[HN Gopher] "Privacy".com-Yeah Right
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       "Privacy".com-Yeah Right
        
       Author : d4a
       Score  : 133 points
       Date   : 2022-10-03 14:38 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ersei.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ersei.net)
        
       | badrabbit wrote:
       | Ahhh FFS, this post is complaining about third party KYC
       | providers. Give me a break, in what world can you get a visa or
       | mastercard without KYC? They provide privacy not anonymity,
       | payment privacy that is not hiding your identity privacy. Your
       | payments are private. Your payment info can't be easily tracked
       | across the different cards you create. That's it.
        
         | vorpalhex wrote:
         | It's not the existence of KYC, it's that their KYC provider is
         | slimey and not privacy respecting. Selling your data to
         | potential bidders is a no go.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | badrabbit wrote:
           | Pretty sure selling your passport pic is illegal, as far as
           | name, address and IP all major banks are doing this already.
        
         | jiveturkey wrote:
         | That's what the post is complaining about, but the problem is
         | quite deeper. The KYC bit is actually ok IMO -- you're giving
         | your identity to places that likely already have it.
         | 
         | What this kind of article _should_ be about is the same thing
         | that VPN is about. privacy.com actually _removes_ privacy. Now,
         | instead of VISA being the only aggregator of your purchase
         | data, privacy.com is also. Either way, the merchant and VISA
         | know your purchase history. Now, so does  "privacy".com.
         | 
         | If you want to hide something from your bill so that someone
         | else in your household doesn't see it, then ok. If you want to
         | hide your address and name from a merchant (say for a digital
         | downlaod) then ok. If you actually want more privacy,
         | privacy.com is the opposite of what you want.
        
           | tchened wrote:
           | > Either way, the merchant and VISA know your purchase
           | history. Now, so does "privacy".com.
           | 
           | how does the merchant know your purchase history if you're
           | using virtual cards with bogus info?
        
         | public_defender wrote:
         | I agree that most of the comments here amount to handwringing
         | (or not understanding what amount of "privacy" is legal), but
         | also, what KYC is really necessary for a company like this? If
         | I understand correctly, all they do is pass through
         | transactions. They don't hold customer deposits or provide
         | credit. Isn't all this third party verification a little much?
        
           | smachiz wrote:
           | The point of KYC is to make money laundering harder (and
           | other transactions that the various governments want to
           | track/police). To that extent, yes, they need to be able to
           | show a regulator who was making those transactions.
           | 
           | The actual funding source/bank behind them won't see any
           | detail beyond "privacy.com".
           | 
           | Any card issuer (or virtual card issuer) has to do this.
        
             | public_defender wrote:
             | My point is that privacy doesn't need to do KYC because
             | there is no possibility of the customer evading regulators.
             | Assuming that privacy answers subpoenas, they would be able
             | to give the government detailed transaction info and a bank
             | account which would identify the customer. KYC at this
             | level of abstraction doesn't seem to solve any kind of
             | legal problem. I'm glad to be educated by an expert,
             | though.
             | 
             | Edit: A sibling explains a good liability reason for this,
             | which makes sense but would not imply any legal reason.
        
               | smachiz wrote:
               | How do you validate that they own the bank accounts if
               | you don't know who the user is?
        
               | public_defender wrote:
               | They only verify control. They do the method of making
               | two small deposits and asking what they were.
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | Which is why KYC is required. Two small deposits just
               | means you have access to someone's bank account, not that
               | you're actually them. Money launderers will pay mules to
               | use their bank account to move money around.
        
           | badrabbit wrote:
           | It is a legal requirement for their bank and for mastercard.
        
           | Kye wrote:
           | Privacy is backed by an actual credit card ever since they
           | restructured things to get around most sites rejecting their
           | cards due to mistaking them for prepaid.
        
           | solumos wrote:
           | > what KYC is really necessary for a company like this? If I
           | understand correctly, all they do is pass through
           | transactions.
           | 
           | Products like this are particularly susceptible to fraud,
           | especially given that they're charging your bank account
           | directly. Without any KYC, if I as a fraudster get access to
           | your bank login, I can basically drain your account. That
           | opens up a ton of liability to Privacy. Also, the card
           | networks tends to be pretty risk-averse with allowing issuing
           | products access to their networks if there's a lot of fraud
           | going through their services.
           | 
           | So, it's much easier to put KYC in place in order to avoid
           | the headache of dealing with fraud/AML/etc
        
             | public_defender wrote:
             | Ok yes, I can see that they would want to have some
             | insulation from having banks charge them back on whole user
             | accounts. That makes sense.
        
       | jqpabc123 wrote:
       | The first step to getting an account at privacy.com is to
       | surrender your privacy --- including private access to your bank
       | account login credentials.
       | 
       | To paraphrase Nancy Reagan, "Just say no".
        
       | nopenopenopeno wrote:
       | It would have been funnier if they used privacy.org.
       | 
       | I never expected them to provide any privacy of any sort, but I
       | don't think they could make matters worse. Privacy.com has been
       | extremely convenient for me, private or otherwise.
        
       | tempsy wrote:
       | I have the Apple credit card.
       | 
       | If you just want to generate 1-time credit card numbers to use
       | once it's the best experience imo - can easily do it in the
       | Wallet app.
       | 
       | Also lots of these subscription websites now detect card
       | generated from something like a Privacy.com is prepaid and will
       | prevent you from using it which defeats the purpose. Not the case
       | with Apple.
        
         | drdaeman wrote:
         | > If you just want to generate 1-time credit card numbers to
         | use once it's the best experience imo - can easily do it in the
         | Wallet app.
         | 
         | I'm sorry, but how? To best of my awareness, there is only one
         | virtual card (though it has a rotating CVV) and the only option
         | I see is "request new card number" that should be used in event
         | of having the current number compromised. I don't see any way
         | to have multiple virtual cards there.
         | 
         | Well, technically there are 3+ cards - the physical card
         | (without a CVV, so not really useful), the virtual card (see
         | above), and one-per-device Apple Pay cards numbers (probably
         | not useful unless merchant accepts Apple Pay).
        
           | tempsy wrote:
           | Yeah its just one at a time. I still find this useful for one
           | time use on a website or free trial.
           | 
           | If you want multiple cards with limits Citi does this and
           | it's exactly the same as Privacy except you can use your
           | credit card.
        
         | darknavi wrote:
         | I didn't realize that Apple CC could do this. I really wish
         | Chase could.
         | 
         | The main reason I don't use Privacy any more is because you
         | can't back it with a credit card (only debit/bank) and I want
         | the CC points.
        
         | sholladay wrote:
         | Privacy.com also allows setting monthly/yearly spending limits,
         | or even setting the card as single-use. Does Apple have
         | anything like that?
        
           | CharlesW wrote:
           | > _Does Apple have anything like that?_
           | 
           | Not that I can find, which is why I use Privacy.
        
