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Comment by driverdan | Hacker News Reader

1. Buy a prepaid credit card at a store with cash.

2. Use the credit card to buy hosting with whomever you wish to use.

3. Enjoy your anonymity.

I realize it may be possible for law enforcement to find you through tracking down the location the card was purchased at but in reality no one else can find who you are. Even then you could go out of your way to purchase the card outside your home area at a grocery store since they often have minimal / poor camera coverage.

Edit - Responses to some of the comments:

In the USA SSNs are only required for customized reloadable cards with your name on them which is obviously not the type you'd want.

As for AVS / name verification, most prepaid cards now have websites which allow you to set a name and address for use online. Others will pass AVS checks with any address. The packaging will often say if they can be used for online purchases.

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> I realize it may be possible for law enforcement to find you through tracking down the location the card was purchased at but in reality no one else can find who you are.

Well then it's not fucking well anonymous, is it?

For saying things that won't piss off the cops, we can just sign up on Tumblr from our residential ISP IP.

The whole point of having anonymity is for safely exercising the right to unpopular speech. If the cops can track you down, then it's not anonymous.

Imagine if Wikileaks had been fully pseudonymous, and then tried what you suggest. They'd be just as fucked as they are now (for being non-anonymous).

Because of the Patriot Act, don't prepaid credit cards now require Social Security numbers and other identifiable information to activate (I would imagine including your name, which you would provide with the credit card when you buy hosting)?

Sure, you could lie, but you would probably be breaking the law (which the method advocated in the article doesn't do).

Only reloadable prepaid cards require SSN. Non-reloadable (Gift) prepaid cards don't require an SSN. Some even allow you to set an address for AVS purposes.

So don't do it in the USA

Instead you can buy virtual visa with bitcoins, and then you aren't on camera buying a prepaid card. Even better use bitcoins for hosting payment directly and avoid credit cards completely.

You can also find any Russian host you wish, then plug in Bitcoins to a Russian exchange such at btc-e and then withdraw straight to their WMZ account to fund your hosting

No need to find a russian host. WordPress accepts Bitcoin! http://en.support.wordpress.com/bitcoin/

Most online services, in my experience at least, will reject credit cards that are not associated with a name.

Most payment gateways provide no name-based authorization - a fake name will work just fine.

Kind of like electronic signatures at stores. You can draw a cat face at one place and a penis in another. Never really understood the point of them.

Same with paper signatures. A signature isn't supposed to rigidly identify you, it is supposed to provide evidence that you signed the document / agreed to the contract. It's a subtle distinction.

Having signatures match is just one straightforward kind of evidence that you agreed to the contract.

Yea, but they reduce to saying that someone was present and agreed to the contract. I've ordered things online, don't receive them, and the courier tells me it was delivered and signed for. I don't know who agreed. Nobody is going to investigate the curves on the signature.

I am curious though which biometrics will eventually replace the signature, especially with so many transactions online where I can spend thousands of dollars without signing anything.

Then why the farce of matching your signature with the signature on the back of the credit card? Or if you don't sign the credit card, asking for an ID? It always makes me laugh when the high school student making minimum wage checks my signature. Do they all need to be certified signature experts before getting a job as a cashier?

Do people still check the signature? I haven't had one on any of my cards for at least five years nor do I sign receipts with my name; nobody has ever questioned me or asked for ID.

Alive and well in my home town, admittedly outside of the city.

Me neither - in 10 years, only one girl in a mall validated my sig with the one on the card. It was in a huge outlet "village".

Cashiers are not supposed to check that the signatures match, they are supposed to check that the card is signed. A credit card is not a valid form of payment unless it is signed on the back. "See ID" is not a valid signature BTW. Cashiers who see that are supposed to direct the cardholder to actually sign the card before charging it.

Strange, I believe I tried that after receiving a bunch of gift cards for Christmas -- I even tried entering in the exact title that's below the CC number on the card, but had no luck.

That's a different issue, namely address verification. You can sometimes log-in to the issuers site or call and give an address (can be fake, just needs to be something you remember) and then use that address on whatever online form you're trying to use. It will pass AVS and you're good to go.

http://www.americanexpress.com/us/content/prepaid/gift-cards... http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/prepaid/gift_card_faq.htm...

I have had the opposite experience. I just put in John Smith for the name and I have never had any issues.

You can read about someone who is a bit obsesses (in a pragmatic way) about that here: http://snarfed.org/privacy_through_prepaid_credit_cards

Simon Malls was one of the first companies to offer prepaid credit cards at a retail location. They started selling them 10 or 11 years ago. I used to re-encode them with stolen magnetic stripe data back when I was into credit card fraud.

What about cameras at the place you bought the card?

2.5. watch as the prepaid credit card gets declined

But you still get to do step 3!

> Edit - Responses to some of the comments:

HN has a button for that, you know.

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