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Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

nytimes.com

251–260 of 274 posts

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

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Inter-bank money transfers in US are handled by a system that needs multiple "business days" I wired some money from my US bank account to my Swedish bank account. The US bank obviously operates on a batch process basis, because around 6AM EST I got an email from my US bank saying that they've sent the money, and I should expect it within three days in my destination account. It was already available in my Swedish…

What do you suggest we do, start our own bank?

"we" did, it's called PayPal.

Except they suck in other ways than the regular US banks.

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

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Inter-bank money transfers in US are handled by a system that needs multiple "business days" I wired some money from my US bank account to my Swedish bank account. The US bank obviously operates on a batch process basis, because around 6AM EST I got an email from my US bank saying that they've sent the money, and I should expect it within three days in my destination account. It was already available in my Swedish…

Well, most Americans aren't doing international wire transfers. I've never had an issue with my American credit union. I draft loans directly out of my account and I can send money to anyone for free (instantly to people with the same bank.) For everything else, I use my credit card for the fraud protection and rewards points.

It's still three days if you send money between for example Chase and Wells Fargo, because... Fuck if I know why.

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

#253
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I complained to them, they called me a liar and refused to do anything. Atleast in germany you have a multitude of options you can pull even without a lawyer getting involved. You can also file legal complaints easily and most fraudsters will drop the money at that point and apologize. Added to that is that most online payment in germany works with a push system, which means you'll see the amount you'll transf…

> Atleast in germany you have a multitude of options you can pull even without a lawyer getting involved. You can also file legal complaints easily and most fraudsters will drop the money at that point and apologize. In this case, all I had to do was log into my credit card website, click "dispute transaction", explain what happened, and forget about it. Moreover, I don't know what would have happened legally , as it…

>I didn't have a receipt or anything.

IIRC from my current law course, if you didn't get a receipt (or other proof of transaction/contract) the vendor has no right to your money. You'll get receipts everywhere.

Fraud is rare enough here that it's not much of a hassle, the legal system being in favor of the customer helps too.

Germany has also a rather non-credit oriented mindset, people don't like taking up debts or credit, a debit card is usually prefered by everyone, seller and buyer.

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

#254
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…

Whenever I had to go to the bank for whatever reason, I would check out the teller's desks while they were working on my transaction. It passed the time, but it was pretty interesting.

At least at that time, at that bank branch, a typical teller's desk included: 1 Dell desktop and accompanying monitor, 1 automatic bill counter, 1 desk calculator, 1 check reader, probably a few pens and some with cute designs on them, a few stationery holders for various slips, forms, notices and marketing materials.

All in all, pretty boring affair, but near as I can tell banks are basically stuffy offices from the 80s. Just swap out the Dell for I dunno, an IBM PC or an Apple //.

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

#255
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But it seems the standards forced down by the EU resulted in a faster, more efficient system? As a private individual or person doing business in the EU I don't have to care about the different gateways in various EU countries or the difference between ACH and wire. I just make a transfer via online banking or authorize a SEPA Direct Debit withdrawal by ticking a checkbox in an online shop. There's zero friction. Whe…

I don't think so. The EU isn't better off than the US when it comes to cellphone standards as such and it certainly haven't made them any better at building successful companies.

EU is trying to solve a bunch of things through legislation which the market should be solving on it it's own.

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

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, most Americans aren't doing international wire transfers. I've never had an issue with my American credit union. I draft loans directly out of my account and I can send money to anyone for free (instantly to people with the same bank.) For everything else, I use my credit card for the fraud protection and rewards points.

It's still three days if you send money between for example Chase and Wells Fargo, because... Fuck if I know why.

Three separate cron jobs are needed to clear the transaction, and they only run at midnight, because that's how they were set up decades ago? (My guess)

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

#258
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BMO in Canada is the same, but six characters. And although you can use alphanumeric characters, it automatically doubles as a phone banking password, so (at least at one point) they were all translated into characters 2-9 in their system. So even online, you could log in with the phone digit equivalent of your exactly 6 digit password.

Yeah it's shitty, but I mean at least they have a 100% guarantee on all online stuff where if you didn't give away your pin/password/card, and didn't make it your name/address/number/other personal info they will refund you. Which I mean isn't much help but at least is something. I wish they had 2FA.

Banks will lock the account after a few mistakes. Even a 4 digit pin would be secure.

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

#259
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot think of a single good reason to impose this. Good? Definitely not, but my money is on CHAR(8) and a lack of understanding.

Dollar to a donut, there is or was a mainframe involved in authentication that has an 8 character password. I even bet the company that sold it was IBM. I remember finding out at one job that the "reason" for the 8 character password requirement for one of our logins, was "you can type as much as you want, but eventually we just take the first 8 characters and use that to log you into the mainframe as thats all it ac…

I remember DB2 had some weird limits. I think it was something like database names couldn't be more than 8 bytes, which was something to do with some filesystem on z/OS or something that couldn't have directories with names longer than that (probably not quite right, but it was something like that).

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

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dollar to a donut, there is or was a mainframe involved in authentication that has an 8 character password. I even bet the company that sold it was IBM. I remember finding out at one job that the "reason" for the 8 character password requirement for one of our logins, was "you can type as much as you want, but eventually we just take the first 8 characters and use that to log you into the mainframe as thats all it ac…

I’ve seen limitations that even go back to paper records. I worked at a medium sized company where at least 20% of database variables were limited by the number of characters on a paper card system developed in the 50s.

Text editors still have a line at 80 characters, which comes from punch cards.
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