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I just lost my wallet on the way home from work

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Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work

#301
post #55
post #22

My bank only seems to allow 12 characters. Why is that? What am I even supposed to do with 12 characters?

Mine allows about an original tweet in length, but forces a line break in the middle, and it disallows dangerous characters. