What is a person worth if he is analog? Written by Francesca Rivafinoli.
I admit, our camp is getting smaller and smaller. The elderly are dying one by one, the members of the middle-aged groups are increasingly succumbing to the pressure, and the even younger ones usually still get it right - but let me speak on behalf of the silent crowd that is gradually forced into the reserve and losing its living space:
no, no matter how convenient it is, I don't want to do business with a smartphone.
I don't want to make all my data available from a single mobile device, from my bank account to the results of the latest lab test to my identity card, I don't want to be identifiable to Google and Meta with the same device, I don't want to have access to everything I need to do anytime and anywhere
and thereby slowly and imperceptibly relinquish the right to complete relaxation.
Let anyone who wants to live with the opportunities offered by our time, let whoever wants to digitalize: just don't make it mandatory. Not for me either, but especially for the generation one older.
My rant is about the impending end of the traditional Customer Portal and the advance of "digital citizenship": although the new Customer Portal+, which will be used from January, will be available without a smartphone, from a desktop computer, but in such a complicated, cumbersome and so unfriendly way for the elderly that
one can only hope that Santa Claus or Jesus will bring at least some easy-to-follow, clever syllabus,
with the help of which, after January 16th, even if it is inconvenient, but at least without a stroke, all concerned can access the findings uploaded to the Electronic Health Service Space. Especially considering that users of the family's discarded smartphones are not necessarily helped either - the Digital Citizen mobile application, which seems simpler to the outside eye, works with iOS 16 released in 2022 and Android 10 or newer operating systems from 2019;
it can't even be downloaded to the roughly 7-8-year-old tablet I tested, which works flawlessly but cannot be updated to a newer system.
This time too, it's good for a responsible conservative who takes care of his assets.
There are already more comprehensible descriptions that guide you through the process of going smartphone-free, so anyone who is ready and able to switch between three browser windows at the same time and train their working memory to put together what to type and where on which page should and what should not be typed in, sooner or later at the cost of some stress you can even tackle the challenge of computer management without a mobile phone and see your recipes -
but it would still be more appropriate and user-friendly to more carefully guide the elderly or less digital citizen centrally, ensuring the transition is easier for them.
Because, of course, you can have helpful children and grandchildren who will happily set up the Customer Gate+ for you as often as necessary - according to my informants over 75 years old, however, it is frustrating enough that they have to use others for more and more things as their strength wanes or on medical orders. They just don't miss feeling half-demented at the same time even with routine computer tasks that they previously performed independently.
There is no doubt that there are no longer millions of people crowding the intersection of "Using Customer Portal" and "Doesn't have a suitable smartphone or don't want to use it" - but a pro-sovereignty government would expect some kind of gesture towards conservative citizens from head to toe,
who (like his prime minister) lives his life with a small resource-saving dumb phone,
instead of throwing himself into the arms of Big Tech in this area as well, saying how much more "convenient" it is.
Also, if I can be so insatiable, and if I deserve it, I would even ask for Christmas that grandmas who don't have smartphones should no longer be required to create a profile on an English-language, foreign authentication website in order to access the website of the Hungarian state health insurance.
navigating through terms such as "Set an issuer" or "Time-based (TOTP)".
At the moment, Ügyfélkapu directs you to such sites for logging in without a smartphone - although in János Neumann's native country, in 2024, it does not seem like an insurmountable IT task to put together a suitable small site with a Hungarian-language interface. But not just because of the possibly less English-speaking elderly - I confess, I also find it difficult to use the English-language authentication service of an unknown foreign company in order to do business in Hungarian.
Of course, all the while I am the two-legged understanding. Two-factor authentication is good, simple password login is bad, that much is clear so far.
The password plus SMS identification is also unassailable, this is also available - although as long as you can enter the netbank by SMS, even from public Wi-Fi, as a fellow passenger did in front of me the other day, with the brightness set to maximum (I had to turn it all the way down my neck so that I don't see your current balance out of the corner of my eye and reflected in the window), until then one feels less of a danger that the encrypted home network by using it on your desktop computer, in incognito mode, you can check your tax account balance by sending an SMS to your dumb phone.
But of course it can also be guessed that it would be expensive fun to maintain two types of identification systems at the same time,
one for smartphone users and another for those who refrain from using it due to their age or by their sovereign decision (although if asked, I would certainly donate my taxes to build such an alternative system, ensuring the right to exist without a smartphone in the long term). As it can be seen that
it is not some kind of NER fraud - an EU regulation under the name "European digital identity" requires the introduction of such systems, but we feel that the pressure has been going on in the private sector for a long time.
It's one thing that a discounted orange or ham goes to someone who swiped a smartphone loyalty card at the checkout - whatever, we'll buy it for a hundred cents more (it's so worth it that we don't have to charge our phone every day and/or worry about running out, and we don't constantly get ads in our faces based on our rambling private conversations),
although more sensitive advocates would perceive discrimination here as well, for example to the detriment of the elderly who are less digital, but in some cases have a more modest financial situation.
In more advanced Western restaurants, anyone who doesn't take out a mobile phone at the table as a matter of principle: a QR code reader is required to view the menu. With foreign banks, it often happens that anyone who insists on being smartphone-free will be charged 120 euros for a separate access control gadget that can be used for 3 years; but from May 2025, anyone who is not sufficiently digital and does not have the airline's app will not be able to travel with Ryanair. You can wave it off, we haven't been regular passengers of the company until now - but we have seen in world history that the passenger-annoying cost-cutting innovation of one or two low-cost airlines ran through the entire European air transport industry like a knife in butter left on the counter. But you don't even have to fly for that:
In Budapest, due to the decrease in demand due to mobile tickets, several discounted BKK ticket types are no longer available in printed version
- it would not be useless to have some kind of paper-based or even top-up card service minimum as soon as possible, before the analog citizen can no longer get a pass.
This week, in the Capital Assembly, representatives of the Fidesz-KDNP spoke out against the fact that in the future it will only be possible to pay parking fees with a smartphone in Budapest - they called the mandatory use of the phone a restriction of personal freedom and a violation of individual freedoms, adding: to people, they can only pay for parking on their phone".
Well, that's the speech. This policy should only be enforced consistently and decisively at the national level, even by amending the constitution accordingly
– and in the meantime correcting the things that need to be corrected at lightning speed in order to simultaneously ensure the mental health and cyber security of decent conservatives who want to shop without a smartphone.
Featured image: StockSnap/Pixabay
