[dalke]

I'm in Sweden. I want to go back to the old ways. I hate how much the US controls our daily life. I hate loss of privacy and the presumption that everyone has a Google or Apple account, and are subject to their whims with little real alternative.

So I stopped using BankID over two years ago, and do most of my daily life in cash.

[MrSkelter]

As a sometime Swede the idea of dealing with daily life in cash is farcical. Possible, sure. Convenient. No.

When my coffee shop in Sodermalm’s card readers weren’t working they just gave me free coffee over taking cash. Cash in Sweden is a burden. Banks don’t want it and most won’t accept it.

I also think the days of cash being anonymous have passed. With cameras everywhere and the trivial ease with which numbers can be recorded and shared a government could probably trace the path of a bank note if it wanted to.

[Scroll_Swe]

>So I stopped using BankID over two years ago

BankID is made by our banks but okay, I get the phone part.

How do you function day to day without BankID?

It is so integrated now """for convenience""" but yea it really is crazy. Especially how it is tied to having a bank account but the login is for everything. Payments, insurance etc...

Also how it needs Google play so Huawei phones got banned.

[dalke]

I function by being stubborn, and having a wife who can help with a few things.

If BankID worked on a free OS then that would be nice for a few things (like paying taxes, which I still do on paper), but other things are both BankID and Apple/Google smartsphone.

For example, I've made it very clear to my kids' school that I do not and will not get a smartphone, so I cannot use their app (based on Google Classroom). It took months, but now they send me the weekly newsletter by email, and I can call to say if the kids are sick. While my wife can handle the scheduling changes for fritids.

I also have the advantage of living in the center of town, a block from the centralized government services office. The queue is very short most of the time. I also live above my bank, though I'm thinking of switching to Handelsbanken, which is about two blocks, since I've seen how Swedbank is deskilling their local branches.

For the bank I still use a bank dosa. For bus travel I use kontoladdning, though the local transit system wants to replace that with a dependency on (US-based) bank cards - something I think is bad for the unbanked (including youths), visitors from certain countries, and bad for Swedish security as it lets the US restrict someone's ability to use mass transit. For health care I call the local medical center.

I work for myself, through my own aktiebolag, and my accountant handles most of the bookkeeping side of things. My customers are all outside of Sweden, so they don't care about BankID.

A few years ago it was hard to explain to people why I didn't use US-based systems. Over the last couple of years it's become a lot easier, for obvious reasons.

There are still enough old people and others that at least essential services don't require BankID. My wife worked with Ukrainian refugees who had a work permit but couldn't get a bank account. The hotel paid their salaries in cash. That's several levels harder than I have to deal with.

You'll be surprised at how many places still take cash, or will do a faktura, or accept simple bank transfer like we all did 20 years ago.