Zukhramm said:
My question is why any of this is stored, at all. Shouldn't the credit card information be thrown away as soon as the transaction is completed? Seems like the safest way to handle them to me.
But in a world of monthly fees and people that don't want to enter their information over and over again, information is stored for those conveniences.
Something tells me that you haven't ever bought a membership to anything online(something that renews when the membership period is up).
A couple examples: Now since I have a 360, I pay for Xbox Live. Right now I am running on a yearly plan, but before I was on a monthly plan. In the beginning when I bought my 360, I got a three month gold card and put it on my account. After that, I put in my debit card information and picked a monthly plan. Every time the equivalent of a month when by, the 7 or 8 dollars it was at the time for Live membership automatically came out of my account, that way I wouldn't have to be inconvenienced by having to take time to re-up it when I got on again. With my yearly plan, when the year is up they will charge me the amount that I payed last time for a year. If I want, before that happens I can go in an cancel it, or I can change it back to a monthly plan.
Second, I'm a member of the publishers club here on the Escapist. I entered my information here to pay for it last year. They automatically re-uped it for me this year.
In those to instances, how do you think that two parties automatically charged my account when the time came? They have my information saved and they us it to charge me.
With most things like this, a few days to a week before the next charge comes, places usually send out an e-mail to the customer that the next charge time is coming(to give the people time to cancel if they want to). I got an e-mail a few weeks ago from the Escapist saying that my membership would be expiring and if I did nothing they would just charge me again to keep it going. Since I wanted to keep my membership, I did nothing and I was charged.
That is how most transactions work online.
In the case of the PS3, since it doesn't have membership fees, people have their info on there for buying downloadable items and games. Many people don't want to have the inconvenience of having to keep entering their info in over and over again, so they tell the system that they want their info to be remembered so that it can automatically be put in and charge them the next time they buy and item or a game.
The same goes for Amazon.com. I have my debit card information saved on my account there. When I make a purchase, at check out, I click the pip that is in front of the saved card I want to use to purchase the item. Since the system has my information already, it can automatically charge me after I put in my password again for the system to make sure it is really me.
The only online store that I know of that doesn't give me that option to save my info is the game store on the Nintendo Wii.
What I have said is how the majority of people pay for things online, they give the company their information and anytime something needs to be charged, the company can do it automatically, so that the consumer doesn't have to be inconvenienced by having to take the five extra minutes it can sometimes take to re-enter all their card information over again.
Yes the information could be stolen, but in many cases it is a rare occurrence. I have only ever had one little scare. I got a call from my credit union saying that somebody had called and claimed to be me and tried to get a transfer of money from my account. It didn't work, not just because I have a phone password with the bank, but because the idiot that called them was a woman that claimed to be me, point being that the teller looked up my info and saw that I was a guy.
