An App To Protect Your Online Payments
It seems like every other day we hear about company data breaches resulting in compromised credit card information, identify theft, and more..
But despite the risks that may come with online payment technologies, there is also great potential for advanced security measures, so long as the developers hold security measures in high regard. The real issue with online payments however, is that each website you visit requires inputing your card information. The more times you submit that information to the web, the greater your chances of fraudulent activity. There’s just a lot of places for bad people can find your stuff!
Imagine if you could enter your credit card information in one secure place, then make all your online payments through a masked, virtual credit card that makes the payment using an encrypted code, leaving none of your card information. That’s what privacy.com does, and no I don't work for them.
privacy.com
I came across privacy.com through an advertisement on Reddit, and decided to give the platform a try. If you haven’t had a chance to browse their site, their value proposition is that by creating and using a secure, virtual card to complete checkout forms, you'll save both time and money while masking your true card information. The gyst is that they create a virtual payment card for you, which is linked to your actual payment card using an extremely hard to decode encryption system (hashed using PBKDF2 with 100k iterations and salted to make rainbow table attacks more difficult) which can then can be used around the web to submit payments. If you want more info on the tech side of things, you can read their security breakdown.
Now if a website ever gets compromised, the attacks won't have your specific card information, but rather the one-time encrypted code you used to make the payment. Seems like minimized fraud risk to me! Having all your transactions go through this one virtual card is also a great way to stay organized with online payments. On the privacy.com dashboard, you can view all attempted transactions to the virtual card and identify any payment attempts that you may have not authorize. Having a single point of online payment management is a huge plus to business owners, as it reduces control risk of your payment information.
Another neat feature about the virtual card is that you can set spend limits just by clicking on the virtual card in your dashboard and entering an amount, to prevent unexpected high transactions. You can also give your virtual card a nickname, if you’re into the sort of thing. If you’d like to give privacy.com a try, use my referral link to sign up and we’ll both get $5 USD.
You can grab the mobile privacy.com app on the iTunes Store or Google Play Store.
Did you find this mod useful? What are some potential loopholes or security risks you think can think of- if any? If you enjoyed this article, please consider signing up for my personal newsletter, where I share valuable business, technology and life coaching tips on a weekly basis. As always, let’s connect on Twitter!
Aleksey Weyman
Aleksey Weyman is a web designer, music artist and creator of Millennial Moderator