             | tempsy wrote:
             | Citi does this.
        
           | tempsy wrote:
           | No it's just the ability to generate new credit card numbers
           | on demand
           | 
           | If you want various virtual cards with varying limits I also
           | noticed my Citi card allows me to do this. It's just a little
           | clunkier but it's actually more robust than Apple's feature
           | if you wanted a unique number per website.
        
             | jrochkind1 wrote:
             | Oddly, my Citi card does not seem to have this. Guess I
             | need a new card.
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | It's not for all account holders:
               | https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/Virtual-
               | Account-N...
        
         | no-reply wrote:
         | Privacy cards are now credit cards[0]. So no, they won't get
         | stuck at "We don't accept prepaid cards". [0]:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32585893
        
       | aorth wrote:
       | Privacy.com is great. I've been using it for years on the free
       | plan. I use short-lived, vendor-specific cards a few times per
       | month.
       | 
       | The author is complaining about the service's name not matching
       | _their_ expectation of what the service is supposed to do. I don
       | 't think that's fair. The Privacy.com homepage summarizes the
       | service very well in my opinion. You give Privacy.com your
       | financial information so you don't have to give it to a dozen
       | other companies, and you get to control when and how those
       | companies use that information by setting limits on spending or
       | card duration.
       | 
       | The author was expecting this to be a cryptocurrency tumbler or
       | what?
        
       | Chalene34 wrote:
        
       | bel_marinaio wrote:
       | privacy.com is one of my favorite companies.
       | 
       | They have saved me from fraud 2x in 3 years. Then I simply closed
       | that "card" with the click of a button. No need to call my bank,
       | cancel my debit card that I use at ATMs, and wait a week for a
       | new card
       | 
       | I don't have to worry about remembering to cancel free
       | subscriptions. I set the card max at $1. This has saved me
       | multiple times from the free trial scams that you need to opt out
       | of. Free trials should be opt in after the trial. Opt out is a
       | scam to trickle money into a company from non customers.
       | 
       | They stopped a contractor from charging me over $2k when I
       | specifically told them they needed to tell me how much before
       | charging me. Of course they didnt tell me and tried to run the
       | charge. Privacy put a stop to their BS.
       | 
       | It is mostly automatic or easy to set up once you are using
       | Privacy. Some banks have started to offer similar digital card
       | numbers similar to Privacy.
        
         | jiveturkey wrote:
         | Not starting, this kind of virtual card service has existed
         | long before privacy.com came on the scene.
        
       | buildbuildbuild wrote:
       | The use of third party KYC services like Onfido is widespread in
       | the cryptocurrency space as well, where over-compliance is the
       | norm right now. Consumers are given little choice as to which
       | provider stewards their ID scans, bank statements, biometric
       | data, etc.
       | 
       | This user experience has trained the most vulnerable, non-tech-
       | savvy audiences to provide just about anything requested when
       | asked for ID verification. Including to phishers.
       | 
       | If you push back too hard against arbitrary, invasive KYC
       | requests, you start down a path towards becoming unbanked.
       | 
       | The USA is badly in need of modern consumer privacy regulations.
        
         | cmeacham98 wrote:
         | If you think this one is bad: look at Plaid, which literally
         | phishes users bank credentials as "fintech".
        
           | edgineer wrote:
           | Last I checked, privacy.com uses Plaid, too. When privacy.com
           | had asked me to use Plaid to add a payment method, Plaid's
           | privacy policy talked of gathering transaction information
           | and using it for advertising among other things.
           | 
           | I think Plaid's stance was that if the host service (the one
           | asking you to use Plaid) wanted to be invasive then it's up
           | to them, or if this host would be upstanding and maintain
           | your privacy, that could happen, too. It was up to the
           | customer to check their policies. But this limitation was not
           | spelled out nor promised that I could see.
           | 
           | Their policy may have changed since then.
        
           | anamexis wrote:
           | "Phishing" implies fraudulent deception.
        
             | buildbuildbuild wrote:
             | I think their growth numbers would have looked much
             | differently if they had transparently disclosed the reality
             | on their login form from day one:
             | 
             | "Plaid will store your plaintext password and use it to
             | periodically access your bank account."
             | 
             | Burying truth deep in a TOS is seen by some as deceptive.
        
               | jefftk wrote:
               | I doubt this would have affected signups that much: most
               | people interested in their service don't care much.
               | 
               | (Though instead of "access", which could imply "take
               | money out" to some people, they'd probably use a more
               | descriptive term)
        
               | 2Gkashmiri wrote:
               | why can't banks have oath like authentication so this BS
               | doesnt happen?
        
               | twelve40 wrote:
               | because there are close to 20000 of them in the US, and
               | while chase has the resources to do oauth properly, not
               | every junky credit union can afford that
        
               | jrochkind1 wrote:
               | Few/no small credit unions (or banks) have their own
               | bespoke online portal they developed just for them. They
               | use a vendor. I bet a few vendors would cover a pretty
               | large % of those 20K banks.
        
               | twelve40 wrote:
               | what's in it for them anyway?
        
               | jrochkind1 wrote:
               | I don't know, what's in it for the big banks either?
               | Probably the same thing as what's in it for smaller banks
               | and their vendors? Apparently nothing, or not enough?
               | Unless customers are going to use the feature to choose
               | their bank? Or it saves the bank money from avoiding
               | fraud? Maybe one or the other will be so eventually.
               | 
               | When it is, the vendors/platforms that "junky credit
               | unions" use will add it, same thing as when big banks
               | will add it. A vendor that small banks and credit unions
               | use for their online platform probably has the same order
               | of magnitude of aggregate consumer customers as a big
               | bank has, I don't see why it wouldn't be about as do-able
               | for one of those vendors as a big bank.
        
               | PainfullyNormal wrote:
               | > "Plaid will store your plaintext password and use it to
               | periodically access your bank account."
               | 
               | That's terrifying.
               | 
               | I'm looking into privacy.com as an alternative to using
               | my real debit card number online because it gets stolen
               | at least once a year. Having my bank account itself
               | compromised does not sound like an improvement. Then
               | again, how often do banks get hacked and have their
               | credentials compromised? At least as often.
        
               | dawnerd wrote:
               | I believe plaid has oauth integration with the larger
               | banks now. I remember using it with chase and chase
               | showing me an auth and permission approval request
               | screen.
        
             | cmeacham98 wrote:
             | I believe they've improved it now, but their login page
             | literally used to say "Plaid" nowhere, and at least for my
             | bank (Bank of America) looked almost identical to the
             | official login.
             | 
             | Here's an example: https://d1hzvs60s6jsjg.cloudfront.net/IM
             | AGES-1/208624076/pla... Does this look like it's going to
             | be shipping your credentials off to be stored by a third
             | party?
        
           | junon wrote:
           | "Phishing" does not mean what you think it means. Blame the
           | banks for Plaid's need to exist.
        
