Yeah, great point. I have thought of that, actually, after receiving a gift card as, well, a gift. But then I forget about it and then I need something, so I put myself at risk all over again. At Amazon, I remove my credit card info each time, but you can’t take it off until the shipment was received, for whatever reason.
I’m 80% sure that’s for returns/cancellation.
It could well be. But since they already have it on file, at the point of ordering, I wish that they would allow you to take it off right away. As often as I can, on other sites, I’ll order as a ‘guest’, so there isn’t additional vulnerability there.
110 million accounts? At this stage it would be more efficient for the NSA to publish the list of remaining credit cards not leaked….
Just yesterday I was in a local bike store with the intent to make a small purchase, and somehow the salesman and I got into a brief discussion about the Target hack. He repeatedly assured me that the hack wasn’t that big of a deal and that he’d easily be able to refute any questionable charge on his credit card (and that the card issuer would happily refund the charge). As I was purchasing a relatively cheap item (~$30) I didn’t get the impression that he was trying to convince me that credit cards were safe to use so I’d go through with the sale, but his conviction seemed quite Chicken Little-ish to me.
Also, you might look into one-time credit card numbers. I have two credit cards and both of them offer one-time use numbers for online purchases. It does add a layer of bureaucracy to the purchase process, but it’s probably not a bad idea to utilize such a service.
I had bought something like that for Roku and they wouldn’t accept it. I’m not sure how it works on other sites. Do you have any links? If not, don’t worry about it, if so, I’d appreciate it.
- Editing to say that I found some old links, will check it out later.
I know at least one person who lost money through it.
I found a few articles here and there, so you’re probably better off calling the CC company and inquiring. I do notice that Discover has stopped making these available (and they do so with an appropriately lame public reason):
Why is this program no longer being offered? Regrettably, the technology on which secure online account numbers are based is no longer available to us so we are unable to continue to offer it to cardmembers.I guess math went away or something. I would suspect that the number and scope of these hacks will force CC companies into offering some sort of burner number, otherwise they're shunting consumers into using the dispute process. Sadly, it's probably easier for them to soak up the cost of generating a new card or widening their dispute group than to offer an easy protection for cardholders.
1 Like
You do realize that you’re far more likely to have a problem with random identity theft or breach-of-account crime than you are to have a problem running afoul of the NSA, right?
My dislike in the bulk collection of data for no specific purpose doesn’t really have anything to do with my concern for dealing with the vulnerabilities in the banking system and the possible ramifications to my creditworthiness or account balances.
To pretend that these nemeses are heavily related is shortsighted and counterproductive, and only serves to undermine arguments against either. Don’t commingle one’s enemies when they’re not actually working together, it makes the arguer look foolish and makes it impossible to find a starting point toward addressing them.
According the US Census (pdf), there 1245 million credit cards in 2009 and a projection of 1167 million for 2012:
There were more than 500 million debit cards:
I am not sure how cards that can act as both a debit card and a credit card are counted, but we can say that there are way more debit/credit cards than people in the US.
It isn’t the security of the transaction that is broken. It is the security of the servers and the encryption used in storing your card number. The only reason for a retailer to store your card number is to make it so you don’t have to enter it every time you shop online. it is entirely possible for the retailer to pass your card number on to the provider for billing without storing it.
you seem to have made a number of incorrect assumptions about my thinking and my premise. you are welcome to your opinion, of course. .
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
