I loved Privacy .com . Used it for all my online purchases before I got a credit card, and they had my back when I submitted a chargeback against a merchant that turned out to be fraudulent.

I stopped using it 2 months ago, as I got hit with KYC and now need to submit my SSN to them to unpause my account. I asked them why, letting them know that I’ve never caused them any trouble, using it only for things like streaming subscriptions and movie ticket purchases. This is what they had to say:

Due to changes in our compliance obligations, we’ve had to add SSN to our list of required information necessary to use our service. As with the rest of your signup info, none of this is shared with the merchants and services you use Privacy Cards for.

The change isn’t driven by anything specific to your account but an across-the-board policy change to ensure we’re keeping up with best industry practices.

The information is fully encrypted and not visible on your Privacy profile. In the unlikely event that an unknown party accesses your Privacy Account or our system, they won’t be able to obtain it.

My credit card has a similar virtual credit card (VCC) service, so I switched to using that. Giving them my SSN is unavoidable, so I might as well use their service and earn some points.

Since we’re on [email protected], thought it would also be a good heads-up letting everyone know that they use Plaid for linking your bank account to your Privacy account. Plaid settled for $58 million in a suit that alleged they (1) obtained more financial data than was needed by a user’s app, and (2) obtained log-in credentials (username and password) through its user interface, known as “Plaid Link,” which had the look and feel of the user’s own bank account login screen, when users were actually providing their login credentials directly to Plaid.

I got $35 from it.

My non-professional opinion: I don’t see anything wrong with them. I like their service, I just don’t want to give my SSN to yet another company, if I can avoid it.