> Another idea would be for banks to offer special credit card numbers, that get automatically flagged as bogus purchases. Any bank offering such a service? If I ever use the magic number, the transaction is perceived to go through, but it's actually tracked and no money is exchanged. Not sure if it's doable with respect to Visa and Mastercard networks.
A credit card that allows you to make purchases but never transfers any money? I'm not sure you've quite thought that through.
Actually, why not... My bank knows me. I'm a good customer. 10+ years of banking with them, not one credit card issue. Thousands of dollars on my bank account. When i use this bogus credit card number for $20 to track a spammer, I think my bank could trust me that I'm not just trying to buy something for free.
Are there other use cases you can think of aside from tracking spammers that would incent your bank to invest in the overhead to maintain special/bogus card #s? (And what about bogus card #s used against legitimate vendors that get cheated out of money owed to them?)
A credit card that allows you to make purchases but never transfers any money? I'm not sure you've quite thought that through.