I’d like to be able to make anonymous, more secure purchases online. I’ve heard that it’s possible to get temporary credit card numbers that only work for one purchase or up to an arbitrary limit. I"ve also heard about some proxy companies, such as Gizmo Card which for some reason doesn’t provide a list of its merchants. They allow you to make purchases without handing over your name and so forth.
Is there anything that does both? I asked my bank about “virtual credit card numbers” and they said they don’t offer them. (Currently I have a Visa though them.) Also, ideally I also wouldn’t give the bank records of the particular purchases.
So does anybody offer this? Something like a prepaid credit card that you can buy online? Of course I would want some way of knowing it’s a legitimate business, if it’s not from one of the major companies.
Of course there is. Have someone else buy pre-paid Visa cards for you.
The other end of the transaction is more troublesome, tho. How do you expect the package to get to you, if you don’t have your name on it? The delivery guys need a name and address, right?
Having someone else buy the “disposable” card doesn’t really work either. Since they are frequently used as gifts, the banks understand that the buyer is not neccessarily the user. So in order to use the card it has to be “activated”, requiring the potential user to enter all their personal information (name, SSN, address, zip, etc). Pretty much all online Credit Card transactions require you to enter an address and name that match the registered info on the card. So remaining completely anonymous will be kinda difficult. The only way I could imagine doing it is to have someone else also activate the card with THEIR info, but then they would have to share that info with you (do they trust you that much?), and then the purchases would be tracked to THAT person instead of you. But that’s still not anonymous is it? THEY will know who made the purchase should anyone ask…
I won’t argue because my experience with these things is rather limited. But I’ve never had to do anything to “activate” the several I’ve been given and used.
I’ve got one in my wallet right now. Required activation with user info. Don’t see how it could be done otherwise. Click on “purchase” with any online merchant and they REQUIRE that you enter your personal info. It also states that it MUST match the info on the card. I’ve misentered my address a couple of times with online purchases and it was declined due to the error.
You can get the short-expiration, small limit card numbers if you have an MBNA card. It’s through their program called ShopSafe, a little Flash app. It’s really cool. You can use it online, and if you want, on the phone.
As for anonymity on an online form…AFAIK, sites can choose how “tight” they want their security to be. They can just accept CC nums and that’s all they check (that’d be horribly stupid). They can check just zip code, or street vs zip, and on up. At least that’s how our authorization scheme is set up to work.
If you really want to fill out a form anonymously you could try your card number and ZIP as being correct, then the rest bunk. Your name being correct probably doesn’t matter. You might just need a valid street address in the same ZIP as your card address. You’d have to figure it out by trial and error.
Citibank also seems to offer virtual credit cards (at least my old AT&T Universal card does). The idea is to give a card number that expires at the end of the month; if the merchant is hacked after that, your number is worthless.
However, the credit card issuer does know that you used the card. That’s how they bill you.
A nitpicky answer to the OP is “no”. The “gift cards” which you could use anonymously are debit cards, not credit cards. I have one of these gift cards with the Visa logo loaded with $25 which I can use anywhere Visa is accepted. But it’s not a “credit card”, it’s a Visa Debit card. It was purchased at a local “mall” (Forum Shops, Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas) for cash, no ID required.
The embossed name on the front is “Gift Card Recipient”. There’s still a signature panel on the back with “Not Valid Unless Signed” so even then there’s a signature matching step the merchant can be required to take.
And I don’t have to register it to my name (via the issuer’s website) unless I want to make online purchases with it. I haven’t done so - and I don’t know that I couldn’t register it under a fake name and to a mail drop (i.e., address of an abandoned house, or a dodgy private mailbox) so that I could then order things online anonymously and still have a valid online check using the Address Verification System.
Citibank offers “Virtual Account Numbers”. The interface is a little tricky but you can generate CC numbers with time/spending limits.
Also, FWIW, if you’re subscribing to a service (ok, like a pr0n site) where you don’t actually need anything delivered, you should be able to make up a name and address, as long as the street address starts with the same number as your real street address, and as long as the ZIP is the same as yours.
Example real address:
John Smith
123 Main St.
Whoville, BV 55555
Fake address you give:
Greg Brady
123 Elm Ave
Whoville, BV 55555
For a while, you could buy something analogous to a phone card, the specific purpose of which was to buy access to adult sites on the internet – anonymously, I suppose, but also useful if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t have a credit card. I used to see these for sale in convenience stores, and for all I know, they’re still there. But I don’t know actually how they work – it’d be like a debit card arrangement, but I imagine the number of places it could be used would be limited.
Greetings,
It would seem nobody else uses my acquisition service’s business model. As I didn’t see anyone else doing it their way, you might want to look into Enymity. I’ve made over 20 purchases through them as-to-date, and I’ve always been quite satisfied. The way they parcel out data at point-of-purchase has never left a complete record of what I’ve gotten or any of my personal info on anyone’s files, and someone would have to hack 4-5 different, secured systems before they could even start attempting to reverse-engineer any sort of profile. If you haven’t found a better way, I think you’d enjoy the peace-of-mind their service affords me. If you have found a better way, I’d love to hear about it.
j
Did Enymity exist in 2006? Because all you had to do was look at the dates to see that every post above yours was that old. So the answer probably is, no, nobody in 2006 had ever heard of Enymity. Or any other service that came into being in the past six years.