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Beyond the fact that I don't understand why a virtual card should be a problem, I think that this era of "we can deny you a service and tell you nothing" should

Beyond the fact that I don't understand why a virtual card should be a problem, I think that this era of "we can deny you a service and tell you nothing" should stop. It's one of the biggest issues of the modern internet. I understand that laws are different around the world. In Italy, whatever is defined as a "public exercise" - anything offering its services to the anybody, be it a shop, a store, a cafè, a restaurant, MUST offer those services to anybody who a) can pay and b) satisfies any global and well-expressed condition (e.g. more than 18 years old, properly dressed, etc). You cannot just deny service to a random customer without a VERY GOOD reason. If you want to serve members only, you can build your private club. Then you're able to do almost whatever you like, but you cannot advertise or promote your activities to non-members. I suppose US law is different, although I think to remember that there're some rules against discrimination. Either the service is available to anyone, or to noone. If some infringement happens, it must be explicit and there must be the chance to appeal to a judge. Otherwise, how can this be non-discriminatory?

skykooler 7y ago
There's rules about discrimination for specific reasons: you can't discriminate based on age, race, gender, etc. "Which credit card" you use isn't one of those categories, so it's legal to discriminate based on it. (And is often done, though not to this extent; many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover.)
- alanfranz 7y ago
  > many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover. But that's explicit and the same for everybody. If you accepted Discover from somebody and not from somebody else, THAT would be discrimination. Discriminating the credit card somebody is using without telling anybody... well, could still be discrimination. Younger people could be more prone to use an Apple card, couldn't them? Can you demonstrate the "feature" you're discriminating about can't be tied to age, race, gender, etc?
  - vageli 7y ago
    > > many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover. > But that's explicit and the same for everybody. If you accepted Discover from somebody and not from somebody else, THAT would be discrimination. > Discriminating the credit card somebody is using without telling anybody... well, could still be discrimination. Younger people could be more prone to use an Apple card, couldn't them? Can you demonstrate the "feature" you're discriminating about can't be tied to age, race, gender, etc? FYI discriminating against people on the basis of age is not illegal when applied to youth, at least in the United States. This is obviously the case as we use age as a gate for many privileges.
    - alanfranz 7y ago
      Right. I got a terrible example.
- jaclaz 7y ago
  >so it's legal to discriminate based on it. (And is often done, though not to this extent; many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover.) Sure, but one thing is: "Sorry, I cannot accept Discover, do you happen to have another means of payment?" and another one is: "Sorry, I cannot accept Discover, and since you presented one of those cards to me once, then you are prevented for the rest of your life to enter these premises again".
  - r00fus 7y ago
    The relief for that would be for the customer to talk to everyone and tell them how bad the vendor is, and go to another vendor who offers the same service. In this case, Google is effectively a monopoly/2Big2Fail in advertising. So that remedy is not available or is impractical. So the issue is not necessarily the behaviors (while reprehensible) but the size of the company.
    - tfha 7y ago
      Yeah the real issue is the choice. If there were 5 or 10 reasonable alternatives, this kind of thing wouldn't bother me at all. But if the options are "obey Google or fail", suddenly it's a big problem.
  - mayank 7y ago
    Unfortunately both your scenarios are perfectly legal. Credit cards are not a protected class.
    - alanfranz 7y ago
      Imagine if that very thing happened at a grocery store. You're in a small town, no alternative, and you've got no driving licence. Would you like to starve because of no reason? Btw, I'm not saying it's illegal. I'm saying it SHOULD be illegal.
      - pb7 7y ago
        It should be illegal as soon as the District Attorney decides to prosecute every instance of criminal fraud.
- jbarberu 7y ago
  But most places won't shun you if you merely try to use the wrong card. Imaging bringing out your Amex and being escorted off the premises and permanently banned.
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  I'm so glad it isn't my job to fight fraud. I worked at a place that would blacklist entire countries from signing up for their service, as a disproportionate number if fraudulent sign ups came from those countries. Every now and then I'd be contacted by an apparently regular customer who just wanted to try the service, and there was nothing I could do to help them, even when I really wanted to. I hated every part of feeling dealing with that stupid fraud system.
  - filoleg 7y ago
    Your situation isn't even as bad as what google did. It is one thing to proactively prevent sign-ups from potentially "fraudulent" users and another to permaban existing users on their first "offense" with no explanation and/or opportunity to appeal that decision. The latter should always be an option for permabans, no matter what.
