'Virtual Card' Offers Online Security Blanket

[John Levine]

>Offered to holders of Citi, Discover and MBNA cards, these "virtual
>credit cards," or single-use card numbers, are designed to give some
>peace of mind to consumers concerned about credit card fraud.

I've been using MBNA's Shopsafe virtual cards for years.  They're
issued by a small flash application which, to my amazement, works just
fine in Firefox on FreeBSD.  Each card can only be used at a single
merchant, and you can either use them once or set them up to be good
for a year with a per transaction limit for subscriptions or places
where you do repeat business.

I've actually found them more useful for cancelling subscriptions than
for preventing fraud.  There are lots of places where it's easy to
sign up online and nearly (or actually) impossible to cancel.  Since I
give them virtual card numbers, I send them my cancel notice, then
turn off the card.  I can't ever recall an instance where they
cancelled my account as I requested before sending me a alarming
notice that they'd have to suspend my account because my card wasn't
good any more.

R's,
John


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