That's fair, if you're doing something illegal that may result in a subpoena, this is not the product for you.
However, that doesn't mean what we're doing isn't meaningful. We just think that you just shouldn't have to share your personal info with a random merchant you want to buy something from.
This notion that passing along your billing info is going some how substantially cutting down on fraud is ridiculous. It's anti-privacy in the guise of being anti-fraud.
And yes, it's fair, if you skip out on a gym contract, you do risk getting taken to collections. We're mostly talking more about the ticky tack, deceptive recurring billing fraud. We can do better. We'll make the language clearer on our home page.
"We just think that you just shouldn't have to share your personal info with a random merchant you want to buy something from."
FWIW, this is, and has been, possible with regular credit cards for as long as I've used them (20 years ?)
Nobody anywhere checks the name on a card. Nobody. Not amazon, not google, not a small online retailer, not a large one. Nobody. Zero.
I made up a default fake name ten years ago and have used it consistently for everything from DirecTV[1] to my daily-used Amazon account to magazine subscriptions.
Yes, of course they have an address (not my home, but an address I control) and of course a global observer (or just my bank) can correlate and index everything I purchase ... but not any of those vendors.
[1] Yes, this does indeed imply that I paid them the big up-front payment instead of allowing them to do a credit check with my name and social. This is a very rare downside, however.
Only American Express offers name verification to merchants. When it comes to address verification, only the numeric data gets checked. So for an address "123 Main Street" would match "123 Bryant St" as well
Hey, I'm all for your service. I was a big user of Discover's one-time card numbers before they went away, just for the peace of mind of not having to worry about having my card number stolen. I will very probably sign up for Privacy and use it.
My point was that we have a lot of tinfoil hat crypto currency believers in the audience here tonight, and this is maybe not the panacea they were hoping for - it's not the second coming of Silk Road or anything.
However, that doesn't mean what we're doing isn't meaningful. We just think that you just shouldn't have to share your personal info with a random merchant you want to buy something from.
This notion that passing along your billing info is going some how substantially cutting down on fraud is ridiculous. It's anti-privacy in the guise of being anti-fraud.
And yes, it's fair, if you skip out on a gym contract, you do risk getting taken to collections. We're mostly talking more about the ticky tack, deceptive recurring billing fraud. We can do better. We'll make the language clearer on our home page.