             | cmeacham98 wrote:
             | Phishing generally means "pretend to be X to get user's
             | info/credentials for X", do you have a different
             | definition?
        
               | junon wrote:
               | Phishing is typically tricking an individual into
               | divulging sensitive information. Credential stealing is
               | typical, but still a subset.
               | 
               | Plaid uses banking credentials on a user's behalf. Yes,
               | it's similar to using stolen credentials because... it's
               | the same thing, except consent, audits, insurance, etc.
               | all play a role whereas with criminal activity they do
               | not.
        
               | cmeacham98 wrote:
               | This seems to be some weird semantic angle where because
               | Plaid is audited that makes what they're doing not
               | phishing? I'm not sure I agree with that definition or
               | that it is particularly common.
               | 
               | That said, if it makes you feel better, pretend my
               | comment read "Plaid pretends to be the users' banks in
               | order to trick users into giving Plaid their bank
               | credentials and stores those credentials without their
               | knowledge or consent".
        
               | junon wrote:
               | That _is_ the definition of phishing. This is why
               | "vishing" is "voice phishing", etc. Phishing is stealing
               | information. It's not a "semantic angle" - it's the
               | definition of phishing. You're free to consulting a
               | dictionary to fact check me.
               | 
               | Plaid is not phishing, by any true definition of the
               | word.
        
               | cmeacham98 wrote:
               | Like I said, pretend I said "Plaid pretends to be the
               | users' banks in order to trick users into giving Plaid
               | their bank credentials and stores those credentials
               | without their knowledge or consent" if it makes you feel
               | any better.
               | 
               | I'm content with my comment if you agree Plaid's behavior
               | matches phishing with the only exception being how they
               | use the credentials afterwards.
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | But it's how they use the credentials afterwards that's
               | core to the disagreement over your use of the word
               | phishing. Which is to say, you don't like or trust them,
               | fine, but Plaid isn't a scam that's going to try and
               | steal your money with those credentials it's gotten.
               | Which makes it not phishing. Phishing involves an
               | attacker trying to get those credentials in order to
               | steal yo shit. Plaid is trying to perform a service on
               | your behalf.
               | 
               | If I go to a store and pick up some items and leave with
               | them is that stealing? How about if I pay for them?
        
               | cmeacham98 wrote:
               | Like I said, pretend I said "Plaid pretends to be the
               | users' banks in order to trick users into giving Plaid
               | their bank credentials and stores those credentials
               | without their knowledge or consent" if it makes you feel
               | any better.
        
               | junon wrote:
               | Plaid does none of that. They don't trick you. Having
               | used plaid software before, it's pretty clear what's
               | happening.
        
         | collegeburner wrote:
         | ahahahaha man who do you think is the one who added all this
         | KYC shit and who scares companies into over compliance... and
         | you want more regulation as a solution. we could start by
         | removing all KYC requirements and fighting crime as crime
         | instead of imputing some criminality to a financial
         | transaction. like even if it's part of a criminal enterprise
         | the transaction itself isn't the "wrong" part.
        
       | ex3ndr wrote:
       | Onfido is state of the art service for ID verification and very
       | trustworthy.
        
         | markovbot wrote:
         | Then why do they have all those incredibly questionable things
         | in their privacy policy? What makes them "trustworthy"? I've
         | never heard of them, but from reading this blog post it seems
         | like yet another evil company trying to suck up PII from
         | unsuspecting victims and sell it.
        
           | Kiro wrote:
           | And that's why you shouldn't trust a random blog. They
           | completely misrepresented that paragraph. Here's the full
           | quote:
           | 
           | "As part of a business transfer. Onfido may disclose your
           | personal information to an actual or potential buyer,
           | investor or partner (and its agents and advisers) in relation
           | to any actual or proposed divestiture, merger, acquisition,
           | joint venture, bankruptcy, dissolution, reorganization, or
           | any other similar transaction or proceeding"
        
             | markovbot wrote:
             | how is that different from what the blogpost said?
             | 
             | edit: to be clear, the blog post has listed, among other
             | complaints:
             | 
             | > Onfido may disclose your personal information to an
             | actual or potential buyer (note "potential")
             | 
             | which you seem to be confirming from your own review of
             | their policy. What did the blog post misrepresent?
        
               | Kiro wrote:
               | Omitting the context very clearly makes it sound like
               | they sell your personal information, when the paragraph
               | is actually referring to disclosing the data in an M&A
               | transaction. The "buyer" here is not a buyer of data but
               | the buyer of the company. Even you said "from reading
               | this blog post it seems like yet another evil company
               | trying to suck up PII from unsuspecting victims and sell
               | it".
        
               | markovbot wrote:
               | It actually wasn't that particular line that made me
               | think they were selling personal information, it was
               | mostly the other three points in that list which you seem
               | to be ignoring:
               | 
               | * Each of Onfido's and/or Provider's third-party vendors
               | may have access to the facial scan data
               | 
               | * Onfido is in no way linked to or responsible for the
               | practices of other Providers. Onfido encourages you to
               | read Company's privacy policies and terms and conditions,
               | as well as those of other Providers, which may apply to
               | the use of facial scan data extracted from photos and
               | videos.
               | 
               | * Onfido may disclose your personal information... or
               | other third party where we believe disclosure is
               | necessary... to protect your vital interests or those of
               | any other person
        
               | Kiro wrote:
               | And I replied to "how is that different from what the
               | blogpost said?", not the other points but you got me
               | curious so here goes:
               | 
               | * "Each of Onfido's and/or Provider's third-party vendors
               | may have access to the facial scan data"
               | 
               | This is actually "Each of Onfido's and/or Provider's
               | third-party vendors may have access to the facial scan
               | data to store the data, to maintain backup copies, and to
               | service the systems on which such data is stored.".
               | 
               | Completely standard and another misrepresentation by the
               | blog trying to paint it like they send the stuff
               | everywhere when it's just about their storage and backup
               | solution.
               | 
               | * "Onfido is in no way linked to or responsible for the
               | practices of other Providers. Onfido encourages you to
               | read Company's privacy policies and terms and conditions,
               | as well as those of other Providers, which may apply to
               | the use of facial scan data extracted from photos and
               | videos."
               | 
               | Nothing strange whatsoever. Again completely standard in
               | GDPR that you need to have to to acquit yourself.
               | 
               | * Onfido may disclose your personal information... or
               | other third party where we believe disclosure is
               | necessary... to protect your vital interests or those of
               | any other person
               | 
               | This is actually "To comply with laws. Onfido may
               | disclose your personal information to any competent law
               | enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or
               | other third party where we believe disclosure is
               | necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or
               | regulation, (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our
               | legal rights, or (iii) to protect your vital interests or
               | those of any other person; and"
               | 
               | Wow, probably the worst misrepresentation. This blog is
               | straight-up misinformation and slander. Thanks for
               | highlighting it.
        
