From: "Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 93 11:27:13 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Numbered Bank Accounts (Was "privacy and rights")
In-Reply-To: <9311181857.AA02801@anon.penet.fi>
Message-ID: <9311181926.AA29344@snark.lehman.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Jack Daniels says:
> I never claimed that nobody offers completely anonymous accounts.  I claimed
> that, to the best of my knowledge, nobody offers the "numbered accounts" that
> used to be popular in Switzerland.  

Well, thats a very narrow statement, but even so...

> Austria does offer "bearer share" accounts which are completely
> anonymous, but are quite different than the "numbered accounts" of
> old-time Switzerland.  In a "numbered account", the owner uses a
> hand-written rendition of the account number as a signature.  The
> hand-written number is compared against bank records to validate the
> authenticity of the owner.  "Bearer share" accounts, which are
> available in Austria, are issued to the user with some sort of
> ceritificate of ownership.  Anyone (the "bearer") who has possession
> of the certificate ("share") can withdraw money from the account.
> No signatures or hand-writen numbers are used to verify the owner.
> 
> If Austria does offer true numbered accounts, then I stand corrected.

Until recently at the very least, they offered accounts which used a
"password" and an account number to perform transactions -- you did not
require any physical certificate to access the account.

Perry