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Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

nytimes.com

181–190 of 274 posts

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#181
post #4

Does anyone know the cause of the large and long standing difference in banking in US vs Europe? In europe: -for 15 or so years already, web banking has been with 2nd factor authentication (since its inception I assume). In previous decades we would get devices where you need to type numbers from its lcd screen into the webpage login. Today mobile auth apps are taking over. -I have never seen a bank have security que…

Some of the early politicians nd early presidents (jackson) had some odd ideas about central banks and Jackson in particular actually caused considerable financial problems.

Also private banks did not like being regulated by a central bank

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia may not be known as a banking superpower but it has the most user-friendly, affordable, efficient financial infrastructure of all the places I lived in. There's the most kickass Bill Pay system ever and DEFT, which allows paying by several methods including the credit card, potentially gaining reward points for paying rent. (Reward credit cards may be pricey though.) Overseas wire cost a measly flat AU$20 a…

> Nobody uses cheques, obviously (although they do exist). Cheques are now mainly used for business to consumer payments, and for large value transactions, where it's done as a bank-drawn cheque usually. The bank I use doesn't have a branch anywhere near where I live, so when I got sent a cheque a while ago I had to ask how to go about depositing it. Turns out the bank I use for my credit card will happily accept the…

I’ve still got a chequebook. It is probably 20 years old.

The last cheque I wrote was two years ago for a house deposit. I think the second last was 9 years before that for the deposit for our previous house.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t have cashier’s checks or banker’s drafts in Germany?

Germany is a very cash-oriented society. Many independent businesses don't take credit cards and most consumers prefer to pay in cash. Germans are very privacy-conscious, and there's a latent suspicion of debt and intangible money because of Weimar-era hyperinflation. https://www.german-way.com/germanys-cash-culture-geld-stinkt...

And there is a culture of hiding assets from the state. I remember a while back the German police where regularly catching pensioners driving to Luxembourg to smuggle large amounts of euros which they did not want to pay tax on.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and a tiny proportion of the most technologically sophisticated banks provide the ability to transfer money to any arbitrary person. In the country where I live all internet banks supports this. And all of course use 2FA. Most if not all banks here let's me do any kind or transactions. Not just viewing my data but transferring money, buying stock, setting up new bank accounts, pension management and everything else…

Well yes, the country where you live needs 2FA on online banking because it actually has transaction capabilities. The US essentially doesn't, so the lack of 2FA isn't a significant problem.

So why does the US banks not have transactions capabilities? Online banking without transactions seems like a oxymoron.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#185
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT: Just wondering why so many people are using password managers. When you use a password manager you have one single point of attack and failure. I wouldn't like to give all my credentials to one single entity.

The password manager is typically on a machine you control. If your machine is owned, you've got issues regardless. A password manager provides a way to effectively utilize higher-entropy, per-account passwords. As with all security-related matters, it's a tradeoff. I expect many choose password managers for this reason.

Pretty sure the typical password manager user does not control the machine.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#186
post #3

Every time I'm confronted with these types of questions I just roll my eyes and add a 'Mothers maiden name' text entry to my password manager with a 16 digit random string.

OT: Just wondering why so many people are using password managers. When you use a password manager you have one single point of attack and failure. I wouldn't like to give all my credentials to one single entity.

Also why would you use internet banking for your primary bank account its just increasing your attack surface.

I only have internet banking enabled for my secondary account (which has 2fa) which never has more than £100 in it and I only did that so I could xfer money to my p2p account.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#187
post #4

Does anyone know the cause of the large and long standing difference in banking in US vs Europe? In europe: -for 15 or so years already, web banking has been with 2nd factor authentication (since its inception I assume). In previous decades we would get devices where you need to type numbers from its lcd screen into the webpage login. Today mobile auth apps are taking over. -I have never seen a bank have security que…

There is no such thing as an international wiretransfer. Instead what you have is a set of agreements between gateway banks in each country allowing for the money to be made available from one country to another.

Other than that it's mainly consumer protection and the EU attempts to standarize everyhting vs. US less restrictive and more, leave it to the market to establish standards.

For historical context the Europe had a head start when it came to mobile with their implementation of the GSM standard where as the US was mostly left to find a winner between competing standards.

The EU have not specific advantage to the US today on the contrary one might say.

So basically what you have is a EU who are forcing standards down on countries vs. a US which let the markets mostly figure things out by themselves.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#188
post #4

Does anyone know the cause of the large and long standing difference in banking in US vs Europe? In europe: -for 15 or so years already, web banking has been with 2nd factor authentication (since its inception I assume). In previous decades we would get devices where you need to type numbers from its lcd screen into the webpage login. Today mobile auth apps are taking over. -I have never seen a bank have security que…

I was born Hungarian but now I am Canadian (hurray!) and this difference in banking totally baffles and irritates me to no end.

Rietumu in Latvia ten plus years ago already was using not just those hopping code authentication devices but also client side SSL certificates (at least for small business accounts, I never had a personal with them). Extremely secure but I wonder how well the generic public would deal with that.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#189
post #4

Does anyone know the cause of the large and long standing difference in banking in US vs Europe? In europe: -for 15 or so years already, web banking has been with 2nd factor authentication (since its inception I assume). In previous decades we would get devices where you need to type numbers from its lcd screen into the webpage login. Today mobile auth apps are taking over. -I have never seen a bank have security que…

Paper cheques are still super common in at least France and Germany.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#190
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia is fairly similar to this. Particularly the fee free transfers between banks (for both private and business) What’s interesting is that next year most of the banks seem to be launching an instant bank transfer system - big interbank implementation. Right now it takes generally 1 business day if you’ve transacted with that account before and 3 business days if you haven’t. I assume that’s some kind of anti f…

Australia may not be known as a banking superpower but it has the most user-friendly, affordable, efficient financial infrastructure of all the places I lived in. There's the most kickass Bill Pay system ever and DEFT, which allows paying by several methods including the credit card, potentially gaining reward points for paying rent. (Reward credit cards may be pricey though.) Overseas wire cost a measly flat AU$20 a…

good summary. Only bit missing would be the recently / soon to be phased out $2 non-bank ATM price gouge
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