In my experience, it does a good job of obscuring my identity from websites with questionable security practices (e.g. ones that rolled their own payment processors and are clearly questionably coded, or just ones that could be).
And it obscures the nature of your purchases from your bank.
Update: especially because, recently, some banks will use your transaction history to advertise to you, I feel even better jumping onto one with stricter rules regarding that
In my experience, it does a good job of obscuring my identity from websites with questionable security practices (e.g. ones that rolled their own payment processors and are clearly questionably coded, or just ones that could be).
And it obscures the nature of your purchases from your bank.
But its a bank too, so they have to keep those records the same way your “actual” bank does too.
Other than certain crytpo, cash is king for anonymity.
That’s a good point. For me, it lets me obscure my real name and real address from some websites, so it’s good enough for me.
For everything else, I would probably consider purchasing in person whenever possible, or with cryptocurrency as a last resort.
Update: especially because, recently, some banks will use your transaction history to advertise to you, I feel even better jumping onto one with stricter rules regarding that
https://www.pcmag.com/news/chase-bank-to-let-advertisers-target-customers-based-on-spending-habits