Mask Your Credit Cards for Safe Holiday Shopping

The holiday shopping season is in full swing, and we've offered some sage advice on how you can shop online without risk. You know to avoid insecure WiFi, use only trusted merchants, avoid phishing, and so on. But what if the security problem isn't at your end? Even the most trustworthy online merchant might get hit by a data breach, and if they haven't properly secured their data, your credit card details might be at risk.
Fortunately, there's a way to shop without revealing your credit card number. The privacy specialists at Abine are making their "Masked Cards" service available for free until December 26th. If you choose to continue using it after the holidays, the service costs $5 per month.

How It Works
When you're ready to check out, instead of entering your credit card number you generate a one-time, disposable card number and load it with precisely the amount of the purchase. An unscrupulous employee who gets hold of the number can't do anything with it, since after the purchase it has a zero balance. To be extra sure, you can deactivate the card after using it. Deactivating also returns any unused balance to you. Simple!
You'll want to keep track of purchases you make in this way, as the charge on your statement will come from Abine, not the merchant. As the company's FAQ points out, Masked Cards are like prepaid gift cards generated as needed for each purchase. In fact, you can give a Masked Card in whatever denomination you choose to a friend or family member.

Why Trust Them?
Of course, you may be thinking that the problem isn't gone. It's just moved from worrying about the merchant's security to worrying about Abine's. On the Why You Can Trust Us page Abine attempts to put such worries to rest. It's pretty convincing!
Abine also offers DoNotTrackMe, a simple browser add-in that prevents ad networks, social networks, and browser analytic tools from tracking your Web surfing habits. Note that this is nothing like the Do Not Track feature found in modern browsers. That system requires cooperation by the advertisers; Abine doesn't. DoNotTrackMe has teeth!
Abine's free MaskMe password manager helps you avoid duplicate passwords and use strong ones; it will also create disposable email addresses to help stem the flood of spam.
Have you ever gotten creeped out by looking yourself up on Spokeo, ZabaSearch, or another of the many sites that collect and aggregate personal data? Abine's DeleteMe will erase your personal data from several dozen such sites by sending them an opt-out request. Of course, these sites keep collecting data, and DeleteMe keeps deleting it. Note that this service costs $129 per year; it's not free like the rest.
It's clear from the product line that Abine is devoted to privacy. As the Abine website says, "Simply put your privacy is our business so we take it very seriously." I'm certainly convinced they take it more seriously than any online retailer. If you do a lot of online shopping, consider giving Masked Cards a try.