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Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

privacy.com

291–300 of 367 posts

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#291
@boling11, why does privacy.com need access to my online banking on an ongoing basis, after the initial signup is finished?

I have changed my online banking password after signing up successfully, and I received an email complaining that "Our connection to your bank is broken".

I can understand the need for initially providing my banking credentials for AML/KYC reasons, but I feel uncomfortable with your company continuing to use those after the initial check.

Why can't you just use the routing/account numbers for ACH after the initial signup?

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#292
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair, if you're doing something illegal that may result in a subpoena, this is not the product for you. However, that doesn't mean what we're doing isn't meaningful. We just think that you just shouldn't have to share your personal info with a random merchant you want to buy something from. This notion that passing along your billing info is going some how substantially cutting down on fraud is ridiculous. It'…

"We just think that you just shouldn't have to share your personal info with a random merchant you want to buy something from." FWIW, this is, and has been, possible with regular credit cards for as long as I've used them (20 years ?) Nobody anywhere checks the name on a card. Nobody. Not amazon, not google, not a small online retailer, not a large one. Nobody. Zero. I made up a default fake name ten years ago and ha…

Only American Express offers name verification to merchants. When it comes to address verification, only the numeric data gets checked. So for an address "123 Main Street" would match "123 Bryant St" as well

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? You didn't "merely consent" to anything; you agreed to their terms and conditions, which state cancellation criteria. There's no "one could argue" here. Commercial law is well-established. Of course they have recourse: taking you to collections. Have you... have you ever not paid a bill before? I'm very confused how one could think this.

If we are talking about something like a phone bill, where you may incur charges during billing period and pay at the end, then you are correct and the company can take you to court because you are in debt to them for services provided that you have not paid for. If we are talking about subscriptions where you pay for a month of service up front, then there is no debt. If they fail in charging another month to the pr…

FYI: contracts can specify a lot of different payment terms. The term that you apparently desire to be in contracts you sign is against the interests of your counterparty. Most of them will have asked a lawyer how to write their contract. Their lawyers will often draft that contract to protect their client's interests. You will find that lawyers are rather good at doing this and are about as likely to be out-thought by a programmer's parsing of the English language as you are to be out-Fizzbuzzed by a randomly chosen attorney.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#294
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pretty much universally run a debit card as a credit card. It's the other way around that's expensive.

A merchant can choose to decline prepaid debit cards, e.g. here's how the braintree api exposes it[0]. I assume that's what this shows up as. [0] https://developers.braintreepayments.com/reference/response/...

A prepaid debit card is different from a plain old 'debit card'. The debit card is accepted everywhere a credit card is (as long as it says Visa or Mastercard on it).

In fact a few places accept debit cards but do not accept credit cards as fees with debit cards can be lower.

There's just a handful of subscription merchants that don't take prepaid debit cards.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#295
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there is. You can buy prepaid cards at grocery stores or malls, although privacy generally erodes when you want to ship.

Are you sure? I've looked at these, and every single one that I investigated involved some kind of activation process that meant giving up identifying information (or lying, which I'm not willing to do).

AMEX gift cards => pay cash => leave => enjoy.

when paying with said card? provide address, fake name, 3 digit code on back of card "A HAPPY CUSTOMER4U" as name on card. Done.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#296
Whoever works on this & put it together / posted this. Thank you. I just recently learned a while back that paypal had something similar but discontinued it. Whatever you have to do to keep this service running & any help you need in spreading the word, I'm willing to help out. This is needed badly for those who are privacy conscious.

Thank you :-)

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#297
post #4

Hey HN - Privacy.com co-founder here. I'm really excited to share what we've been working on for the past year and a half or so. We've been neck-deep in payments stuff on the card issuing side (getting a BIN sponsor, ACH origination, etc), so happy to answer any questions on that front as well. P.S. For new users, your first $5 donation to watsi.org is on us :)

Am I reading comments right that this isn't work with an existing credit card, or say, paypal? So I have to give you my debit or bank account info?

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#299

I think people are over-thinking this offering a little too much. People who are asking if the company will resist a subpoena, or if all customer data will be irreversibly encrypted, are expecting too much. The main purposes of this product are to be able to mask your marketing data (name, address, phone) to businesses, and to mitigate damage in the event of a data breach (any stolen card numbers are useless). It's n…

That's fair, if you're doing something illegal that may result in a subpoena, this is not the product for you. However, that doesn't mean what we're doing isn't meaningful. We just think that you just shouldn't have to share your personal info with a random merchant you want to buy something from. This notion that passing along your billing info is going some how substantially cutting down on fraud is ridiculous. It'…

Hey, I'm all for your service. I was a big user of Discover's one-time card numbers before they went away, just for the peace of mind of not having to worry about having my card number stolen. I will very probably sign up for Privacy and use it.

My point was that we have a lot of tinfoil hat crypto currency believers in the audience here tonight, and this is maybe not the panacea they were hoping for - it's not the second coming of Silk Road or anything.

Re: Privacy – Forget Your Credit Card

#300
post #60

> Privacy is PCI-DSS compliant. We are held to the same rigorous security standards as your bank. I always giggle when I see that.

There's a relevant (and pretty funny) ServerFault question from 2011 I'm immediately reminded of: "Our Security Auditor Is An Idiot. How Do I Give Him The Information He Wants?" http://serverfault.com/questions/293217/our-security-auditor...

Wow that was a interesting read, to say the least. Thanks for the link!
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