Apple Launches 'Enhanced Privacy' Apple Card, Adult Industry Should Beware (XBIZ)

Read the full article by Gustavo Turner at XBIZ.com

CYBERSPACE — The Apple Card, Apple’s new credit card and payment system developed with financial giant Goldman Sachs, was introduced yesterday as a credit industry disruptor and tech status symbol. However, the adult industry and sex workers — often early adopters of new technologies — might want to look at the fine print, and Apple’s dismal track record with censorship and sex worker rights, before jumping on board.

The slick Apple website for the new financial product hypes that the Apple Card "completely rethinks everything about the credit card."

“It represents all the things Apple stands for,” the company continues. “Like simplicity, transparency and privacy. It builds on the incredible ease and security that millions of people love about Apple Pay.”

The incentives to use the physical card — really only a status symbol, as the iPhone’s Apple Pay does most of the lifting — and the cashless digital payment system that is the actual product include colorful budgeting tools similar to Mint, discount cash-back programs through Daily Cash, which is not actually cash as the ecosystem is all-digital, no fees, a commitment to “low interest rates” and Apple’s proprietary security features.

“Apple Card is designed to make sure you’re the only one who can use it,” the website explains. “All the advanced security technologies of Apple Pay — Face ID, Touch ID, unique transaction codes — are built right in. And the physical card has no numbers. Not on the front. Not on the back. Which gives you a whole new level of security.”

The description of this “new level of security” sounds ominous: “When you first get your Apple Card, a unique device number is created on your iPhone. Then it’s locked away in the Secure Element.”

Wait — “the Secure Element”?