From: hal@finney.org
Date: Mon Oct 22 2001 - 11:06:18 MDT
>From: "Alex F. Bokov" <alexboko@umich.edu>
>
>Hiya Ken, good to hear from ya. Okay, prosaic explanation accepted.
>Fact still stands that if they know who I am, I have no provable
>privacy when doing business through them. The only secret they can't
>betray is one they don't know.
>
>http://www.goldmoney.com/
>http://www.egold.com/
The actual URL for E-Gold is http://www.e-gold.com. egold.com is owned
by a squatter.
According to their user agreement e-gold handles identification as follows:
http://www.e-gold.com/unsecure/e-g-agree.htm#Limits:
4.2. Value Limits
Issuer may set the value limit on the balance in an e-gold account
based on the sufficiency of the identifying information provided by
User. Issuer may restrict User?s ability to use more than one e-gold
account in an attempt to circumvent this limit.
As they explained in more detail on their mailing list as this policy
was being evolved, the idea is that an account would have limits on how
much e-gold it could hold depending on how thoroughly they owner had
been identified. This would not stop you from spending your e-gold,
but would stop people from transferring e-gold into your account if it
would exceed the value limit.
After an initial account creation, there would be a low limit. Once an
email verification was done, the limit would be raised. Beyond that
there could be telephone or postal mail contact, and finally a notarized
statement of identity, to get the maximum limits. There are some e-gold
accounts holding millions of dollars.
I don't know if these specific levels of identification are in use today,
and what the corresponding value limits are. In general I think this
is a reasonable solution if the company feels the need to know who its
large customers are. But it does mean that you can't be fully anonymous
to e-gold and use it for large scale transactions.
Hal
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