       | volandovengo wrote:
       | Privacy.com is a great service. I use them all the time to
       | generate 1 time use card numbers for sites & then cancel the card
       | so they cannot mysteriously charge me. I've been with them for
       | years & their CEO is a wonderful & smart person.
       | 
       | When you're allowing strangers to perform financial transactions
       | - you're taking on risk that the money that is sent needs to
       | actually be funded. They need to conform to KYC laws like all
       | fintech providers - so yes, they will require knowing a little
       | bit about you to operate in the United States like all financial
       | institutions.
        
         | hirundo wrote:
         | That part is fine. The part that isn't is where they require
         | you to give your personal information to a third party who has
         | very weak controls on how they share it. Your endorsement makes
         | me interested in trying the service, but I have the same "nope"
         | reaction to the non-privacy as the author of this post.
        
         | dynm wrote:
         | But they apparently require government photo ID that gets sent
         | off into the cloud? You can most certainly get a regular credit
         | card without that, so it doesn't seem analogous. They also
         | intentionally hide this requirement so that you don't find out
         | about it until after you've signed up, which is a pretty
         | devious dark pattern.
        
         | vorpalhex wrote:
         | KYC does not require the use of sketchy 3rd parties who leak
         | data like a sieve.
        
           | fillskills wrote:
           | What makes you think OnFido is sketchy? It's a pretty popular
           | platform for ID verification.
           | 
           | 3rd party verification has become a standard in the
           | fintech/insuretech industries since its very hard and risky
           | to do KYC on your own. Also personally I don't trust having
           | all the random companies I transact with maintain my KYC
           | info. At least in theory, the experts at ID verification have
           | strong enough incentives, motivation and expertise to keep my
           | data safe, reducing the attack surface area.
           | 
           | Not affiliated with either party.
        
             | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
             | FWIW, they are at least willing to put this in their
             | privacy policy:
             | 
             | > Whenever legally possible, we seek to protect the
             | information we share by imposing contractual privacy and
             | security safeguards on the recipient of the information.
             | This is particularly important in cases where the recipient
             | is located in a country that has different or lesser
             | privacy laws than those of the country where the
             | information was originally collected. In some cases,
             | however, it's not possible for us to do so -- for example,
             | when we have a legal obligation to disclose information to
             | a government authority and that government authority isn't
             | willing to enter into such contractual safeguards.
        
             | drdaeman wrote:
             | Check the article. It has quotes from their ToS that can be
             | roughly summarized as "we'll sell all your data to whoever
             | pays and you have no control over this".
        
               | Kiro wrote:
               | No, that's not what they are saying at all. The quote on
               | the blog is misleading and leaves out important pieces.
               | Here's the full thing:
               | 
               | "As part of a business transfer. Onfido may disclose your
               | personal information to an actual or potential buyer,
               | investor or partner (and its agents and advisers) in
               | relation to any actual or proposed divestiture, merger,
               | acquisition, joint venture, bankruptcy, dissolution,
               | reorganization, or any other similar transaction or
               | proceeding"
        
           | Kiro wrote:
           | Nothing sketchy about Onfido. You're hating on them all over
           | this thread based on nothing but one sentence from their
           | privacy policy, quoted on a random blog. A sentence that's
           | not even saying what you think it's saying.
           | 
           | Here's the full paragraph:
           | 
           | "As part of a business transfer. Onfido may disclose your
           | personal information to an actual or potential buyer,
           | investor or partner (and its agents and advisers) in relation
           | to any actual or proposed divestiture, merger, acquisition,
           | joint venture, bankruptcy, dissolution, reorganization, or
           | any other similar transaction or proceeding"
        
       | nine_k wrote:
       | Privacy.com is not about hiding your identity from authorities.
       | 
       | It's mostly about hiding the fact that the same person, you, are
       | paying to merchant A and merchant B. It allows you to easily have
       | a card per merchant, and lock it to the merchant so that when its
       | number is stolen, it can't be used anywhere else.
       | 
       | The domain name is a bit lofty, yes.
        
         | d4a wrote:
         | Author here.
         | 
         | My concern wasn't that Privacy.com knows who is using their
         | service, but with rather how they choose to know that
         | information through a third party (Onfido) and how terrible
         | Onfido's privacy policy is.
        
           | dessant wrote:
           | Recently I've signed up with Paddle, and they have opted to
           | verify user identities with Onfido, so they have asked for a
           | government ID and a selfie. I have contacted Paddle and
           | refused to provide a selfie, so they eventually asked me to
           | upload my ID too in place of a selfie and manually approved
           | the submission.
           | 
           | Paddle has no excuse for collecting selfies, they are
           | providing services to businesses that can be verified in more
           | humane and secure ways, such as an electronic signature.
           | 
           | Verifying people with selfies is a degrading and insecure
           | practice, especially when you encounter Onfido during the
           | installation process of a bank's app that you already have an
           | account with, opened in person at a local branch in the EU.
           | This bank also asks you to create a video of yourself and
           | submit your speech to configure their mobile banking app. I'm
           | sure the data will be useful for someone when Onfido
           | eventually gets hacked, or just sells your biometric data.
           | 
           | My hope is that biometric data collection for online account
           | verification will become illegal once all EU member states
           | have intoduced electronic IDs which have an NFC chip. The
           | verification should consist of a person holding their ID next
           | to their phone, and the online service would only receive the
           | minimum amount of personal data to complete the verification.
        
           | Kiro wrote:
           | Maybe you should quote the whole thing instead of making it
           | sound like they sell the data?
           | 
           | "As part of a business transfer. Onfido may disclose your
           | personal information to an actual or potential buyer,
           | investor or partner (and its agents and advisers) in relation
           | to any actual or proposed divestiture, merger, acquisition,
           | joint venture, bankruptcy, dissolution, reorganization, or
           | any other similar transaction or proceeding"
        
           | junon wrote:
           | Then why drop a steaming pile of shit on the company who's
           | not directly at fault via the title? For clickbait?
           | 
           | I've used privacy.com for years. Never had an issue. Never
           | had to validate my identity. Never had any issues with
           | support. If used as prescribed (setting limits on cards etc)
           | it fits in directly to where it belongs in my threat model.
           | 
           | What a strangely charged article.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | withinrafael wrote:
             | Not directly at fault? Privacy.com _chose_ to use Onfido. I
             | don 't think the author's complaint is misplaced.
        
               | junon wrote:
               | Using a company and having proper contracts and
               | agreements with them to be properly protected is not
               | malice, especially since the company is well known and
               | assumedly adheres to regulation.
               | 
               | I'm not sure what you want privacy.com to do differently.
        
               | markovbot wrote:
               | I think the ask was pretty clear: not to share
               | confidential identification information with sketchy
               | companies that are clearly sharing that information with
               | everyone.
        
