Infinite Trials + Privacy Online
Infinite free trials for Classpass, Crunchyroll, and more!+ especially around online digital privacy
Overview
One of the big things that I tend to be really interested in is generating free trials for software products. Especially in this day-and-age, where every company is trying to track us, I’ve focused a lot on how to mitigate it, and inadvertently also found out how to create “pseudo-identities” when signing up for these different services.
The example I’m going to walk through is going to be primarily focused on Classpass - a subscription based service that instead of committing to one gym, let’s you buy credit from Classpass to use with their affiliates. The reason why, is I think they have one of the most comprehensive discouragement to prevent this sort-of thing from any company I’ve seen. So if you can create a new account with classpass, you are able to make a new account with (most) companies. I still have some issues with trying rideshare companies 🤷. But otherwise! 95% of companies I generally have no issues.
Now let’s discuss the major hurdles:
Emails
To generate emails is the first step:
I used to use a small trick called "plus addressing". Which let’s say your email is: johndoe@gmail.com. You can write your email as johndoe+1@gmail.com when signing up for a service. And this will still get sent to your johndoe@gmail.com email.
There is also (dot) addressing, where: justin.test@gmail.com, is the same as ju.stintest@gmail.com.
This feature can be used to help you sort your emails, but also often many companies do not properly validate that these are the same emails.
(However Classpass does properly validate against this).
Meaning we need to use other options.
The next option is if you are paying for Apple Cloud Storage, which is 99 cents a month, which is worth it for me, they have a hidden email feature. Where through Settings > Apple Id > iCloud > Hide my Email you can generate pseudo-alias emails that have a icloud domain, but connects back to your real email.
This is what I tend to use, as I want to try to have access to the emails that Classpass sends me. But if I don’t care, let’s say a free crunchyroll account for the week, I use a service called: 48hr email. Which is a free, immediate to use service that let’s you have access to an inbox that is randomly generated with a URL, through a link, for 48 hours.
Special Note:
Set up your own domain and you can have infinite emails always forwarding to yourself. This is a great option let’s say if you always need persistent emails where you can control the name of the email so it doesn’t look crazy vs iCloud / other relay servers might be random email mask names.
This is basically a “catch-all address”, where anything x@yourdomain.com, will be forwarded to you.
Phone Number
So there are tons of ways to go about this.
For a more “persistent phone number”, I use Google Voice. It’s an easy way to create a second number, and be more privacy minded when I hand my phone number out to different things that maybe I am more sketched out by.
I used to also buy phone numbers through a service called Zang.io, which has now shut down I believe, b/c services like Twilio actually are unable to receive SMS code verifications.
So now I use something called: SMS Virtual - Receive SMS. (They also have an Android app, and this is what I use for burner text messages). And I’m sure there are other VOIP / eSIM services / second phone number services out there. I’ve also been considering this but since SMS virtual works for me, I just haven’t explored too much. For SMS Virtual, the way it works is you buy “credit” to then rent a number for 20 minutes. For example, for 1 dollar, I get 5 credits, and it usually cost about 1 credit to rent a number for 20 minutes to get the SMS code.
Classpass does occasionally update the way they handle different numbers and so-on, so I haven’t tried this in a while, but I believe this works. Basically, you need something considered a “verifiable” phone number, b/c VOIP numbers like Google Voice, sometimes - depending on the company, might be smart enough to check against it. And I’ve had on-and-off success with Google voice, which is why I had eventually moved to SMS Virtual.
Credit Cards
Finally is credit cards. So there is many ways to go about this:
Privacy.com is an easy one for US based users. It basically allows you to connect your bank account to a virtual credit card, where you can put any name, address, etc. and put a spending limit on it. Example, 1 dollar. I love this b/c it prevents companies from getting my real information, and them making it hard to cancel. However, I do know more than a few friends having trouble when they tried to open an account with them, so there are other options. (Also, Privacy.com if they see this behavior can sometimes begin to bounce the verification checks and prevent you from using them with a company).
