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Financial

Traditional banking provides little to no privacy, and there is no such think as anonymity. This, we are told, is to protect us from those who would cause harm and destruction. Our privacy is infringed because it makes us safe.

There are very limited ways to stay anonymous or even private. We have three recommendations, which are physical tender (cash, gold, silver, ammo, etc.), pre-paid debit cards, and Monero.

Physical Tender

Pre-paid debit cards

Monero

Not recommended

Privacy.com

Privacy.com provides virtual Visa credit cards which allows you to enter any name and address when purchasing online, and so it supposedly provides some level of protection against your private information being disseminated to large marketing entities and spread across the interweb.

Privacy.com provides no anonymity, and likely little privacy. Both Privacy.com, and the current banking institution that creates virtual cards, Patriot Bank NA, are privy to your SSN and any other information you must submit to them, as well as all transactions. So not only do you have to read Privacy.com’s privacy policy, but also Patriot Bank’s privacy policy.

These privacy policies are not as beneficial as you think. And Privacy.com is deceptive about it. image

Note, for example, how they have separate bullets for what they use to “verify your identity” and then in another bullet they have similar information without being limited to “verify your identity.” image

Based on the contractual rule against redundancy, we must assume that Privacy.com will use this information for something other than verifying your identity.1

The information they say they collect includes: name, email, phone, birthdate, government ID, payment card, bank info, any information used to sign up, transaction data (including, but not limited to, payment methods and devices use), hardware model, operating system, unique device identifiers, mobile network data, browser type, IP address, cookies, third-party verification services about you, publicly available info about you, and information with consumer reporting agencies.

And they are liberal with what they can share it with.

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And then you have the second layer, which is Patriot Bank NA, who also has your data. Patriot Bank NA’s privacy policy is worded in a very anti-privacy way.

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In other words, they are willing to limit sharing of your personal information when they are required to, and only then. Though they claim not to share if they don’t have to.2

This is why if you use a service such as this, we recommend using virtual cards from a bank directly if possible, and realizing that it will still in no way provide anonymity.


  1. Justice.gov/principles-of-contract-interpretation, “An interpretation will be rejected if it leaves portions of the contract language useless, inexplicable, inoperative, meaningless, or superfluous (Ball State Univ. v. United States, 488 F.2d 1014 (Ct. Cl. 1973); Blake Constr. Co. Inc. v. United States, 987 F.2d 743, 746-47 (Fed. Cir. 1993). 

  2. Bankpatriot.com/Privacy_Policy.pdf