    - jeremyjh 7y ago
      How many dollars should Google be required to spend handling these appeals? Do you think fraudsters won't appeal as well? Some don't, but actually many of the most indignant/irate "customers" are the ones who have been caught in a scam, particularly if they are caught before they've actually closed the lid on it. They probably won't blog about it, but they'll definitely try to force the company to spend as much as possible dealing with them.
      - mikeash 7y ago
        Such is life when dealing with the public. Some people will need individual attention. They may well cost you more than you make from them. You make it up with the averages. If you don’t like it, don’t sell to the public. Your local grocery store has far better customer service than this despite razor-thin margins. Payment problems? They’ll work with you. Product is bad? Refund. Sale not ringing through properly? They’ll fix it. Surely Google can afford to have some actual people to help you when you have problems.
        deleted 7y ago
johannes1234321 7y ago
> Beyond the fact that I don't understand why a virtual card should be a problem, Two reasons I can imagine: - Each transaction uses a different card number, this is suspicious for multiple transactions on an account - Approval requires user confirmation on their phone, thus takes longer than usual
usaphp 7y ago
> If you want to serve members only, you can build your private club Isn't Google Ads kind of that already? You need to get approval to create your campaigns, and you have to provide all of your information in order to post ads?
- alanfranz 7y ago
  Mmh, I get ads about adwords almost weekly.
iamben 7y ago
I kinda get the virtual card thing - it's pretty hard to get a credit card. Assuming you can create infinite virtual numbers you could, theoretically (and I appreciate it's probably not the case here as the poster has account history), switch/cloak/whatever a whole bunch of high converting against policy stuff until the account is banned, at which point you set up a new ad account, new virtual number and start again. Rinse and repeat. Seems a simpler method to tackle that by just banning virtual cards with the assumption "if you have nothing to hide you'll use a fixed number".
- the_watcher 7y ago
  Sure, but it seems reasonable to offer at least one "decline bc it's a virtual card, do you have something different?" response.
- xoa 7y ago
  >I kinda get the virtual card thing - it's pretty hard to get a credit card. I'm not sure you do? Because virtual cards are credit cards, afaik they're exclusively credit card linked, or at least bank account linked through a debit card type system. You need to have a standard card/account to get one (and at least in America getting a credit card is utterly trivial though it may not be a good one granted) and have identity. >Assuming you can create infinite virtual numbers you could, theoretically (and I appreciate it's probably not the case here as the poster has account history), switch/cloak/whatever a whole bunch of high converting against policy stuff until the account is banned, at which point you set up a new ad account, new virtual number and start again. Rinse and repeat. Virtual credit cards are still linked to you. Your name and mailing address and whatever else is required for normal credit card validation is still required. They're not a tool for anonymity, they're exclusively for dealing with issues on the seller side (ie., they get hacked, or are fraudsters). >"if you have nothing to hide you'll use a fixed number". But literally everyone does have something to hide: their fixed credit card number/crc/date, since that is an irritation to deal with if it gets stolen. It's not a public key unfortunately. Virtual CCs are a hack essentially to help bring some of the benefits of a more modern system that was fully tokenized (like Apple Pay and co) or used proper asymmetric crypto to legacy systems, at the cost of forcing more manual effort by the user. It's in the same bucket as password managers, ideally password auth would have long since ceased to exist, but in the mean time password managers help a bit with the garbage fire of the current authentication world.
CobrastanJorji 7y ago
> It's one of the biggest issues of the modern internet. It's one of the biggest issues of the modern Internet that affect us: relatively rich, privileged people engaged in business primarily on the Internet. It's one of the smaller issues for most of the users of the Internet, who have much more significant problems, like governments spying on their Internet use, governments blocking big sections of the Internet, corporate monopolies making only certain parts of the Internet free and others prohibitively expensive, fraud, and all sorts of other problems.
jeremyjh 7y ago
It turns out that businesses all over the world have to protect themselves from fraud to stay in business. It’s also unfortunately the case that telling fraudsters how you identified them as such just helps them avoid detection in the future - and they tend to share information with each other. This doesn’t excuse Google’s chronic lack of human customer service but it does mean their problem is harder than you give them credit for. In Italy how much information are businesses required to give criminals about their detection capability?
PunchTornado 7y ago
I couldn't get my virtual card to do anything online. It's not just Google, but tons of companies refuse virtual cards. I gave up on it.

