About the Author
Joanne Reid
Joanne Reid is a writer with eclectic interests (such as
gardening) and games.
In spite of my assurances to all and sundry that using a credit card online was a safe practice, I had my Visa card information swiped online. I still don't know how. But the Visa people called me one day to ask if I had just tried to buy a computer online. No. I hadn't.
That card was cancelled and a new one sent to me.
Then a couple of months later I was looking at my Mastercard statement and noticed a charge I did not recognize. It was for an odd figure and not very high. I figured that it must have been for a gas fill-up (this was before the gas prices went up). The next month my credit card bill had the same charge on it. I called the company and asked them to track it for me. They said the best thing to do was to cancel the card and get a new one.
That card was cancelled and a new one sent to me.
Except for gas, the only place I use my credit cards is online. Well, occasionally for a meal out. And the bookstore. I still don't know where either card was compromised. Well, I know the Visa was compromised online as that is the only place I had ever used it. But I don't have a clue where the Mastercard info was stolen.
I am an inveterate shopper online. What I did was find a way around having my credit card stolen for sure. No, I did not stop shopping online. I joined Entropay. (You can check it out at http://entropay.com.) They provide virtual Visa cards. You set up an account and link it to a credit card -- this does mean that the card is exposed to one place online but you know where that place is. They verify that you are the owner of the card. This involves providing information such as a charge they placed on your card for the first top-up of the virtual card and a photocopy of your passport or some such similar information.
You can create a Visa card that has all the information including the 3-digit special number from the back of it. Actually you can create a lot of cards. I have two right now. You can use a card once and then delete it and if there is any balance on it, that goes back to your Entropay account and can be used to create a new card.
There are a number of uses for this card. For instance, a friend of mine without a credit card wanted to do some shopping online. She could have given me the cash and I could have let her use my credit card online but that likely would violate some terms of service for my credit card company and if she used it someplace where it was stolen, I could be in trouble.
And besides, as I have been saying here, I don't like to use my card online.
So I created a virtual Visa card for her and put in the amount equivalent to the cash she had given me and off she went and shopped happily away.
There is a small fee -- pennies really -- for the card. But I like the idea that I can dispose of the card myself and instantly create a new one.
Ah technology.
Published by Joanne Reid on October 13, 2005 04:39 AM
