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Comment by happymellon | Hacker News Reader

I still don't understand what a "privacy card" is.

One version of it that I have used is "virtual" prepaid cards. The way it works is that I can use my online banking account to create a new "virtual" card and load it with a fixed amount from my bank account. A new single-use credit / debit card number (by Visa or Mastercard) would be generated with CVV and expiry date that I can use online anywhere. It provides an easy and secure way of transacting online without providing the Primary Card / Account information to the merchant. Another version I wasn't aware, has been explained here in another comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32238813 ...

I have unique cards generated for online transactions, and I see this feature with multiple banks here in the UK. It seems mad that this would be considered a bad thing.

But if somebody steals your login, they can create multiple virtual numbers and spend a lot. And since these are virtual number, MC or Visa will not have tools to find problem or block it.

Can somebody which knowledge of this explain problems with "privacy" cards and why scammers love them?

Mastercard and Visa aren't the ones at risk by such activity, the issuing banks are, and as someone who works for a bank, yes, banks have tools to detect and stop account takeovers and assist card members in recovering from such incidents.

Scammers don't care about privacy cards. They'll use anything they can get their hands on, metaphorical or otherwise. If it doesn't have their details attached, it's fair game to them.

It's due to fraud risk. If googles threshold billing is X, then their risk of revenue loss is X*(N+1) where N is the number of virtual card numbers that have been created for a single physical card. The +1 is for the physical card.

Visa/Mastercard likely don't supply a way to link a physical card to it's virtual card generations (that'd be a security risk), so Google doesn't know that virtual card A is associated with physical card B.

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