skykooler 7y ago

There's rules about discrimination for specific reasons: you can't discriminate based on age, race, gender, etc. "Which credit card" you use isn't one of those categories, so it's legal to discriminate based on it. (And is often done, though not to this extent; many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover.)

alanfranz 7y ago
> many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover. But that's explicit and the same for everybody. If you accepted Discover from somebody and not from somebody else, THAT would be discrimination. Discriminating the credit card somebody is using without telling anybody... well, could still be discrimination. Younger people could be more prone to use an Apple card, couldn't them? Can you demonstrate the "feature" you're discriminating about can't be tied to age, race, gender, etc?
- vageli 7y ago
  > > many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover. > But that's explicit and the same for everybody. If you accepted Discover from somebody and not from somebody else, THAT would be discrimination. > Discriminating the credit card somebody is using without telling anybody... well, could still be discrimination. Younger people could be more prone to use an Apple card, couldn't them? Can you demonstrate the "feature" you're discriminating about can't be tied to age, race, gender, etc? FYI discriminating against people on the basis of age is not illegal when applied to youth, at least in the United States. This is obviously the case as we use age as a gate for many privileges.
  - alanfranz 7y ago
    Right. I got a terrible example.
jaclaz 7y ago
>so it's legal to discriminate based on it. (And is often done, though not to this extent; many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover.) Sure, but one thing is: "Sorry, I cannot accept Discover, do you happen to have another means of payment?" and another one is: "Sorry, I cannot accept Discover, and since you presented one of those cards to me once, then you are prevented for the rest of your life to enter these premises again".
- r00fus 7y ago
  The relief for that would be for the customer to talk to everyone and tell them how bad the vendor is, and go to another vendor who offers the same service. In this case, Google is effectively a monopoly/2Big2Fail in advertising. So that remedy is not available or is impractical. So the issue is not necessarily the behaviors (while reprehensible) but the size of the company.
  - tfha 7y ago
    Yeah the real issue is the choice. If there were 5 or 10 reasonable alternatives, this kind of thing wouldn't bother me at all. But if the options are "obey Google or fail", suddenly it's a big problem.
- mayank 7y ago
  Unfortunately both your scenarios are perfectly legal. Credit cards are not a protected class.
  - alanfranz 7y ago
    Imagine if that very thing happened at a grocery store. You're in a small town, no alternative, and you've got no driving licence. Would you like to starve because of no reason? Btw, I'm not saying it's illegal. I'm saying it SHOULD be illegal.
    - pb7 7y ago
      It should be illegal as soon as the District Attorney decides to prosecute every instance of criminal fraud.
jbarberu 7y ago
But most places won't shun you if you merely try to use the wrong card. Imaging bringing out your Amex and being escorted off the premises and permanently banned.
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
I'm so glad it isn't my job to fight fraud. I worked at a place that would blacklist entire countries from signing up for their service, as a disproportionate number if fraudulent sign ups came from those countries. Every now and then I'd be contacted by an apparently regular customer who just wanted to try the service, and there was nothing I could do to help them, even when I really wanted to. I hated every part of feeling dealing with that stupid fraud system.
- filoleg 7y ago
  Your situation isn't even as bad as what google did. It is one thing to proactively prevent sign-ups from potentially "fraudulent" users and another to permaban existing users on their first "offense" with no explanation and/or opportunity to appeal that decision. The latter should always be an option for permabans, no matter what.
  - jeremyjh 7y ago
    How many dollars should Google be required to spend handling these appeals? Do you think fraudsters won't appeal as well? Some don't, but actually many of the most indignant/irate "customers" are the ones who have been caught in a scam, particularly if they are caught before they've actually closed the lid on it. They probably won't blog about it, but they'll definitely try to force the company to spend as much as possible dealing with them.
    - mikeash 7y ago
      Such is life when dealing with the public. Some people will need individual attention. They may well cost you more than you make from them. You make it up with the averages. If you don’t like it, don’t sell to the public. Your local grocery store has far better customer service than this despite razor-thin margins. Payment problems? They’ll work with you. Product is bad? Refund. Sale not ringing through properly? They’ll fix it. Surely Google can afford to have some actual people to help you when you have problems.
      - deleted 7y ago

