5 ms·

>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 experie

by flutas 4y ago

>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.

jrochkind1 4y ago
Woah, that is concerning. Making it harder, rather than easier, to chargeback fraudulent uses is not what I'm looking for.
- flutas 4y ago
  > 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 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 4y ago
    >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 4y ago
      > 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".
      - mardifoufs 4y ago
        Any way to deactivate that feature?
    - jrochkind1 4y ago
      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 4y ago
    [deleted]
1shooner 4y ago
>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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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-anatomy-of-a-pan-enumeration-attack/ https://blog.privacy.com/a-different-type-of-card-fraud-anat...
    - flutas 4y ago
      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."
rachel_lithic 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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
  - searchableguy 4y ago
    They rebranded to lithic from privacy last year.
  - rachel_lithic 4y ago
    Lithic is our parent company - you can also drop me a line at rachel@privacy.com. Both end up in the same space. If you interested in reading more about the rebrand and difference in the two business feel free to check out this blog post: https://blog.privacy.com/our-journey-from-privacy-com-to-lithic/ https://blog.privacy.com/our-journey-from-privacy-com-to-lit...

by flutas 4y ago

jrochkind1 4y ago

Woah, that is concerning. Making it harder, rather than easier, to chargeback fraudulent uses is not what I'm looking for.

flutas 4y ago
> 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 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 4y ago
  >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 4y ago
    > 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".
    - mardifoufs 4y ago
      Any way to deactivate that feature?
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    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 4y ago
  [deleted]

1shooner 4y ago

>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 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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-anatomy-of-a-pan-enumeration-attack/ https://blog.privacy.com/a-different-type-of-card-fraud-anat...
  - flutas 4y ago
    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."

rachel_lithic 4y ago

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 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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
- searchableguy 4y ago
  They rebranded to lithic from privacy last year.
- rachel_lithic 4y ago
  Lithic is our parent company - you can also drop me a line at rachel@privacy.com. Both end up in the same space. If you interested in reading more about the rebrand and difference in the two business feel free to check out this blog post: https://blog.privacy.com/our-journey-from-privacy-com-to-lithic/ https://blog.privacy.com/our-journey-from-privacy-com-to-lit...