On Mon, 28 Oct 1996, R.J.Blakemore wrote:

...

As for the Bank, they get details on the item the student has purchased, purchase location (the building and exact 'Mondex point' in the bar/shop where the transaction took place), the exact time and date the transaction was carried out, together with (obviously) the name and ID of the purchaser, etc.

Relax, bandwidth is limited, all transactions over certain amounts and in certain areas have been logged for a long time, these will continue to be logged. Records made on the chip will probably have a shorter life than the memories of those people present, still admissible in court. Because the computers logging the details, either on site or at the finantial institution, have limited storage capacity, less useful data will be continuously overwritten by more current data. On site, this may be nightly, at the bank, possibly weakly, maybe even monthly. All records, except those already logged, will have a fairly short halflife, this will be especially true of locations which enjoy heavy traffic. As for the "smart card", it will have a half life as well, especially if you purposely flood it. Go to the ATM with the lowest rates, 0 if possible. Pick one heavily visited, the nearest to a coin-op laundry would have a particular poetic justice to it, and transfer funds back and forth for several cycles to overwrite the data on the card. Suddenly, the card has been through too many transactions to recall what happened 500 transactions back. Someone with experience with the technology might also modify an electronic wallet to blank transaction records, this could be as basic as transferring funds repeatedly between two cards.