               | junon wrote:
               | So you're saying Privacy should reinvent the wheel with
               | an incredibly difficult, terrible-to-manage process,
               | itself requiring an entire company worth of people and a
               | huge support staff, laden with insane amounts of red
               | tape, just to perform a small function of their business,
               | instead of contracting out another company that
               | specializes in doing this exact thing?
               | 
               | This seems like a larger security/privacy surface area
               | than the latter approach.
        
               | markovbot wrote:
               | No, i didn't say that, nor did the post. You keep making
               | these absurd leaps. Privacy.com advertises themselves as
               | being private. I expect them to be private. They're the
               | ones who chose to hinge 100% of their marketing strategy,
               | all the way down to their name and domain, on how very
               | private they were.
        
               | bluehatbrit wrote:
               | OP's original point is that a company marketing
               | themselves as a privacy tool are forcing customers to use
               | a 3rd party for processing very personal identification
               | data. That 3rd parties TOS, which binds customers of
               | privacy.com, says they can and will share data with
               | anyone they want for any reason. That's nearly the
               | antithesis of the privacy the company is marketing itself
               | on.
               | 
               | Privacy.com don't have to use Onfido, there are other
               | options out there. There could be a myriad of reasons why
               | they chose Onfido over the competition but the TOS bind
               | the privacy.com users and they don't offer any
               | alternative.
               | 
               | For a company leaning on "privacy" as their primary
               | marketing tool, this is a double standard. It doesn't
               | mean Privacy.com is a bad company with horrible people
               | building a terrible product. They're just calling out a
               | company for doing something seemingly opposite to their
               | marketing, and saying that's why they personally aren't
               | using the product.
               | 
               | You can disagree with OP but doesn't make their point
               | wrong, invalid, or stupid.
        
               | dessant wrote:
               | They should just verify identities without selfies, like
               | most payment providers. This trend of using selfies comes
               | from shady crypto companies that were eager to pretend
               | that their users have been verified, while also
               | benefiting from the collected biometric data.
        
             | croes wrote:
             | So it wasn't privacy.com who chose Onfido?
             | 
             | If your contractor chooses a bad subcontractor, who do you
             | blame?
        
               | junon wrote:
               | Privacy.com is not a contractor, firstly. IMO that's a
               | weak analogy at best. I've asked elsewhere - what do you
               | want privacy.com to do differently?
        
               | croes wrote:
               | To use another service to do the user identification or
               | at least to offfer an alternative.
        
           | onetimeusename wrote:
           | I agree with you but the thing is I don't remember doing any
           | of that stuff to use privacy.com. I hope they just changed
           | their policy and that I haven't forgotten about uploading
           | identification and photos of myself. I normally would not
           | tolerate that.
           | 
           | All I remember is using the plaid bank API which is itself
           | probably very dangerous and a poor decision to allow.
        
         | gruez wrote:
         | >It's mostly about hiding the fact that the same person, you,
         | are paying to merchant A and merchant B.
         | 
         | What merchants out there are cross-correlating credit card
         | numbers to deanonymize people? Can you even do it in a way
         | that's PCI compliant? If you're actually interested in
         | preventing random merchants from tracking you, I think credit
         | card numbers are the least of your worries. Your
         | billing/shipping information, which is almost always collected
         | is much more revealing about you and can't be anonymized. Given
         | this I do think the name of "privacy".com is misleading. At
         | best it's stopunauthorizedcharges.com.
        
           | junon wrote:
           | That's not what it's about. It's the same reason why you use
           | many passwords across all your sites. If one is breached,
           | using privacy.com means your card information is not globally
           | vulnerable to the point you have to get a new card,
           | invalidate all your old ones, worry about personal
           | information being correlated etc.
        
         | flutas wrote:
         | >It allows you to easily have a card per merchant, and lock it
         | to the merchant so that when its number is stolen, it can't be
         | used anywhere else.
         | 
         | In my experience even that can fail. I had a card number stolen
         | from them, charged to the tune of $200+, and their support
         | refused to even entertain the idea of it being fraud, and when
         | I mentioned a chargeback they basically said "we don't do
         | those, because we have contracts with vendors."
         | 
         | A payment stop at the bank sure worked though.
        
           | 1shooner wrote:
           | >I had a card number stolen from them, charged to the tune of
           | $200+
           | 
           | I'm curious, how did this happen specifically? In my
           | experience, all privacy.com virtual cards default to being
           | merchant-locked to the first place you use them. Did the
           | merchant run an unauthorized transaction on the card?
           | 
           | I've had online payment info compromised once, and
           | privacy.com caught it cold (and also clearly demonstrated
           | that the vendor had mishandled the payment info, despite
           | claiming otherwise).
        
             | flutas wrote:
             | Honestly no clue, different vendor than the card was setup
             | for.
             | 
             | This was during a big wave of unauthorized activity being
             | attempted on their cards as well, a lot of friends reported
             | blocked charges for random amounts at like a
             | retirement/hospice home(?) at the time.
             | 
             | This was like 3+ years ago, and my only guess now (read:
             | can't remember if this is true) is that the card had never
             | been charged to the merchant, only pre-authed. But even
             | then I'd expect the pre-auth to lock it to a merchant.
        
               | 1shooner wrote:
               | Interesting, looks like there was some kind of attack on
               | privacy.com in 2020[0] that caused transactions to be run
               | from vendors without them.
               | 
               | 0. https://blog.privacy.com/a-different-type-of-card-
               | fraud-anat...
        
               | flutas wrote:
               | Thanks for digging that up! I knew they made a post about
               | it. Didn't notice before that they tried to say they
               | "made (everyone) whole".
               | 
               | Maybe they think that not sending me to collections after
               | I stopped the payment at the bank and closed my account
               | is "being made whole."
        
           | jrochkind1 wrote:
           | Woah, that is concerning. Making it harder, rather than
           | easier, to chargeback fraudulent uses is not what I'm looking
           | for.
        
             | flutas wrote:
             | > Making it harder, rather than easier, to chargeback
             | fraudulent uses is not what I'm looking for.
             | 
             | Honestly I'm still confused by the whole thing.
             | 
             | I told them that it was a fraudulent transaction that I
             | didn't approve, they then kept asking me for tracking
             | numbers and finally closed the support ticket, and would
             | close any further ones instantly on me with this reply.
             | 
             | https://i.imgur.com/EyjCGiU.png
             | 
             | Never mind the fact that it was a completely separate issue
             | than what they would keep replying to me about, the fact
             | that they included the line of
             | 
             | > At this point, the only possibility is that the shipment
             | was stolen after the delivery. This is no longer a case
             | where the merchant is at fault. Hence, the case would be
             | concluded in the merchant's favor.
             | 
             | is a complete disregard for visa's rules. The fact that
             | they wouldn't even _let me_ open a dispute is the biggest
             | factor of  "wtf" here to me.
        
