There are 2 common hacks I use in my mostly ONLINE life to stay safe and sane.
– Never enter your real credit card into a website that’s not Paypal or Amazon.
– Never enter your actual email address. Always use burners with the +++.
How do I use the internet if I never enter my email on website?
2 BIG TIPS:
1: Use the Gmail +++ feature. If your email is travis@gmail.com then when you sign up for a list, just add the + sign in between your username and the @.
So say Donald Miller has a list, I’d enter
Example: travis@gmail.com becomes travis+donaldmiller@gmail.com
I then sort all emails with the incoming email address of travis+donaldmiller@gmail.com into a folder.
I’ve had different burner email address like this get “hacked” or stolen. For example travis+walgreens@gmail.com – I started to get spam emails to that email address and knew that their system had been hacked.
Luckily – because that email address has never been used on another website. So all I had to do was select that incoming email address and block all emails coming to that address. Which takes 30 seconds to do in Gmail. Simply create a filter to mark all emails with travis+walgreens@gmail.com as the incoming address to go to spam. Boom.
How to protect your credit card and never be charged after a “7 day trial”?
2: The second biggest tip I have is for doing any online trial or website purchase. Use a free app called Privacy.
I generate 1 time use credit cards and set the limits and can 1-click deactivate these “temporary credit card numbers”.
Gone are the days of emailing the noreply@infosite.com with my request to cancel the trial only to find auto responses saying that email address doesn’t exist.
Gone are the days of my response to cancel my trial being “what don’t you like about our product? how about we extend your trial?”
Gone are the days of them “accidentally” charging my card despite me clicking on the “cancel the subscription”.
Gone are the days of waiting 30 days for them to actually refund the renewal…
Gone are the days of them saying “sorry we can’t refund you – you didn’t cancel before the 7 day trial ended”
Gone are the days of them saying “sorry, you needed to request a cancel 24 hours before the end of your trial”
Gone are the days of them saying “sorry, we can’t issue a refund but we can apply your $99 to a store credit”.
Now it’s different.
Now it’s ME who holds the power. I do the $1 trial and I NEVER get charged the renewal fee.
If they want to charge me more, they have to ASK me for a new credit card number to renew. It never auto-renews.
Example:
So when they have a $1 14 day trial, I generate a 1 time use credit card with a $5 dollar limit (just because that’s my standard minimum limit) – and I select “one time use”.
The app is set up and linked as a debit card to my bank – and then it creates these cards in the app.
So I pre-load money into my Privacy account and it uses that like a debit card.
After that $1 charge goes through for the trial – it automatically cancels the card (closes it).
I never have to set calendar reminders to cancel my free trial, I never have to jump through their “guarantee” hoops.
Here’s the best part.
I had a website keep trying to charge me the automatic renewal until 30 days later they emailed me an offer for their $997 course for $47. They knew I liked the material, they assumed I wouldn’t buy. But I ended up logging back into the site and buying it at $47.
I would have never seen that offer had I signed up and cancelled my trial – because it was a “failed payment” special offer.
There you have it – my 2 tips or online hacks for email and payments.
Never enter your real credit card into a website that’s not Paypal or Amazon.
Never enter your actual email address. Always use burners with the +++.
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