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Ask HN: Credit Card honeypot/canary service?

3 points by rmc ↗ HN
Is there any company that provides a credit card canary/honeypot? i.e. I sign up, they give me a credit card number. If this credit card is used, it is declined, and then I get an email.

This could be an(other) way to detect data breechs, but I can't find anyone doing this.

3 comments

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ScottWhigham
Cool idea. I know that Visa and Amex, at least, have the one-time use numbers. I don't know, though, if they will notify you if someone tries to use it and it is declined.
callmeed
Could you give a more specific scenario where this would be useful? I'm quite interested in cc fraud at the moment, but I don't quite where you're going ...
chris_dcosta
Credit card will soon become obsolete anyway, but that's another story.

I don't see how you could make use of a CC number that would always be declined. The point is it has to have been active and used successfully to have been recorded somewhere and then stolen.

If you are talking "dummy" number then why should any bank make those numbers public? They would be identified anyway at the moment they are used.

CC fraud is a problem, but I think you probably need to know a lot more about how the transactions take place and what the industry is already doing (from the inside). It's not something that would be widely publicised by any specific bank, because people would close their accounts in droves.