               | badRNG wrote:
               | >is a complete disregard for visa's rules
               | 
               | Visa is probably easier to deal with in the case of fraud
               | than what it sounds like privacy.com is like.
               | 
               | I use a single CC for everything (that I'm willing to pay
               | with a CC for.) It's been compromised to the point that
               | charges went through 2-3 times over the past decade and a
               | half. CC company caught the fraud each time,
               | automatically charged-back each of the fraudulent
               | transactions, and overnighted me a new card. They also
               | moved all of my recurring charges to my new card
               | (somehow.) From what I understand, all of the big 4 CC
               | companies operate more or less the same in this regard.
               | 
               | This thread has eliminated the chance of me using
               | Privacy.com in the future. If they can't make dealing
               | with fraud _at least_ as easy as a regular CC (which is
               | quite painless, there 's no reason to use them.
        
               | dathanb82 wrote:
               | > They also moved all of my recurring charges to my new
               | card (somehow.)
               | 
               | If you're curious about how this works, read up on "Visa
               | Account Updater".
        
               | jrochkind1 wrote:
               | I have never had to actually pay for any fraud, the
               | bank's fraud detection alwasy catches it, it's never even
               | showed up on my bill.
               | 
               | But I end up having to cancel and get a new credit or
               | debit card about once a year. And this actually is really
               | inconvenient, when you think of all the places you have
               | stored a CC that have to be updated.
               | 
               | I guess my bank doesn't do automatic updates of any
               | recurring subscriptions, I've always had to deal with it
               | manually. (And in charitable contributions, amazon,
               | paypal, stripe, grubhub, etc etc etc).
               | 
               | That was making me consider privacy.com instead... but if
               | I'm doing it cause of that fraud inconvenience, which
               | right now is just an inconvenience which I have no worry
               | whatsoever would result in actual $$ (cause it's happened
               | so many times now and it's never even been a threat), and
               | switching to privacy.com may eliminate having to update
               | card numbers everywhere when fraud happens but actually
               | _increases_ my risk of actually being out the $$ (or
               | increases the amount of time I have to spend dealing or
               | fighting with customer service or fraud recovery support
               | anywhere) -- forget it.
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | rachel_lithic wrote:
           | Hey @flutas, I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Send me
           | a note at rachel@lithic.com and I'll look into this further
           | for you.
        
             | jimmygrapes wrote:
             | As somebody who doesn't use any of these services, your
             | request for somebody to contact you at a lithic.com address
             | in response to concerns about privacy.com issues is uh....
             | well, it reads like the 3rd slide in a corporate SCORM
             | annual "phishing awareness" training.
        
               | Sirened wrote:
               | hey jimmy grapes, sorry to hear you had a bad experience
               | with a Lithic employee. Please email us at
               | lithic@gmail.com with your SSN and mothers maiden name
               | and we'll have this dealt with shortly
        
         | Vox_Leone wrote:
        
         | kitsunesoba wrote:
         | Yeah, my main use of Privacy.com has been with web payment
         | portals that look old/unmaintained or otherwise untrustworthy
         | (surprisingly common with state government sites).
         | 
         | If there's a better option for this use case I'm all ears,
         | though. Reading sibling comments that Privacy won't actually
         | stop charges past set limits is disconcerting.
        
         | DerekBickerton wrote:
         | The name is doublespeak and not concerned with privacy as an
         | ideal, it's really just to manage CCs in a sane way, like using
         | a CC once and then disposing of it so you don't get unexpected
         | charges. Also it limits the blast radius if a vendor gets
         | breached and your legal name is not exposed. (So you need to
         | sacrifice your privacy to privacy.com to get privacy on other
         | vendors). They need to rebrand as 'SaneCard' or something
         | similar.
        
           | junon wrote:
           | No, they don't. One of the main features is being able to put
           | in any billing information you want and they'll accept it.
           | Typically a bank will validate the name and sometimes the
           | address against your account on file. Privacy ignores it.
           | 
           | This IS a privacy enhancement in many cases.
        
             | twelve40 wrote:
             | Nope. You have to go through KYC with them, give them your
             | address, last 4 of social, dob, and yes, I got stuck on
             | identity check too. Just because it didn't happen to you,
             | doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
        
               | DerekBickerton wrote:
               | This. You have to waive your privacy to privacy.com to
               | get privacy on vendors/merchants. If I lived in the US I
               | would happily waive it to privacy.com, since I buy stuff
               | on e-commerce sites _a lot_. Enough times that I would be
               | pissed if my personal info got leaked. Also being able to
               | manage my card and lock it to specific vendors is sorely
               | needed and should be a feature on all CC providers.
        
               | junon wrote:
               | Privacy is not binary though. It's not "either you have
               | complete privacy, or none".
        
               | junon wrote:
               | You misread my comment. When I check out on a website
               | using a card _generated by Privacy.com_ , I can put any
               | billing information into the checkout form on the site.
        
               | prophesi wrote:
               | Huh, I've been using privacy.com and had no idea about
               | this. Thanks! Keeping the blast radius of leaked billing
               | info to privacy.com instead of a myriad of merchants
               | sounds like a good deal.
        
       | INTPenis wrote:
       | I worked in domain registrations in the early 2000s and it's
       | funny how we used to put stock into what sort of TLD a domain
       | used. Like .com would clearly be a commercial entity, while .org
       | would be more non-profits, open source, public domain and stuff
       | like that.
       | 
       | Anyways, they're probably harvesting your payments and selling
       | that info. I've noticed that since the card issuers have such
       | high security requirements, and audits, a lot of little
       | businesses have cropped up who are trying to act as middlemen to
       | your payments. Because they just found a backdoor to getting all
       | your payment history without hacking your card issuer. I believe
       | privacy.com is one such business.
        
         | solumos wrote:
         | That might be true if they weren't also the card issuer[0]. The
         | main way they make money is on interchange, which for a card
         | issuer is a kickback of up to 2% from Visa/Mastercard/etc [1].
         | 
         | [0] - https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/20/privacy-com-rebrands-
         | to-li...
         | 
         | [1] - https://www.adyen.com/blog/interchange-fees-explained
        
           | INTPenis wrote:
           | So privacy.com themselves handle the transaction from their
           | own account then? I stand corrected. I assumed that you
           | registered your card with them and they just acted as an
           | inbetween.
        
         | badrabbit wrote:
         | You "believe" without any evidence? To the contrary my bank
         | card purchases were resulting in targeted ads but privacy.com
         | cards have not shown any sign of that after using them for over
         | a year.
        
           | INTPenis wrote:
           | Yes I believed to be more specific, you've changed that
           | belief with your facts. Thanks.
           | 
           | But I still do believe this practice goes on here in Sweden
           | where small businesses are offering services that act as man
           | in the middle between the consumer and the card issuer. And
           | therefore they're able to harvest your transaction data,
           | which is gold.
        
