this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Funny: Home of the Haha

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[–] eochaid@lemmy.world 61 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Privacy.com. You can mint a credit card with a $0 limit (or $1 if they need to do a test transaction) and kill it right after.

[–] tostiman@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Seems to be for americans only, sadly.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In Europe you can probably use Revolut, they let you generate single-use cards.

Please note however that websites can tell it's a single-use card and refuse to accept it. Most recently Amazon and their related services (Twitch etc.) started refusing them.

[–] tostiman@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah I already have Revolut but those single use cards can't be used on subscribtion services sadly.

[–] provomeister@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

There's KOHO for Canadians, still not a proper Privacy.com replacement but you get two Mastercard cards (one physical & one digital) and they are refillable via Interac payments.

When doing trials, I set a few dollars on the card to ensure if they try to do a 1$ transaction to verify the card and I'm good to go. Even if I forget to cancel, the payment won't pass.

[–] CrowAirbrush@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago

That's where the VPN comes in?

[–] teddy-bonkerz@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

+1 for privacy.com

Should be a default feature with all card issuers

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you're getting "site not found": https://privacy.com/

http://privacy.com/ doesn't work, it doesn't answer on port 80.

[–] eochaid@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fascinating. I use Firefox with "Force HTTPS" enabled so I never noticed this before.

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does that mean you can't explore sites like toastytech.com?

[–] eochaid@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just get a "Secure site not available" warning with a button to proceed into the HTTP site anyway

[–] imgonnatrythis@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

I defer to second image on this post when I see that

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which is not a good look for privacy.com. You have to be either very lazy to not set up the redirect, or use a very cheap service that doesn't allow you to do it.

[–] Glitchington@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, it's just ensuring SSL encryption to their servers at all times. It's the best possible look for a website called privacy.com. If they allowed http connections, those connections aren't guaranteed to be private (encrypted).

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm talking about leaving http://privacy.com (the non-secured version) not leading anywhere. It's an amateur move.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Right. I don't feel like trusting my CC information to a company that doesn't even know how to do a redirect.

[–] JimmyDean@lemm.ee 41 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Every damn time. IMO, it's not really free if it requires a payment method; free trials should automatically end when the time is up instead of making you the one responsible for canceling to avoid being charged.

[–] nadram@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

It should also be illegal for someone to mandate you hand over credit/debit card details if you are not making a purchase. A free trial does not qualify as a purchase, nor should it be treated as an opportunity to sneakily take money from people. It is purely out of bad intentions that they request card details and should be banned.

[–] TheAndrewBrown@lemm.ee -5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I agree completely, but in practice I’ve never had trouble stopping a free trial before it charges me. Most I’ve done even let you turn off the auto-renewal immediately after signing up and still let’s you run out the trial.

I always just set a reminder as soon as I sign up for it to make sure I cancel. Not ideal, but gets the job done.

[–] wsweg@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I got a free membership to a car wash, and they would not let me cancel over the phone. They made made me go to the physical location, which doesn’t even have an indoor part! So, I had to go through the car wash line to talk to an employee, and then didn’t even get to go through the car wash, lol.

[–] TheAndrewBrown@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Car washes seem particularly aggressive about their memberships. I’ve heard the same thing about gyms.

[–] MeetInPotatoes@lemmy.ml 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also noping out at "Creqte an account or continue with Facebook login."

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

No thanks! I'll just never visit again instead.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Get a universal gift card for $20 and spend all but a few cents. Use it to subscribe to qll the things

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I’ve had those not work. Apparently they can detect when it’s a gift card

[–] dlok@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If it helps I find most of the time you can cancel a subscription as soon as you start the free trial and it will give you the full trial period.

No need for setting reminders etc

[–] BassaForte@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Until they get rid of that everywhere too.

[–] Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"In most cases you can do this"

"Unless everyone stops letting you do that"

[–] BassaForte@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've already seen instances of it. It will happen eventually.

[–] Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Then just don't buy th... oh wait.

[–] DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

"Yes, you just lied to me, but by all means, here's my sensitive payment information."

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 8 points 1 year ago

Prepaid gift cards and virtual credit cards not accepted!

[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah that's not a 30 day trial, that's a subscription with the first month free.

[–] iforgotmyinstance@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

You do realize what you're asking right? My credit card is across the house and I am waaaaaaay too lazy to get out bed.

[–] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

This is me for sure lol.

[–] cybermass@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

They got me on this one with Uber eats premium, never again..

[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] SpiderShoeCult@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Funny that "DoNotPay is a paid service that currently costs $36 every two months, a subscription that renews automatically." on a thread about subscriptions. Would be even funnier if they had a free trial.

[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

Damn, last time I checked, which was admittedly quite a while ago, it was less than 10. Which easily made up for Spotify, Apple music, Google music etc

[–] thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Every service claims that the primary motivation for that is just to verify that you're a real person and to cut down on spam/fraud.

Some services actually mean it. Most are exploiting you, because somebody heard at a conference one time that conversions go up when you do that.

[–] FierroGamer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, I used to believe people were better at keeping track of those things, but now I know a lot of people aren't even aware of all of their subscriptions.

It's likely a fair amount of people forget and later get charged for quite a while, they just bank on those.

[–] thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Exactly. Even if you only let one or two payment cycles go by and then cancel, that's still money in the bank, and-- perhaps more importantly-- someone's KPI (like "number of paid conversions" or something) goes up. It's a "win" for someone, even if you feel cheated.