johannes1234321 7y ago

> Beyond the fact that I don't understand why a virtual card should be a problem, Two reasons I can imagine: - Each transaction uses a different card number, this is suspicious for multiple transactions on an account - Approval requires user confirmation on their phone, thus takes longer than usual

usaphp 7y ago

> If you want to serve members only, you can build your private club Isn't Google Ads kind of that already? You need to get approval to create your campaigns, and you have to provide all of your information in order to post ads?

alanfranz 7y ago
Mmh, I get ads about adwords almost weekly.

iamben 7y ago

I kinda get the virtual card thing - it's pretty hard to get a credit card. Assuming you can create infinite virtual numbers you could, theoretically (and I appreciate it's probably not the case here as the poster has account history), switch/cloak/whatever a whole bunch of high converting against policy stuff until the account is banned, at which point you set up a new ad account, new virtual number and start again. Rinse and repeat. Seems a simpler method to tackle that by just banning virtual cards with the assumption "if you have nothing to hide you'll use a fixed number".

the_watcher 7y ago
Sure, but it seems reasonable to offer at least one "decline bc it's a virtual card, do you have something different?" response.
xoa 7y ago
>I kinda get the virtual card thing - it's pretty hard to get a credit card. I'm not sure you do? Because virtual cards are credit cards, afaik they're exclusively credit card linked, or at least bank account linked through a debit card type system. You need to have a standard card/account to get one (and at least in America getting a credit card is utterly trivial though it may not be a good one granted) and have identity. >Assuming you can create infinite virtual numbers you could, theoretically (and I appreciate it's probably not the case here as the poster has account history), switch/cloak/whatever a whole bunch of high converting against policy stuff until the account is banned, at which point you set up a new ad account, new virtual number and start again. Rinse and repeat. Virtual credit cards are still linked to you. Your name and mailing address and whatever else is required for normal credit card validation is still required. They're not a tool for anonymity, they're exclusively for dealing with issues on the seller side (ie., they get hacked, or are fraudsters). >"if you have nothing to hide you'll use a fixed number". But literally everyone does have something to hide: their fixed credit card number/crc/date, since that is an irritation to deal with if it gets stolen. It's not a public key unfortunately. Virtual CCs are a hack essentially to help bring some of the benefits of a more modern system that was fully tokenized (like Apple Pay and co) or used proper asymmetric crypto to legacy systems, at the cost of forcing more manual effort by the user. It's in the same bucket as password managers, ideally password auth would have long since ceased to exist, but in the mean time password managers help a bit with the garbage fire of the current authentication world.

CobrastanJorji 7y ago

> It's one of the biggest issues of the modern internet. It's one of the biggest issues of the modern Internet that affect us: relatively rich, privileged people engaged in business primarily on the Internet. It's one of the smaller issues for most of the users of the Internet, who have much more significant problems, like governments spying on their Internet use, governments blocking big sections of the Internet, corporate monopolies making only certain parts of the Internet free and others prohibitively expensive, fraud, and all sorts of other problems.

jeremyjh 7y ago

It turns out that businesses all over the world have to protect themselves from fraud to stay in business. It’s also unfortunately the case that telling fraudsters how you identified them as such just helps them avoid detection in the future - and they tend to share information with each other. This doesn’t excuse Google’s chronic lack of human customer service but it does mean their problem is harder than you give them credit for. In Italy how much information are businesses required to give criminals about their detection capability?

PunchTornado 7y ago

I couldn't get my virtual card to do anything online. It's not just Google, but tons of companies refuse virtual cards. I gave up on it.