Hi, nowadays a lot of places online only accept payment via one of the three options mentioned. Privacy wise, which is my best option? My thread model is mainly based on surveillance capitalism.
If you pay with a third party, your data goes to them and whoever is providing the account behind it. So if you have your credit card in PayPal, your data goes to PayPal, the credit card provider, and your bank. If you use the credit card directly, it’s just the CC provider and your bank.
There’s a third party between the payment system (website, point of sales systems, card terminals, etc) and the card’s provider who also has access to the transaction data in the latter example. These payment systems don’t interact with visa/mc/whatever directly.
The tradeoff is you will be giving the merchant your cc info instead, which is not really a good idea if you are dealing with one off transactions as that data is a way weaker link and have more dire consequences when compromised. When it comes to money, someone will always get your info, it’s just a matter of choosing who you want to give it to.
Usually there is also online payment providers like Stripe, Adyen, Square, which process the credit card payment and thus get your data - not only the bank and creditcard provider.
I’ve been using their service for years and I advocate it whenever I can. You link their service to a bank account and then generate throw away credit card numbers which one used deduct the balance directly from your checking account.
You can set spending limits on the virtual cards, you can make them one time use only, and you can make them lock themselves to a vendor so even if someone steals that credit card number they can’t use it.
I very highly recommend using their service to protect yourself using online payment systems.
As far as obfuscating your purchase history, that’s kind of part of the territory. That information will always be available to your banking institution and if so facto, the government…
I would use this more if I could use a credit card instead of a bank account. How easy are chargebacks on privacy? Ease of chargebacks is a major reason I use cc over debit (also points, which I think using privacy might affect).
- There are no “charge backs,” it’s not a credit card.
- You can dispute any transaction, that’s US federal law
As for the “ease” I have no idea. I’ve never needed to do it. If you need the consumer protections to feel safe, then just use your credit card.
unfortunately they are only available in the US
Which jurisdictions are you looking to support this?
EU
if so facto, …
Speech to text. 🤷♂️
No offense, but none of your research is valuable if you’re too stupid to look up the moderators in a community you’re a guest in.
You reported me to myself, and I’m the owner of the instance. So thanks for your work in the area of privacy but we’re going to do our own research, you insipid cow.
Not only is this ad hominem (calling a person “too stupid to look up the moderators” is not relevant to whether the research they did is valuable, the two are independent and you’re addressing (incorrectly perceived) personal characteristics rather than flaws in an argument) but also, friend, you’re telling on yourself. Spam is a legitimate concern in this and every online community. Nicole is a known spambot. You spammed your own community as a moderator. Apparently as a joke that most people seem to have gotten. Your response is basically [I’m the mod here, I can do whatever the fuck I want]. And no, you can’t. Contrary to what you might think, this isn’t your community. You are just currently (actually, looking at the mod list for this community that seems to be formerly) one of the people responsible for facilitating the dialogue this community is, in principle at least, trying to foster.
A joke is one thing, but coming out of the gate hot like this calling people “stupid insipid cows” because they reported nicole spam is… unempathetic and tends to suggest a power trip. In other words, “Be nice :)” applies to you, too.
They require an amount of personal info that I don’t really want a company to have.
You understand that you have the freedom to…not use their services, right?
Yep, that is what I did. It just seems ironic that a company that sells the service of protecting your privacy wants to violate your privacy in order to do it.
Anecdotally, I don’t trust Klarna one bit. A few years ago I was making a payment and Klarna directed me to a third party site that wanted my bank credentials. It was at that moment I stopped using Klarna and requested they delete all information they have on me. Apparently, Klarna wanted to see my account activity. I now go out of my way to avoid them. I have a similar issue with PayPal, where connecting a Credit Card requires entering information in a way I’m uncomfortable with.
So for now I’m just using a CC directly. This may not be the best approach, but it feels the least intrusive - for now. I don’t know what the optimal solution would be. Maybe when GNU Taler becomes an option…
information in a way I’m uncomfortable with.
Huh, what’s that? Maybe I did this so long ago that I don’t remember before I started getting big into privacy.
Picking between the ones you listed it’s basically a “pick your poison” situation.
Klarna is definitely extremely sketchy. I’ve yet to read their terms of services but km not looking forwards to it.
I think all of these companies are sketch in one way or another. You would be better off choosing something like Wise or Revolut as they at least offer disposable credit cards for one time purchases.
Sorry to piggyback. Can anyone talk about their experience with Signal payments using mobilecoin? I, too, like OP, am looking for privacy-oriented options for payment. I just noticed it was a thing, last night, as I was exploring my Signal settings. Might be helpful to others. Dunno anything about it because I haven’t tried it. Thanks!
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In-app-Payments#payments_which_ones
Edit: I searched for Signal and Mobilecoin on Newpipe and the results are less than favorible. 😬
I always wondered how to use it. How to put Money in and out of the Wallet. I would recommend creating a new post as I am very interested too.
Read your credit card agreement. Does it have a number to call, email address or mailing address to post to to opt-out of information sharing of purchase information with 3rd parties? I opted out with my latest card.
Monero
Gift and prepaid cards are an option too.
I rarely encounter sites that accept them.
IMO I think most financial institutions can see or acquire a lot of transactional data, so I just pick one bank (who already knows everything I spend) have a credit card with them, and use it. My bank also allows making virtual cards, so I opt for it over privacy.com.