Apple Card. The Apple card if you have an iPhone is create. It is a numberless card, and let’s you click a refresh button to generate a new card number. I will say, for some reason, Classpass is the ONLY company that somehow was able to still charge me twice in my testing, the 80 dollar fee when the trial switches to a “full subscription”. So make sure to cancel the free trial once you are done, and don’t just let it expire. I wasn’t expecting this to happen, cause obviously with something like Privacy that is impossible, and considering I changed the card number, I am unsure how Classpass could still charge me, but they were able to. Both times, I was able to get my money back though, but emailing the customer support, asking them if they could track which account it was tied to (b/c I usually forgot which email I had running at the time for classpass), and they were able to refund me within 1-3 days. But it was a lesson learnt.
Revolut. This is for more international users, but I also use Revolut which also has a feature like Privacy.com where you can generate virtual cards. Has the ability to freeze a card, put spending limit, so on. The only annoying thing, is I had to deposit money into it their system to work - “sort-of” like Venmo. So that way, when I put 1 or 2 dollar spending limits, so that it passes the initial pending checks companies do to charge the card 1 or 2 dollars, that it would pass. But with just 5 dollars or so loaded, I’ve been able to generate and use Revolut card without issue.
Other credit card options: there are other options out there I am aware of too, such as Robinhood Gold Card, and other services that lets you generate credit cards / debit cards.
I have found specifically for Classpass, Privacy.com doesn’t work cause they reject things called “prepaid debit cards” which is what Privacy.com looks like to them. Again, this is a rare thing to guard against, but they do. Which is why I just end up using the other methods listed.
Unique Identifier - Incognito Mode
The final hurdle, to get around with classpass was figuring out why every time I made a new account on my phone, I couldn’t use any of the credit, and I found out, I believe, that Classpass is tracking my device’s unique device id.
B/c of this any new accounts generated on my phone would fail to let me use any of the credit, even if the account was successfully generated.
Instead what I had to do was just simply use the web version of classpass, and go incognito mode.
Create a new email
Create a new number
Add a temporary credit card
And from there, sign up for my class for the week.
Closing
Obviously, there are tons of ways to go from here. I’ve used this, especially if you have a partner or friend, to get referral bonuses for “grocery apps”, for crunchyroll accounts, for xyz new sign-up bonus etc. There is pain to this, so if it not worth my time, it isn’t something I constantly do, but even just knowing all this to hide your identity from a company is something I find worth it.
For example, maybe I sign up for a subscription that I actually use, but they make it impossible to cancel **cough cough, adobe**, then by giving them a credit card, email, and so-on that has a layer of obfuscation, I can just cancel the temporary credit card.
Resources Compiled:
Only doing number services since this is the hardest ones to generate other than credit cards.
Non-Voip Number Services:
Voip Services:
Special Notes Edit:
July 31st, 2024:
Was introduced to MySudo another alternative for free emails / new phone numbers. the 99 cents a month plan gets you a free number, to delete and get a new number, costs another 99 cents. So this is potentially quite decent. Still playing with it.
Firefox Relay is another method I’ve learnt to do custom email masking too, if you don’t have iCloud.
August 13th, 2024:
Was introduced to another way to relay emails:
https://addy.io/
Set up your own domain and you can have infinite emails always forwarding to yourself with your own domain (can buy a cheap domain):
https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/310/2214/how-to-set-up-a-catchall-wildcard-email-address/
August 29th:
SMSVirtual doesn’t work with classpass anymore. Was able to get it working with VerifySMS which generates non-voip numbers, and passes along codes one time for 20 minutes. Also looking into using pvadeals which is unlimited sms text message short-term-rental too.
Also had trouble getting my cards added so I used a brave browser on my phone and apple pay to link my robinhood virtual card. Kind of a pain, I don’t know why manual link doesn’t work but whatever.
September 6th:
Is another great non-voip service.
Very useful information.