Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ravenstine 1085 days ago
I do the same thing using Privacy.com. Enough companies today use the "fuck you" approach towards their users, hence the users should use the "fuck you" approach right back at them.

What's funny is how people won't use virtual cards because they think bill collectors or the law will come after them. That's extremely unlikely to happen for an unpaid $9.99 bill, especially since it's not like bill collectors work on behalf of companies free of charge. It's in the best interest of companies to ignore the transgression, freeze the account, and wait for the user to come back and reactivate it; much less likely to happen if they actively punish a user because they missed a payment.

Same goes for the "but muh credit score" argument. Somehow my credit score is still excellent despite the numerous times I cancelled virtual cards or didn't feel like paying my utility bills.

So yeah, use virtual cards everywhere.

2 comments

Privacy.com allows you to use completely made up billing information - transactions won't get rejected if the name/address is a mismatch. You can just feed a fake name and address into each site, even if they wanted to, how would they identify you? Of course, this likely works best if you use an email aliasing service that hides your real email completely, and a VPN to obscure your physical IP address.
I can’t use Privacy.com because they use cellphone numbers. Supposedly, someone had used my number previously to sign up and now I cannot make an account since that number is “tied to an account”. It’s why I hate this standard of 2FA/“identity verification” with something as antiquated as phone numbers. I’d love to use their service, but as of right now I’m simply not allowed.