such an affliction by posting your credit card number, your name and address, your social insurance number, your home phone number, your work number, your cell number, and your place of birth in your reply.

ethan2

sounds great, britsnake, just one small hitch ... my passports expired.

Novocastrian

Happy to oblige. I'm sure I can trust you as you seem to be such a well balanced rational person, but you can't be so sure about everyone on here, so I'll send you a PM.

Is that OK? And if I do, will you send me a passport (any old country will do).

ethan2

c'mon now, Novacastrian, that's a lil paranoid about pernicious members on the site, isn't it! or maybe it's just a plain ol'...cluck cluck...

while in therapy regarding your paranoid affliction concerning Britishexpats on the site, perhaps, considering the number of posts (evidence you don't get out much), it might be prudent to get some additional therapy for your obsessive compulsive behaviour.

then again if your short of cash because you don't get out much, check in wikipedia under:

OCPW - obsessive compulsive paranoid wanker

Novocastrian

Goodness me. How rude of you. I wonder where you picked up vocabulary such as pernicious?

I suppose you're right though. I'm sure your 21 posts in 7 years have all been scintillatingly profound, whilst almost all of mine have been puerile.

Siouxie

Get an extension. No online payment required.

https://www.gov.uk/get-an-emergency-...ravel-document

All of the following must apply:

you’re outside the UK
you have a red passport
you haven’t already applied to renew your passport
your passport expired less than 6 months ago or will expire in the next 3 months (or in the next 7 months if you’re in or going to a country or territory that says you must have 6 months left on your passport)
your passport has at least 3 blank pages

sharkus

Rude perhaps, but I just have to laugh. If you were giving your financial information to some potentially dubious website when purchasing, fine, I could see how you might not wish to do that. However we are talking about giving the information to a somewhat legitimate source, using, very likely, pretty good payment providers with decent security.

I'd also like to think if the passport office, or whatever department they fall under, was subject to some kind of breach, and financial information leaked, that they would sort it out.

I too have had my credit card compromised a couple of times, the max being around 700 dollars. A co-worker had around 4200 nabbed before christmas.

Yes, it is frustrating, but the banks are generally very good at detecting and stopping the card before transactions go on, or cancelling the charges when they have investigated and found them to be erroneous.

In the last case I had, just after christmas, the bank contacted me to say they had stopped my card, as they had noticed a couple of transactions that matched fraudulent trends they had been monitoring (a penny or so at NCIX, then a larger amount, 50 I think at groupon - it's said the smaller one was to see if the info was valid, then gave a larger amount a try elsewhere. I presume they would likely have gone for even more if the monitoring had not picked up the trend). They asked me to confirm if I had made certain transactions, and those two were not valid, so they sent out a new card.

I'd be more concerned about using my credit card at a bricks and mortar store than online (providing you're using reputable websites). Take a look at the breaches that have occurred in the past few years, one of which was Home Depot. I'm sure there are others which may not have been picked up on, and others that will occur in the future.

To be honest, I think you are being a little too over cautious. The world is moving on, and online payment seems to be the norm for a lot of services. I'd guess you probably would not renew your drivers licence or license plate sticker online either? What about reloading a transit payment card, e.g.; Presto?
Nope to all? I think at some point you are going to find yourself in a position where you will have no option but to provide your financial information to an online system, be it your personal computer or some terminal somewhere.

scrubbedexpat091

Your info is probably safer doing it online then going through the mail where it could be stolen.

Fraud has happened well before the internet, all the internet has done is shifted how the fraudsters do it, before they stole mail and credits cards and other info from your mail box, now they do it electronically to steal it, but its still the same in the end.

I find being forced to pay for something online annoying as I too have no credit cards, and if it's anything like the CIC website, who knows if a pre-paid will even work, more and more places wont accept the pre-paids online.

I tried to forward my mail online with CP with a pre-paid and they kept denying the transaction, worked fine on amazon.ca though.

It would be nice if banks in Canada would issue proper Visa/MC debit cards like the US and other countries have. ( I know some banks do, but they have a lot of limitations on them when used in Canada or on a Canadian based website.)

sharkus

Very interested in why people don't have credit cards. I can understand if it's a case of no credit history, as I was in that situation, and TD wanted $1000 for a secure card, which was a joke, as I, and I suspect a lot of people, simply don't have $1000 lying around as a deposit on a card. I did find Capital One had a $200 secure card, so went with that for a while to build up some credit history, and then got a TD card later on.

What I'm very curious about is if Apple Pay, when it arrives here, makes any difference to things, specifically fraud. I know for in person payments it'll use a one time number for the transaction, plus security involved in the transaction itself, so even if someone did grab the number, it likely wouldn't be any use to them at all.

Payments from apps on new iOS devices that support Apple Pay will also use the same system, so the same deal applies there too.

What I, and I expect Apple to, envisions is that you'd get your credit card, authorize it, then add it to Passbook, and then only ever use it for transactions where apple pay isn't accepted, which they are hoping won't be that many places (yeah, I know, bit of a dream).