Credit Card Companies Are Tracking Shoppers Like Never Before: Inside the Next Phase of Surveillance Capitalism
In the battle between data brokers and privacy advocates, the latest front is the credit card
By Burt Helm
On Privacy.com, shrouding your online shopping habits sounds easy: Enter your debit or bank account information, and the website generates a virtual debit card. This so-called burner card acts as a buyer by proxy, keeping your name and billing address out of view. Simply type its number, expiration date, and CVV code into any e-commerce site, hit purchase, and Privacy takes over. The service charges your actual card, adds those funds to the burner one, and uses the new card to do the actual shopping.
The promise is appealing. The card can be configured so that retailers can’t tack on any additional charges, such as an automatic subscription fee. If the retailer’s site gets hacked, you just ditch the burner and move on. And if anyone involved in the transaction tries to sell your data, the only card information they’ll have is that the purchase came from Privacy.
This isn’t the only service offering to mask people’s transactions. Last August, Apple introduced the Apple Card, a Goldman Sachs–issued, no-number credit…