           | bombcar wrote:
           | Belief kind of implies lack of evidence, more a feeling or a
           | faith, after all.
        
             | badrabbit wrote:
             | I agree in this case
        
       | avipars wrote:
       | Mainly about managing debit cards...
        
       | notyourneighbor wrote:
       | Lets break this abysmal post down into what appears to be the
       | point:                 Privacy.com flagged you for some unknown
       | reason and asked you to verify your identity. You learned that
       | Onfido exists and googled the name and (LOL) decided you would
       | spend 45s on Wikipedia and then read a privacy policy written
       | not-for-you, and then post yourself on HN so you can "inform
       | others."
       | 
       | Lets not even bother with the fact that flagging for further
       | identification happens at every financial company that exists.
       | People are flagged all the time for a number of reasons dictated
       | by ML/AI that is not always right. "I've never had this happen
       | before." That's not how math works.                 As I am not a
       | lawyer, I probably missed some more bits as well.
       | 
       | We can tell. And you did. You missed the part where you have to
       | read and comprehend more than three or four words at a time. That
       | or you intentionally excluded the pieces that invalidated
       | everything that got you to the front page of HN. I'd wager it's
       | the former. Allow me to do the research you pretended to do:
       | 
       | First and foremost, there are regulations on how PCI/PII data can
       | be stored. I'll assume you read about reading about or pretended
       | to read about PCI so I won't go into the details you don't care
       | to understand (but should).                 Each of Onfido's
       | and/or Provider's third-party vendors may have access to the
       | facial scan data
       | 
       | When a company hosts with providers like AWS, GCP, etc, those are
       | considered "third party." If you curl the onfido website you can
       | see that it's hosted on S3 (or at least parts of it are). It's
       | very likely that onfido is storing data in S3 which _means a
       | third party has access to store the data, make backups, etc_. You
       | also excluded THE IMPORTANT PART on previous line that said
       | _Onfido securely stores all selfies, videos, photos of identity
       | documents, and facial scan data in an encrypted format._
       | Onfido may disclose your personal information to an actual or
       | potential buyer (note "potential")
       | 
       | I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you've never owned
       | a company who's had an offer to exit. When company A purchases
       | company B they first have to evaluate that business and decide if
       | they want to buy it. Since you think like Twitter I'll clear
       | something up for you: acquisitions don't happen by posting on
       | twitter "I want to buy Twitter." This is a standard bullet point
       | in every privacy policy. When you are approached by a potential
       | buyer you sign a slew of NDA's and other _legally binding_
       | documentation that prevents any party from sharing the details of
       | the agreement.
       | 
       | Believe it or not, startups don't have enough time, money,
       | energy, resources to rewrite every little feature required to run
       | a business. Visa and Mastercard also have their own ways of
       | sharing your private information. Does that also mean to start a
       | privacy focused fintech company you need to write the entire
       | american payment system?                 Onfido may disclose your
       | personal information... or other third party where we believe
       | disclosure is necessary... to protect your vital interests or
       | those of any other person
       | 
       | Jesus Christ. I don't even know how you pieced that together so
       | I'll _actually quote_ the document:                 To comply
       | with laws. Onfido may disclose your personal information to any
       | competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency,
       | court or other third party where we believe disclosure is
       | necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, (ii)
       | to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights, or (iii) to
       | protect your vital interests or those of any other person;
       | 
       | This is American and guess what: you have to comply with the law.
       | I know in your fantasy world of impotence masquerading as
       | activism you think you can "privacy" your way around it, but
       | guess what? You can't. Any company operating in <insert country>
       | has to comply with the laws. "I use Proton and they are privacy."
       | I'm sure you do, and they're privacy because the laws permit it
       | until they don't.
       | 
       | So what do you do? You try to deprive a company who's actively
       | trying to do what you pretend to do with your useless tantrum.
        
       | jedberg wrote:
       | > There must be a way to follow local laws and regulations to
       | prevent financial fraud without violating their privacy to this
       | extent, right?
       | 
       | Sadly no, there really isn't, unless you lobby congress. These
       | laws were written with law enforcement in mind, not privacy.
        
       | RVRX wrote:
       | They actually don't let me use my primary email as they
       | specifically don't allow accounts to use a Yandex email. They
       | said the reasoning was to prevent non-US citizens from creating
       | accounts, and that I would have to use another email address...
        
       | rachel_lithic wrote:
       | Rachel here, I lead Operations at Privacy.com. Wanted to clarify
       | our data collection and retention process, and our position on
       | privacy.
       | 
       | Our goal is to make sure that customer data spends as little time
       | as possible with third-party providers like Onfido. Onfido's
       | general policy is that they will not save customer data longer
       | than a year but they set up different contractual agreements
       | based on what customers stipulate. We've stipulated that they
       | delete data after 30 days.
       | 
       | The "Privacy" in our name is about making sure our customers'
       | personal and payment information is kept private from merchants
       | and from fraudsters.
       | 
       | We offer a financial service that comes with legal and regulatory
       | requirements and we have to gather details like address, social
       | security number, and phone number to authenticate a user's
       | account. If you know of other KYC providers that have more
       | privacy-forward policies, we're open to exploring.
       | 
       | Happy to discuss more. You can drop me a note at
       | rachel@lithic.com.
        
       | ramesh31 wrote:
       | Privacy.com was a perfect expression of "Your business is our
       | feature".
       | 
       | Practically every major card issuer provides native virtual
       | numbers now.
        
         | zcmack wrote:
         | i have quite a few credit cards and haven't seen this feature
         | on a single one. discover eliminated this feature years back.
        
         | rectang wrote:
         | How does one go about getting such numbers? Do a web search for
         | "$BANK_NAME virtual credit card number"?
        
         | nathancahill wrote:
         | Really? Visa/MasterCard/Amex have Click To Pay but it's on the
         | merchant to offer it. This is the opposite of Privacy.com where
         | the customer can choose to use it.
        
         | public_defender wrote:
         | 1) I have three different major credit cards and none of them
         | have this feature. Your comment is still true in the abstract
         | though, so I hope the amex product team is reading.
         | 
         | 2) For a knowledgeable consumer, there is huge incentive to use
         | services like this to prevent the credit companies from being a
         | single point of financial data aggregation. But--and here I
         | guess I'm talking to amex again--if disposable or per-merchant
         | card numbers are widely offered by card providers, I'd expect
         | most people would just use those instead of a more robust
         | provider like privacy.com.
        
         | groovybits wrote:
         | Younger audiences may not remember, but yes: major card
         | providers _used_ provide virtual card numbers back in the day.
         | 
         | This is a feature of the past, and most providers don't do it
         | anymore. The only one I know of is Capital One's Eno:
         | https://www.capitalone.com/digital/eno/virtual-card-numbers/
        
           | fragmede wrote:
           | Citi does:
           | https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/Virtual-
           | Account-N...
           | 
           | Bank Of America retired theirs (and lost the retirement
           | page): https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:
           | -9i6Vr...
        
