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While I do love me some privacy.com, unfortunately they only allow you to tie payments to bank accounts, not credit cards. So, it's a virtual debit card, not a

While I do love me some privacy.com, unfortunately they only allow you to tie payments to bank accounts, not credit cards. So, it's a virtual debit card, not a virtual credit card. Now, they do let you set transaction limits, and daily/weekly/monthly limits, as well as either locking the card to the first merchant to use it or to make it a "burner" one-time only card. So, there's lots of additional controls there. They don't give you a good way to export any of that financial information, so if you want to use a budgeting program to try to help you track what is going where, then privacy.com doesn't help you there. Overall, I like privacy.com very much. I do want to be able to tie in multiple back-end payment sources, including credit cards, and I'd be fine taking the 2% or whatever fee on my end. And I do want more transparency in terms of being able to easily export my data where I want to use it. But those are both relatively minor problems, compared to the ones they do help you solve.

danShumway 7y ago
privacy.com comes up on HN a lot, and every time they do I try to take the time to point out they require a binding arbitration agreement with no opt-out. Arbitration agreements are bad in general, but not necessarily uncommon. What makes privacy.com different is that they have access to your bank account. They're in a position where they have direct access to your funds, and you can't bring them to court if they wrong you. I've had people suggest that I link privacy.com to a limited bank account and manually transfer money. That's a good suggestion, I'd probably do that no matter how they were set up. But that's not going to help if privacy.com takes you to arbitration over a bogus overdraft charge, or if they leak your credit card numbers, or if they start selling data behind your back. My bank doesn't have an arbitration agreement tied to my checking or savings account. I don't think it's justifiable for privacy.com to claim that they have more customer risk than my bank does. If a business includes an arbitration agreement in your terms of service, I immediately assume that they don't respect their customers. There are some businesses where I tolerate that, but I need a heck of a good reason -- especially if that business is going to be managing my bank account. Binding arbitration agreements are underhanded. The only reason to have one is because you want to make sure right from the start that you're not accountable to your customers.
- drdaeman 7y ago
  > What makes privacy.com different is that they have access to your bank account. In my understanding, they have the account numbers and can do ACH withdrawals - just like someone who has your debit card number (but against a checking account, not a card). So I believe it's like every other transaction (or check) - there's an intentional (as I get it) processing period for a day or two, and you can always call your bank and request to not honor it. I could be wrong though. And actually, they can be associated with a debit card instead of a bank account - they've failed to associate with my bank, so I have had to go this route (and there's no way to switch it afterwards). Oh, and I totally agree that arbitration clauses without a way to opt out are disrespectful to say the least.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    One can't use the technical situation to escape the legal situation. If you dispute the ACH transaction, privacy.com could still claim you owe them that debt. They likely won't, being still subject to the court of public opinion. But it doesn't bode well that they're trying to escape the more direct avenue of accountability. (IMO the FAA is blatantly illogical and should be judicially nullified. But until that happens, we're stuck being on guard for these offensive customer-hostile terms)
- m463 7y ago
  I believe you can opt-out of binding arbitration in california.
jammygit 7y ago
The privacy.com business promise is privacy, but their privacy policy (as of several years ago) did not actually promise much. I emailed them about it and they said they were surprised by the oversight. I wonder if they changed it
- jammygit 7y ago
  > We may share data that is not personally identifiable with third parties > Cookies and Tracking Technologies: We and our partners use cookies or similar technologies to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movements around the website, and gather information about our user base, such as location information based on IP addresses They also transfer data in the case of a query about a sale. This would be a bit less awkward if the name of the company wasn’t “privacy”
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
In regards to privacy.com in my opinion, it would be very, very unwise to trust any venture capital funded startup to protect your privacy. What happens when their investors decide they aren't monetizing fast enough. They are sitting on a lot a private data that other companies would love to get their hands on. What is the downside to them of selling your information, and making a big exit, that left the founders wealthy? I would trust Apple a lot more since they already make money, and their reputation is something that they would be more likely to value more than a startup would be.

danShumway 7y ago

privacy.com comes up on HN a lot, and every time they do I try to take the time to point out they require a binding arbitration agreement with no opt-out. Arbitration agreements are bad in general, but not necessarily uncommon. What makes privacy.com different is that they have access to your bank account. They're in a position where they have direct access to your funds, and you can't bring them to court if they wrong you. I've had people suggest that I link privacy.com to a limited bank account and manually transfer money. That's a good suggestion, I'd probably do that no matter how they were set up. But that's not going to help if privacy.com takes you to arbitration over a bogus overdraft charge, or if they leak your credit card numbers, or if they start selling data behind your back. My bank doesn't have an arbitration agreement tied to my checking or savings account. I don't think it's justifiable for privacy.com to claim that they have more customer risk than my bank does. If a business includes an arbitration agreement in your terms of service, I immediately assume that they don't respect their customers. There are some businesses where I tolerate that, but I need a heck of a good reason -- especially if that business is going to be managing my bank account. Binding arbitration agreements are underhanded. The only reason to have one is because you want to make sure right from the start that you're not accountable to your customers.

drdaeman 7y ago
> What makes privacy.com different is that they have access to your bank account. In my understanding, they have the account numbers and can do ACH withdrawals - just like someone who has your debit card number (but against a checking account, not a card). So I believe it's like every other transaction (or check) - there's an intentional (as I get it) processing period for a day or two, and you can always call your bank and request to not honor it. I could be wrong though. And actually, they can be associated with a debit card instead of a bank account - they've failed to associate with my bank, so I have had to go this route (and there's no way to switch it afterwards). Oh, and I totally agree that arbitration clauses without a way to opt out are disrespectful to say the least.
- mindslight 7y ago
  One can't use the technical situation to escape the legal situation. If you dispute the ACH transaction, privacy.com could still claim you owe them that debt. They likely won't, being still subject to the court of public opinion. But it doesn't bode well that they're trying to escape the more direct avenue of accountability. (IMO the FAA is blatantly illogical and should be judicially nullified. But until that happens, we're stuck being on guard for these offensive customer-hostile terms)
m463 7y ago
I believe you can opt-out of binding arbitration in california.

jammygit 7y ago

The privacy.com business promise is privacy, but their privacy policy (as of several years ago) did not actually promise much. I emailed them about it and they said they were surprised by the oversight. I wonder if they changed it

jammygit 7y ago
> We may share data that is not personally identifiable with third parties > Cookies and Tracking Technologies: We and our partners use cookies or similar technologies to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movements around the website, and gather information about our user base, such as location information based on IP addresses They also transfer data in the case of a query about a sale. This would be a bit less awkward if the name of the company wasn’t “privacy”

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago

In regards to privacy.com in my opinion, it would be very, very unwise to trust any venture capital funded startup to protect your privacy. What happens when their investors decide they aren't monetizing fast enough. They are sitting on a lot a private data that other companies would love to get their hands on. What is the downside to them of selling your information, and making a big exit, that left the founders wealthy? I would trust Apple a lot more since they already make money, and their reputation is something that they would be more likely to value more than a startup would be.