Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years • Hacker News Board

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#21

Post by nstart » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 3:14 AM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #17

twunde wrote: post #6

I think the most impressive part is that apparently the same system and code had been running for 15 years as the number of transactions reported on had increased exponentially

They did, it just left out a few transactions (26,810 transactions over 15 years is a very small number).

Good point. Just under 5 transactions a day really. I think the point that's really annoyed the sec is the number of years they have to go back and correct now that they have the right data.

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#22

Post by eli » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 3:14 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #15

fredfoobar42 wrote: post #12

$7m is pocket change for Citigroup. No wonder the big banks keep shitting the bed. There's never any real consequences for their fuckups.

> Citigroup failing to send information on 26,810 transactions in over 2,300 such requests. 26810 requests, do you think they made more than $7m on this? It's about proportional fines. Just because they're a giant company doesn't mean we should find then $1b for forgetting to put a handicapped parking space at one of their offices.

There is a school of thought that punitive fines should be a proportion of company value/earnings rather than an absolute dollar figure to exact an equal amount of discomfort.

I think Finnish speeding fines are a percent of income.

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#23

Post by jswny » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 3:14 AM UTC

Important to note that they only left these transactions out of report data sent to the SEC. It's not like they were not honoring the transactions or that some people were missing money.

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#24

Post by argelius » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 3:23 AM UTC

This makes me feel more comfortable with the reality that some broken code I wrote a long time ago might still be running somewhere... :)

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#25

Post by insickness » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 3:34 AM UTC

eli wrote: post #22

rtpg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Citigroup failing to send information on 26,810 transactions in over 2,300 such requests. 26810 requests, do you think they made more than $7m on this? It's about proportional fines. Just because they're a giant company doesn't mean we should find then $1b for forgetting to put a handicapped parking space at one of their offices.

There is a school of thought that punitive fines should be a proportion of company value/earnings rather than an absolute dollar figure to exact an equal amount of discomfort. I think Finnish speeding fines are a percent of income.

Even if fines were in proportion to company value/earnings, they would also need to be in proportion to the violation. Not every violation is equally as egregious.

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#26

Post by comp1927 » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 3:44 AM UTC

//Try this in your console.

function should_not_exclude_10B_10C(x) { if ("089" should_not_exclude_10B_10C("10B")

should_not_exclude_10B_10C("10C")

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#27

Post by kazinator » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 3:55 AM UTC

Synopsis: SEC sends clear message to tech people in finance: shut the fuck up if you find something, silently fix it, and sweep the remaining crumbs under the rug, or else your company will be fined millions.

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#28

Post by AdeptusAquinas » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 4:22 AM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #27

Synopsis: SEC sends clear message to tech people in finance: shut the fuck up if you find something, silently fix it, and sweep the remaining crumbs under the rug, or else your company will be fined millions.

If they did that and the SEC found out, they probably wouldn't stop at just fining you. Which is probably what Citigroup guessed and why, after realising the extent of the issue, they reported it fully within a month

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#29

Post by trentnelson » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 4:23 AM UTC

nstart wrote: post #21

jonknee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did, it just left out a few transactions (26,810 transactions over 15 years is a very small number).

Good point. Just under 5 transactions a day really. I think the point that's really annoyed the sec is the number of years they have to go back and correct now that they have the right data.

And these systems clear around 1.5-2.5 million transactions a day at the moment.

Re: Citigroup fined $7m after legit transactions mistaken for test data for 15 years

#30

Post by sf56 » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 4:26 AM UTC

Totally unrelated, but I am not surprised. I once logged into my Citi credit card account and was granted access to another user's account. Certain places were off limits but I was able to view a lot of details. Pretty scary! I never heard back after reporting the issue.