I think he is referring to how most credit card companies will allow you to generate a new credit card number on their website. You can generally specify how much can be spent on that new number, and whether it can only be used once, monthly, or other.

For example, you could setup a number to use for Linode that would allow a $20 transaction every month and no more. If the number got stolen, it would be worthless to anyone.

Never seen those before are they a USA thing? (I'm in the UK)

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How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
3. Post relevant logs.
4. Don't hide details i.e. your domain, it just makes things harder
5. Be polite or you'll be eaten by a grue

Never heard of such a thing in Canada.

I'm from the UK but work all over the place. I've heard of these single use credit card numbers and I've tried to get them out of my bank from time to time. I've never succeed.

They are an amazing security measure and should be used far more often.

From UK as well. Never heard of this. But it sounds good security measure.

I try to use a credit card with low limit wherever possible. Any credit card companies in the UK to introduce this first, would score a good USP.

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Maybe this will clear up a few things...

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=one+time+credit+card+number

Might be a States thing, last I checked, EC Karte (Germany) didn't offer virtual (one shot) numbers.

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Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

It's usually bank dependent, not network dependent.

The thing is with credit cards you are covered anyway. The retailer gets screwed on fraudulent transactions as long as you report them so there isn't much reason for customers to go to extra lengths when they don't take the loss anyway. I guess that's why few banks offer them, people just can't be bothered.

I'd use them if I could get them but I've never managed to find a bank that would cooperate.

We have these in Portugal and I use it everywhere.
There is a one time use and 12 month duration, in both cases we define a limit.

It's a veryh secure service. These virtual credit cards are connected to you Bank account.

Well, today is May 1st, the day our CC information was supposedly going to be released according to the individual who claimed to have hacked Linode.

Shortly after Linode's later blog entry, the individual came on #linode and proclaimed to have shredded the data.