             | groovybits wrote:
             | Wow, I have a Citi card and I never knew! I don't think
             | I've ever been promoted this feature before.
             | 
             | I remember BofA used to. When they closed it, I thought
             | everyone else followed suite.
        
       | ineptech wrote:
       | Sooner or later we're going to need a federal dept of is-this-
       | guy-who-he-says-he-is. No startup can solve this; it's not
       | profitable enough to do right. The last resort for authentication
       | will always be "go to a place and talk to a human" and the gov't
       | is the only entity who is willing/able to staff a brick-and-
       | mortar office in reach of everyone in the country.
       | 
       | I know some people are afraid of the feds having a centralized
       | and accurate registry of citizens, but the alternative (that
       | every company who takes payments must have their own separate,
       | partial, and inaccurate registry) causes a lot of problems.
        
         | throitallaway wrote:
         | It's definitely a problem in the US. When setting up an account
         | with treasury.gov there's a good chance you'll have to verify
         | your identity, and the only way to do that is to go to a bank
         | that you do business with that has a "Medallion Guarantee." I
         | wish we could get to the point of having government issued
         | smart cards for verifying identity. I would be elated if my US
         | passport also functioned as a smart card.
        
           | fragmede wrote:
           | ID.me's trying, but it should really be a government run
           | service and not a private corporation.
        
             | ineptech wrote:
             | In my preferred alternate reality, Keybase was (somehow)
             | purchased by the feds instead of Zoom and used for exactly
             | this purpose.
        
         | fillskills wrote:
         | If you think about it, there is a way this is done already in
         | the real world - using Notaries. Notaries verify your
         | 'documents'. Not that's they are experts at sensitive data
         | storage, but there could be something to learn from the
         | 'distributed' system of notaries.
        
           | ineptech wrote:
           | Notaries already exist. The proof that they are not a good
           | solution to this problem is that they're not currently being
           | used to solve it. All the companies doing hokey things like
           | asking people to take a picture of themselves holding their
           | ID and so forth could just start asking them to find a notary
           | instead. AFAIK none of them do and I'm not clear on why
           | you're thinking they would or should.
        
             | fillskills wrote:
             | You are right - current notary system may not be optimal
             | for this use case. What I meant to say was that in my
             | understanding, my main issue with 3rd parties such as
             | OnFido etc is my lack in trusting them with my information
             | and secondly storing that info in a central repository. If
             | a bad entity gets access to that database, they now have
             | very detailed information about me.
             | 
             | I would rather prefer a decentralized & secure way that can
             | be accesses via an API by companies such as privacy.com
             | etc. The distributed piece is solved by Notaries. Could we
             | learn something from how the notary system works that can
             | be leveraged to build out a modern distributed ID
             | verification system.
        
         | collegeburner wrote:
         | or... the feds stop requiring everyone to go through this KYC
         | bullshit and we accept that anonymity or pseudonymity is
         | hecking valid.
        
         | jaywalk wrote:
         | This is what Notaries are for. Maybe we could find a way to
         | more efficiently utilize their services instead of creating yet
         | another federal agency to intrude on our lives?
        
           | ineptech wrote:
           | You've misunderstood the problem we're trying to solve.
           | 
           | Right now, N companies have N partial records of my identity,
           | with varying ages and accuracy levels. Company A has my name
           | and phone number, company B has my email and name and my
           | previous phone number, company C has a copy of my driver's
           | license from two years ago, etc. N partially accurate
           | versions of my identity, floating around, getting bought and
           | sold and merged together with buggy perl scripts, forever.
           | Notaries do nothing to solve this.
           | 
           | Whence comes this fear? How would the government having an
           | accurate list of the citizenry, and storing a key for you so
           | you can attest your identity, intrude on your life? Doesn't
           | having to scan a copy of your ID and send it to your
           | [bank/insurer/crypto account/hosting company/employer/etc]
           | intrude on your life more?
        
         | drexlspivey wrote:
         | Estonia government issued electronic IDs have a computer chip
         | that can digitally sign data.
        
       | jedberg wrote:
       | In defense of Privacy.com, they've helped prevent me from being
       | defrauded multiple times. I use them any time I'm buying from a
       | website where I don't trust they will keep my CC secure (like
       | paying local utility bills).
       | 
       | Sure enough someone tried to use my one-time-use utility card
       | multiple times. Once they charged it for 16 cents which how card
       | runners test the cards to see if they are valid. Normally those
       | won't show up on any alerts you may have, because most banks
       | don't alert below $1.
       | 
       | But privacy.com does.
       | 
       | I actually prevented about 1000 stolen cards from being used
       | because I was able to inform the local utility that their
       | database had been breeched before they even knew about it, and
       | they were able to let the CC companies know before the card
       | runners could use them.
        
         | borski wrote:
         | Completely the same experience here.
        
         | cortesoft wrote:
         | > Normally those won't show up on any alerts you may have,
         | because most banks don't alert below $1.
         | 
         | My Chase credit card is set to text me on any charge over $0. I
         | have received alerts for under a dollar.
         | 
         | Also, I have been using a credit card extensively for 20 years,
         | and I don't take many precautions (other than having text
         | alerts for all purchases). I will put that number anywhere I
         | want to buy something without even thinking about it.
         | 
         | I have had many fraud ATTEMPTS over the years, but I have never
         | once lost money because of it. Having to change my credit card
         | number has been annoying, but I am not sure it has been more
         | annoying than it would be if I had to use a different number
         | for every purchase.
        
           | baseballdork wrote:
           | I think that this is a totally valid approach. I merely
           | prefer using privacy because it locks a card to a vendor and
           | I can set limits (or simply pause a card) per vendor
           | trivially.
           | 
           | In fact, this weekend I got a notice from wilsoncombat that
           | their payment processor had been hacked and card info had
           | been leaked, which I had suspected when I received a
           | notification that a charge ($0.15) had been declined on the
           | card I used with them in March. The charge was declined, and
           | I was able to close that card and not have to redo my card
           | info in every place I have a card linked.
        
       | Raed667 wrote:
       | Companies using Onfido [0], Stripe Identity[1] or other similar
       | services, just want to move the "trust/fraud" problem one layer
       | away without throwing internal resources at it.
       | 
       | It is a hard problem, and using a 3rd party service is more cost
       | effective than staffing a department to do manual verification.
       | 
       | [0] https://onfido.com
       | 
       | [1] https://stripe.com/en-fr/identity
        
       | whodev wrote:
       | I absolutely love Privacy.com for the service they provide. It's
       | fantastic to be able to create a one time use card for a web
       | purchase. I even have one connected to my Walmart app that allows
       | me to pay in store via the QR code.
        
       | kornhole wrote:
       | I use and like the service for what it does. Has anybody found a
       | competing service?
        
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