In the third world you always to watch yourself so you don't hurt, scammed or abused with little recourse. So being curious, doing something different or challenging the status quo becomes a liability. Eventually there isn't much development at all, only corruption and people knowing their place.
When you buy something in a store with cash in person, after having it shown by an employee, you can still in most cases return the thing at your will. But when some clicks a button moving a few bytes with a digital payment that in reality costs nothing, there is of course nothing that can be done. This industry is just increasingly rubbish.
Don't click this, don't open that e-mail and don't answer the phone. You don't know who it is from or who it is going to. Don't have that password, don't type it there, don't have it too long and don't make it too short. We can automate your job, but not authentication. Don't publish that, don't vote like this and don't live here. Know your place.
(At least my banks haven't offered virtual cards for many years).
Better financial tools/primitives would have gone a long way to prevent the issue in the article which most Americans don't have. I shouldn't need my bank to hopefully create a "virtual card" feature (it doesn't). It should've been ubiquitous 20+ years ago.
This is one reason I use Paypal: I can see a list of organizations authorized to take money out of my account. My bank account and credit cards? I have no fucking idea who might show up next month. Maybe that thing I "canceled" on their website four months ago?
Or I use bitcoin because it's basically cash.
These systems are set up so you really don’t have much choice, though. My son will come to me and say, “Dad, I have some money from Grandma, can I use it to buy willywhacker 2 for my iPod?” I’ll say, “sure” - then he’ll hand me the $5 he got from Grandma and I’ll type my credit card number into wherever the game expects it to be and try to check the “don’t remember this card for future use” check box (if it’s there and if the game actually honors it). My kids are really good about asking before they make purchases, but a lot of these apps are designed to trick you - that’s how they make profits.