privacy.com alternative? (credit card info masking services for online payments)

BeepBeep

Been a while since I looked at them, but unless something has changed, MySudo used to only offer credit cards on iOS. And, at the time I tried them, their website was not at all good about disclosing the absence of that important feature on Android. Moreover, the price for the service wasn't less on Android despite missing a key feature. They also charged you both annually and also every time you changed a phone number, and with only 5 identities, it wasn't so good for burners. It was cool to have a full communications suite of email, voice and sms in one app, although I never could get the voice function fully working on GOS (without Google Play)

Shortly after I'd paid the annual fee, MySudo summarily cancelled my account for a terms of service violation, saying I'd used MySudo outside the US, and that wasn't allowed. In reality, all I did was connect to a VPN through a US gateway, and VPN had routed my traffic outside the US. It was pretty silly that a privacy oriented service hadn't even considered that someone might use a VPN, but the real irritant was that they cut me off, without ever contacting me or even telling me exactly why. It took me several days to persuade them to get my account reactivated. Overall, not a positive experience. Maybe they've gotten better.

GrouchyGrape

Privacy.com is what I've been using for a few years. I agree that it has it's issues, but my primary goal using it isn't privacy, but security. If/when they have a data breach, I can change my card and add the new card to the site, nothing else is affected. This wouldn't be the case if I added that same card to all these different sites which increases the headache of getting a new card (let alone the attack surface increase). This solution isn't perfect, but it fits my current lifestyle.

The feature set of privacy.com is also pretty awesome. If I could find a better replacement I'd be all over it. But for 99% of my transactions, this is great.

PaulDavis

Starling will allow you to create virtual debit cards attached to your main account

Speeduser7533

petrnovak

If you're going to do this isn't it better to buy a $200 Visa gift card with cash and just use that?

This is what I always come back to every time I think about this next privacy move.

petrnovak

Speeduser7533
I am from Europe, these do not exist here. In fact, in most countries there are no "visa gift cards" you can just buy in cash from local store.

And if you live in the country where they exist, they usually only works with merchant from that same country. (USA visa gift card only work with merchant from USA)

And merchant acceptance is not good. Often they just do not accepts it.

spl4tt

I was using revolut for thos for a long time now, but they started banning grapheneos users now, so I'm also on the lookout for a new app for european users

SilverCat38

spl4tt revolut works now with the latest build

petrnovak

So if:

you live in a location where visa gift cards are available
you know merchant you want to buy from accept such gift cards (or is likely to accept it AND you have different place to spend the gift card if they won't)
money you wants to buy with is in cash or your bank account (not already in Bitcoin)

Then visa gift cards are likely better choice.

But:

if visa gift cards are not an option (because it do not exist in your region or because it do not work with merchant you wants to buy from)
Or if you already have most of your money in bitcoin and (given the current price) you prefer to spent from your bitcoin instead from your bank account

Then service like paywithmoon is probably better option.

zzz Seems like the service creates multiple "credit card aliases", which function just like email aliases and serve the same fundamental purpose.

Just for clarification, these are more akin to debit cards then credit cards. Users are not paying with credit, payments are directly tied to an account.

zzz My reasoning is that I'd prefer to have my banking info stored with just a few trusted parties online. An online shoe retailer, for example, should not be trusted to store my CC info. I'd rather hand them a one-off card # generated via the service, prefilled with just enough money to make my purchase.

Most of these retailers, are using third parties to store the data you are worried about anyway. Very few companies are processing their own credit card payments. These act as intermediaries between the merchan and the credit card company. Its a misconception that, for example, the shoe retailer has any of that information.

zzz

Overlay1404

Agreed on the debit/credit clarification

About this:

Its a misconception that, for example, the shoe retailer has any of that information.

I've read reports that seem to contradict.
For example, the 2024 Hot Topic breach:

the exposed details include full names, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, physical addresses, purchase history, and partial credit card data for Hot Topic, Box Lunch, and Torrid customers
[...]
the dataset contains 25 million credit card numbers encrypted with a weak cipher that's easy to break using modern computers.
[...]
the breach may have originated from an information stealer malware infection that stole credentials for a data unification service used by Hot Topic.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hibp-notifies-57-million-people-of-hot-topic-data-breach/

Perhaps a 3rd party processes the payment info. But these retailers still retain credentials that have access to sensitive info, and those credentials are often leaked / hacked / breached.

Overlay1404

zzz

If you read how that breach happened

A report from HudsonRock published on October 23 suggested that the breach may have originated from an information stealer malware infection that stole credentials for a data unification service used by Hot Topic

From the HudsonRock article:

researchers discovered an employee who was recently infected by an Infostealer on September 12th, 2024

With over 240 credentials found on the machine, many of which are corporate, researchers determined that this person is employed at a company called “Robling”, whose description is “Helping retailers unite data across silos”.

To me that reads as an employee from a third party processor was infected with an info stealer, and that was used to get info from Hot Topic

The scariest part to me was that apparently the credit cards were very weakly encrypted.

zzz

Overlay1404
Good details, thanks for sharing.

Regardless of which company's employee gets hacked, I'm still convinced that using burner debit cards could reduce a person's exposure to this type of problem. The fewer companies that have the primary debit card, the better.