Card Exposure Control by LifeLock

Whenever you save your credit or debit card online, you’re entrusting another company to protect your sensitive financial information. Over time, your card details can end up on an array of shopping sites, delivery apps, subscription services, and travel platforms, many of which you probably don’t even remember using. And the more places your card details are stored, the more vulnerable they are to being exposed in a data breach.

Card Exposure Control, available on all LifeLock plans, gives you better visibility and more control over your stored payment information, helping reduce the risk of your data being exposed in a data leak or breach that could lead to financial fraud or identity theft.

How Card Exposure Control works

Card Exposure Control reviews your transaction history across connected accounts and identifies online merchants where you’ve used your credit or debit card. It then determines which of those merchants are most likely to still have your information, provides a risk rating of the merchants, and guides you through the process of requesting removal.

Here’s a step-by-step look at what Card Exposure Control does:

1. It reviews your transaction history, scanning up to 12 months of transaction data across all your connected financial accounts to detect merchants where you’ve previously made a purchase.
2. It identifies potentially risky merchants, reviewing each merchant’s privacy policy to check whether they store card details and providing an individual security rating for each merchant to assess the risk of data exposure.
3. It helps you remove your card details, offering personalized instructions to guide you through the process of requesting removal of your financial data from each merchant’s database, and providing prefilled opt-out requests when relevant.

Why stored payment details can increase the risk of financial fraud

Every online merchant that has your card details on record is a potential weak point in your defense against data exposure. These merchants, like any other company, can suffer data breaches or leaks that leave your financial data compromised and at risk of being sold to cybercriminals on the dark web.

In fact, there were a record number of data breaches in 2025, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center's latest Annual Data Breach Report. And the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) consistently cites credit card fraud as the most commonly reported type of identity theft, most recently in its 2024 Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book.

Meanwhile, according to VISA’s 2025 Global Digital Shopping Index, 67% of U.S. shoppers used stored credentials for their most recent online purchase, and 41% store their payment credentials with online merchants most or all of the time.

In other words, even as consumers increasingly trust online merchants to store payment details, data breaches are exposing sensitive information at a record rate. That creates more opportunities for identity theft in the form of credit card fraud. And identity theft remains one of the most likely crimes to happen to you.

How Card Exposure Control helps you keep track of your payment details

Card Exposure Control is designed to help you understand where your payment information is stored, which merchants might pose a risk to your data security, and how you can reduce the overall risk that your financial details leak or end up with cybercriminals.  

Depending on how much you use your cards online, it may be impossible to remember every purchase you’ve made and every e-shop you’ve made it from. Plus, how are you supposed to know which merchants you can trust?

Here are some examples of real-world use cases for Card Exposure Control, all of which can help you defend against the risk of fraud or identity theft:

• Find old retailer accounts: An online store you made one purchase with months ago might still have your card details saved without you realizing it. Card Exposure Control identifies these potential vulnerabilities, so you can tie up loose ends that could be putting your finances at risk.
• Identify risky merchants: Not every company handles sensitive financial data carefully. Card Exposure Control assigns a risk level to each merchant that you store card details with, helping you prioritize data removal and decide how to balance convenience with security.
• Clean up old or unused subscriptions: How many current subscriptions do you no longer use? And how many of those have you canceled in the last 12 months? Card Exposure Control can help you identify subscription services that you no longer want holding your card details, so you can limit your exposure to major data breaches.

Note that Card Exposure Control doesn’t change your billing information with merchants or affect automatic payments. It just gives you insights that make it easier for you to take control of your own financial exposure.

Protect your financial data with LifeLock

Card Exposure Control, available in all LifeLock plans, helps you balance convenience and financial security, making it easier than ever to identify where your payment details are stored online and providing step-by-step guidance to help reduce the risk that they’re exposed. Plus, as a LifeLock member, you’ll also benefit from alerts to suspicious activity on your financial accounts, dark web monitoring, and identity theft reimbursement coverage.

FAQs

How does Card Exposure Control know where my billing information may be stored?

Card Exposure Control analyzes your transaction history to identify which merchants are likely to have your card details on file, based on signals like whether a transaction was completed online or in-person and what the merchant’s privacy policy says.

Why would I want to remove my billing information from a merchant?

Removing saved billing details from online merchants you no longer use or don’t trust to protect your data can reduce your exposure to fraud or data breaches. Thousands of data breaches happen each year, with billions of records like names, email addresses, passwords, and credit card numbers having been exposed in the past. In 2024 alone, the Leakd.com security team discovered a collection of 5 million unique credit and debit card details.

Can Card Exposure Control remove my card details for me?

No. Card Exposure Control guides you through the removal process with step-by-step instructions and pre-filled request forms, where available. It won’t make any changes to your card details with online merchants automatically.