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“Privacy”.com–Yeah Right

ersei.net

21–30 of 172 posts

Re: “Privacy”.com–Yeah Right

#21
post #5

Privacy.com was a perfect expression of “Your business is our feature”. Practically every major card issuer provides native virtual numbers now.

i have quite a few credit cards and haven't seen this feature on a single one. discover eliminated this feature years back.

Re: “Privacy”.com–Yeah Right

#22

Privacy.com is a great service. I use them all the time to generate 1 time use card numbers for sites & then cancel the card so they cannot mysteriously charge me. I've been with them for years & their CEO is a wonderful & smart person. When you're allowing strangers to perform financial transactions - you're taking on risk that the money that is sent needs to actually be funded. They need to conform to KYC laws like…

That part is fine. The part that isn't is where they require you to give your personal information to a third party who has very weak controls on how they share it. Your endorsement makes me interested in trying the service, but I have the same "nope" reaction to the non-privacy as the author of this post.

Re: “Privacy”.com–Yeah Right

#23
Ahhh FFS, this post is complaining about third party KYC providers. Give me a break, in what world can you get a visa or mastercard without KYC? They provide privacy not anonymity, payment privacy that is not hiding your identity privacy. Your payments are private. Your payment info can't be easily tracked across the different cards you create. That's it.

Re: “Privacy”.com–Yeah Right

#24
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Phishing” implies fraudulent deception.

I think their growth numbers would have looked much differently if they had transparently disclosed the reality on their login form from day one: “Plaid will store your plaintext password and use it to periodically access your bank account.” Burying truth deep in a TOS is seen by some as deceptive.

I doubt this would have affected signups that much: most people interested in their service don't care much.

(Though instead of "access", which could imply "take money out" to some people, they'd probably use a more descriptive term)

Re: “Privacy”.com–Yeah Right

#25
post #3

Privacy.com is not about hiding your identity from authorities. It's mostly about hiding the fact that the same person, you, are paying to merchant A and merchant B. It allows you to easily have a card per merchant, and lock it to the merchant so that when its number is stolen, it can't be used anywhere else. The domain name is a bit lofty, yes.

>It allows you to easily have a card per merchant, and lock it to the merchant so that when its number is stolen, it can't be used anywhere else.

In my experience even that can fail. I had a card number stolen from them, charged to the tune of $200+, and their support refused to even entertain the idea of it being fraud, and when I mentioned a chargeback they basically said "we don't do those, because we have contracts with vendors."

A payment stop at the bank sure worked though.

Re: “Privacy”.com–Yeah Right

#26
post #5

Privacy.com was a perfect expression of “Your business is our feature”. Practically every major card issuer provides native virtual numbers now.

Younger audiences may not remember, but yes: major card providers used provide virtual card numbers back in the day.

This is a feature of the past, and most providers don't do it anymore. The only one I know of is Capital One's Eno: https://www.capitalone.com/digital/eno/virtual-card-numbers/

Re: “Privacy”.com–Yeah Right

#27
post #3

Privacy.com is not about hiding your identity from authorities. It's mostly about hiding the fact that the same person, you, are paying to merchant A and merchant B. It allows you to easily have a card per merchant, and lock it to the merchant so that when its number is stolen, it can't be used anywhere else. The domain name is a bit lofty, yes.

[flagged]

Re: “Privacy”.com–Yeah Right

#28
post #18

I worked in domain registrations in the early 2000s and it's funny how we used to put stock into what sort of TLD a domain used. Like .com would clearly be a commercial entity, while .org would be more non-profits, open source, public domain and stuff like that. Anyways, they're probably harvesting your payments and selling that info. I've noticed that since the card issuers have such high security requirements, and…

You "believe" without any evidence? To the contrary my bank card purchases were resulting in targeted ads but privacy.com cards have not shown any sign of that after using them for over a year.

Belief kind of implies lack of evidence, more a feeling or a faith, after all.

Re: “Privacy”.com–Yeah Right

#29
post #23

Ahhh FFS, this post is complaining about third party KYC providers. Give me a break, in what world can you get a visa or mastercard without KYC? They provide privacy not anonymity, payment privacy that is not hiding your identity privacy. Your payments are private. Your payment info can't be easily tracked across the different cards you create. That's it.

I agree that most of the comments here amount to handwringing (or not understanding what amount of "privacy" is legal), but also, what KYC is really necessary for a company like this? If I understand correctly, all they do is pass through transactions. They don't hold customer deposits or provide credit. Isn't all this third party verification a little much?

Re: “Privacy”.com–Yeah Right

#30

Privacy.com is a great service. I use them all the time to generate 1 time use card numbers for sites & then cancel the card so they cannot mysteriously charge me. I've been with them for years & their CEO is a wonderful & smart person. When you're allowing strangers to perform financial transactions - you're taking on risk that the money that is sent needs to actually be funded. They need to conform to KYC laws like…

KYC does not require the use of sketchy 3rd parties who leak data like a sieve.
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