Credit or Debit? Vodafone scandal et al.

I've been discussing some design implementations with the web engineers. I was thinking it might be nice if users were able to credit and deplete their accounts, instead of paying a flat fee for access. This would allow users who don't use much to save, and bandwidth hogs to pay, instead of spreading the costs equally over the users. I suppose it is a pricing decision.

But the fun part is we could offer XeroBank dollars, and users could buy and sell them, with or without the help of xerobank. So that would add another layer of anonymity to the payment systems. Just fuel your account with XB dollars or whatever that you get from the gas station. Well, it is a good thought, but I doubt the market is there. Most people, I think, imagine that what they buy online is secure and anonymous as is. Oh well, we still want to give the best product possible.

On to more interesting news, did everyone hear about the greek Vodafone scandal? Okay get this: all major telecommunications systems have "legitimate" wiretapping functions built in. Cellular and landline. As did Vodafone. Well, someone hacked the system, and secretly wiretapped the heads of state, wives, politicians, and business folks. Who and for what purpose? We don't know, they got away with it. This is pretty scary stuff. So when the gov says "We need the capability of listening, but we promise we won't abuse the power" etc, your main worry isn't Alberto Gonzolez and his ~30% nefarious purposes, but amazing hackers who can jigger the system for 100% nefarious purposes. So, insist on your privacy, and not placing it in the trust of the incompetent. Glad I'm doing all my VoIP through xB network... Now if I could figure out how to do that with my cell phone... actually, the iPhone does VPN, but only PPTP. But PPTP is leaky, so I wonder if it could to L2TP, which should be a little better...

XeroBank for your iPhone, anyone?