Not a solution to all your problems of course, but the only way to buy something and preserve your privacy is to pay cash. Everything else will get your info to someone. Lots of good suggestions for lesser evils here for when you have no choice but to shop online.
None of them are good or private
Picking between the ones you listed it's basically a "pick your poison" situation.
Klarna is definitely extremely sketchy. I've yet to read their terms of services but km not looking forwards to it.
I think all of these companies are sketch in one way or another. You would be better off choosing something like Wise or Revolut as they at least offer disposable credit cards for one time purchases.
Privacy.com.
I've been using their service for years and I advocate it whenever I can. You link their service to a bank account and then generate throw away credit card numbers which one used deduct the balance directly from your checking account.
You can set spending limits on the virtual cards, you can make them one time use only, and you can make them lock themselves to a vendor so even if someone steals that credit card number they can't use it.
I very highly recommend using their service to protect yourself using online payment systems.
As far as obfuscating your purchase history, that's kind of part of the territory. That information will always be available to your banking institution and if so facto, the government...
unfortunately they are only available in the US
Which jurisdictions are you looking to support this?
EU
I've used them and had a lot of trouble getting their cards to be accepted by online merchants
Because of US financial laws the virtual card numbers are prefixed as prepaid cards. So in certain situations you're going to have friction where the merchant you're dealing with isn't able to, or can't use prepaid cards.
They require an amount of personal info that I don't really want a company to have.
You understand that you have the freedom to....not use their services, right?
Yep, that is what I did. It just seems ironic that a company that sells the service of protecting your privacy wants to violate your privacy in order to do it.
If you pay with a third party, your data goes to them and whoever is providing the account behind it. So if you have your credit card in PayPal, your data goes to PayPal, the credit card provider, and your bank. If you use the credit card directly, it's just the CC provider and your bank.
There's a third party between the payment system (website, point of sales systems, card terminals, etc) and the card's provider who also has access to the transaction data in the latter example. These payment systems don't interact with visa/mc/whatever directly.
The tradeoff is you will be giving the merchant your cc info instead, which is not really a good idea if you are dealing with one off transactions as that data is a way weaker link and have more dire consequences when compromised. When it comes to money, someone will always get your info, it's just a matter of choosing who you want to give it to.
Usually there is also online payment providers like Stripe, Adyen, Square, which process the credit card payment and thus get your data - not only the bank and creditcard provider.
Anecdotally, I don't trust Klarna one bit. A few years ago I was making a payment and Klarna directed me to a third party site that wanted my bank credentials. It was at that moment I stopped using Klarna and requested they delete all information they have on me. Apparently, Klarna wanted to see my account activity. I now go out of my way to avoid them. I have a similar issue with PayPal, where connecting a Credit Card requires entering information in a way I'm uncomfortable with.
So for now I'm just using a CC directly. This may not be the best approach, but it feels the least intrusive - for now. I don't know what the optimal solution would be. Maybe when GNU Taler becomes an option...
information in a way I'm uncomfortable with.
Huh, what's that? Maybe I did this so long ago that I don't remember before I started getting big into privacy.
Sorry to piggyback. Can anyone talk about their experience with Signal payments using mobilecoin? I, too, like OP, am looking for privacy-oriented options for payment. I just noticed it was a thing, last night, as I was exploring my Signal settings. Might be helpful to others. Dunno anything about it because I haven't tried it. Thanks!
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In-app-Payments#payments_which_ones
Edit: I searched for Signal and Mobilecoin on Newpipe and the results are less than favorible. 😬
techlore (or surveillance report maybe?) did an experiment on using it. they couldn't even complete a single transaction.
aha, found the video
I always wondered how to use it. How to put Money in and out of the Wallet. I would recommend creating a new post as I am very interested too.
I actually went with Revolut as my Bank, using their virtual credit cards for online payment - they offer a virtual one-time CC as well which details reset after each succesfull transaction. Thow way there's at least no 3rd party besides CC provider and my bank snooping on my transactions.
I just looked at revolut, they have all these squgily ££££ symbols everywhere.
in it's base version, Revolut is free, yet they surely try to convince you to pay for a paid plan, use their depot, and other stuff... However the only downside worth mentioning is getting less interest on the savings account. Or did you refer to them being a UK bank? In that case: Revolut exists in multiple countries - my account is in Lithuania, yet still fully managed in €. They nowadays also have a german banking license (giving you a DE-IBAN). Accounts themself can be in on of, I dunno... 33 different currencies or so?
Another option worth mentioning would be Trade Republic, however I've never tried them myself.
Gift and prepaid cards are an option too.
I rarely encounter sites that accept them.
Read your credit card agreement. Does it have a number to call, email address or mailing address to post to to opt-out of information sharing of purchase information with 3rd parties? I opted out with my latest card.
IMO I think most financial institutions can see or acquire a lot of transactional data, so I just pick one bank (who already knows everything I spend) have a credit card with them, and use it. My bank also allows making virtual cards, so I opt for it over privacy.com.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)