Privacy, Security

How Can You Make Private Purchases Online?

Feb. 1, 2022 / My Data Removal Staff
A screenshot of the front page at privacy.com

Often, doing things privately online means they are less convenient. While this isn’t always true, sadly it often is. Making purchases online is one area that can be difficult for those who seek privacy. Fortunately, there are more options than there were just a few years ago.

If you are looking for a way to make purchases online without connecting your real name to your address, then privacy.com might be the service you need.

A summary

Privacy.com is a service that can make paying online more convenient, more private, and more secure. Privacy.com provides masked credit cards, which are a virtual credit cards that are linked to your bank account. It gives you the ability to make payments online without having to reveal details such as your physical address, email address, credit card number, or your name. You can essentially create a false identity to protect your true identity and information.

Details

For many purchases, the vendor does not need to know your actual information. The online vendor or merchant you are purchasing from only sees what you give them. They have no idea what your actual name is and if you even live where they shipped your item, and they don’t need to know. You get the item you paid for and they get paid. When you use a privacy.com credit card, you no longer have to stress if a company you have used has a data breach or gets hacked.

To create a new card you click the create card button in their app or on their website and you get a new credit card with a credit card number, expiration date, and 3 digit security code. You can input notes on the card, usually the vendor and maybe what you put for your billing information. The card is ready to use as soon as you create it.

Each card only works with one vendor. So if you create a new card and use it with guitarcenter.com, you won’t be able to use that same card anywhere else. So even if guitarcenter.com were to leak your credit card number, you wouldn’t care since it can only be used at guitarcenter.com. If you use privacy.com to pay for 20 different services, you will have 20 different privacy.com cards. The app or website keeps track of them and you can search them when looking up your payment information.

Advantages of privacy.com

There are a few options for cards you create. You can pause or delete cards. So you don’t need to worry about being charged when the trial period is over.

You have the option of setting what level of details your bank sees for the privacy transactions. They can all be the same or you can let your bank also see who the real vendor is.

Although law enforcement can see your data if they need to, a marketer or private investigator wouldn’t be able to trace it back to you without getting information from privacy.com.

Disadvantages of privacy.com

Privacy.com is only so private. If the government wants to know who made that purchase, they will be able to trace it back to you.

Prepaid cards are not accepted everywhere. So this can’t completely replace your credit cards. But they are accepted most places. They are definitely more widely accepted than crypto currency.

Privacy.com still has your transaction data. They don’t delete it immediately or anything like that. If you are doing something sketchy, law enforcement would be able to trace it back to you. But if you aren’t engaged in questionable activities, your purchase information should stay private.

Their cards only work online. You don’t get physical copies of their cards. Consider cash when making purchases in person. It’s pretty anonymous and hard to trace back to you.

Examples

Purchasing a product online - If you want to make a one-off purchase of sunglasses from a company online you could use privacy.com. If you wanted to protect your privacy you would use a masked email address, a privacy.com card an alias name and address that you choose. All the vendor knows is what you give them. Maybe you shared your real address, but they don’t know your real name. It is great.

Offline service – Most offline companies don’t look at your id before selling to you. You can sign up for your utilities like waste removal, internet, electricity, etc. with a privacy.com card (one for each company), any name you want, and a masked email address to match it. Many of our clients have done this. They receive and pay for the services they need. The companies they purchase from get paid for their service. And if they share or sell their customer data, our clients don’t care at all since it isn’t their real identity.

Online service – Does Netflix only work if they know your real name? Of course not. Give them a privacy.com card, a masked email address, and an alias name to go along with it. Everyone gets what they want: Netflix gets your money and you can watch their streaming service.

Privacy.com is a great option for people who want to increase their privacy while making purchases online. It can give you peace of mind knowing you are more in control of how much of your information is being shared with others. Give the service a try and you can see how convenient it is to make private purchases online. To get a $5 credit to your account (we also get $5), click this link. This link won’t give us a kickback, but will go straight to privacy.com. We are okay if you use either one.

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