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Comment by eli | Hacker News Reader

You shouldn't be worried now. You don't pay for any fraudulent charges.

It's still a major hassle when our cards get compromised and subsequently canceled by the bank.

I've had it happen when I'm traveling, and my primary card suddenly stops working. I always carry backups for this reason, but it's still disruptive and potentially embarrassing.

Also if I have a card on file for recurring payments or repeat orders, I have to go find all of those places and update it every time the card gets replaced. When it happens once, it's not so bad. When it happens two or three times a year, it's a headache. I finally took to having a single card that is used for ONLY recurring payments, with the hopes that it wouldn't get compromised and when the others do I wouldn't have to go through this whole exercise again. So far so good.

The bottom line is yeah, it doesn't cost me money, but it does cost me stress and time. I have better things to do with my time and energy than cleaning up after yet another compromise that happened through no fault of my own.

> I finally took to having a single card that is used for ONLY recurring payments...

This is a sound plan. Kudos!

For non-recurring payments, I've taken this a step further: I use a debit card for online purchases backed by an account with just a few dollars in it. When I wish to make a purchase, I move the funds for that purchase into that account.

I would rather have a fraudulent purchase be declined than to deal with the hassle -however small- of disputing a charge.

Are you sure it works that way? By default, the bank is more than happy to let the transaction go through, then charge you $20 for loaning you the money, plus much more interest than you'd pay with a credit card.

I'm 100% certain. I checked it intentionally once, and accidentally another time. As I understand it the trick was to decline the "Overdraft Protection" shit that every bank was pushing many, many years ago.

<Shameless self promotion>If you're in the US: We're working on solving this at getFinal.com. Email us and we'll make sure you get taken care of as soon as we can.

Use an American Express. My card was compromised 8 months ago and most my recurring transactions still go through on the old card #. Amex was the only card issuer that didn't issue new #s to cards breached during target hack.

Also most recurring billers use account updater so if your bank supports it, the billers will get the new card #.

You indirectly pay for all fraudulent charges because they're included in the fees the merchants pay to the credit card companies (and obviously just include in their pricing as well). With a secure system those fees could be much lower.

> You don't pay for any fraudulent charges.

If the thief is slick he / she may make small charges that you wouldn't immediately notice or at all if you're sharing the card with someone else (e.g. a significant other). It's also a HUGE pain in the ass.

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