Many apps and services are welcome to try it for free for a limited period of time, but this requires you to enter your credit card details before you start.This means that you risk paying for the service if you forget to cancel the subscription before the end of the trial period, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and even Apple Arcade. Will be coming soon.
DoNotPay, an application for avoiding vehicle parking violations, provides a solution to this problem through a new feature called Free Trial Surfing.
Mechanism of Action
This feature works by generating a fake credit card name and number for each user, allowing access to the service without the use of real financial information, while automatically canceling the trial subscription when it supervises completion and avoiding any unexpected payment.
These erroneous details are provided by an unknown bank that works with application developer Josh Browder, and is registered with his application.
The application also handles the emails the company sends to the fake card, forwarding it to the user's real email address.
While giving your email will not cost you a monthly fee, keeping these addresses hidden will probably protect you from receiving marketing emails, or - at worst - from data breaches.
Mr Browder says you can't use these phantom card details to pay anything, avoiding potential abuse of the system.
He adds that the only way subscribers can circumvent the system is to stop supporting all of the issuing bank's customers, which Mr Browder says would be a bad idea given its size, or if they stop offering completely free trial subscriptions.
The app is currently available for free download from the Apple App Store, but the developer says it is working on a web version as well as an Android version, and says it may charge a subscription fee for using its service.
The app is available to users in the United States, where it has about 10,000 users since its launch six weeks ago, as it was launched this week in the United Kingdom, while it will not be clear when it will be released to users worldwide.
However, the app, as pointed out by iNews, is not currently appearing on the Apple App Store, but according to the British website Expert Review, it can only be accessed as part of the "Don't Pay" app.