Private online Payment

Questions
1

Greetings,

It’s Harold here. I was wondering what is suggested to be the most private method/workflow for online payment, that is also widely accepted/possible with retailers such as bol.com.

I am not intending to hide my information from government instances when it comes to finance, as I realize that this is virtually impossible without extreme measures. Instead, I want to minimize the tracking and data linkage for general companies and less sophisticated adversaries.

This is part of an ongoing hobby project to turn my digital life into an impenetrable fortress as much as possible.

Currently I am thinking of getting a virtual card service like Revolut or Wise (which one? If I should do these) which is linked to my real bank account, but not used for anything but PayPal, then I will have different PayPal accounts through pseudonyms which are linked to a specific virtual card. This way PayPal won’t know all my purchases as they are done through specific pseudonym buckets, and both my bank and the virtual card intermediary won’t know all the details of my payments as they only see cashflow between the other layers.

To me, getting gift cards with cash is not an option as I absolutely detest going to physical stores, and want to avoid it at virtually all costs. My workflow must work from the computer/phone only.

I already have a setup where I use NordVPN, and NextDNS along with Brave browser and Badger tracking blocker extension. So my conventional security/privacy setup is decent already I believe. Soon I’ll have finished configuring QubesOS to make it even more impenetrable… But this will likely require a few more weeks.

Thanks in advance,
Harold Finch

2

Off topic comment if you’ll excuse it:

The irony is that Harold Finch would never have such a question. But I understand and appreciate the fandom.

As for your question:

I believe you can also buy gift cards online, one doesn’t always need to go to the store. And you can use your virtual card to buy it and have it be delivered physically or digitally.

1 Like
3

I’d start with reading the recommended financial services first: Financial Services - Privacy Guides

If this recommendations don’t work for you use case, explain why, and other suggestions can be provided.

2 Likes
4

I get the irony, don’t worry.
Thanks for the response :slight_smile:

I’ll look into it most definitely. It doesn’t have urgency.

5

Thanks for the response, I’ll read that article too (:

6

You can buy a VVV cadeaukaart online and transfer the value to a bol.com card (for free) and with that at least it is somewhat decoupled.

Other option is via coincards using crypto as recommend on our website, linked above here.

It is rather off topic to your question but we do not encourage your setup choices when it comes to your vpn and extension. Would recommend to read the website on those topics.

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7

Thanks. I think coincards will be a useful alternative.

I’ll definitely take a look at the VPN + Extension articles.

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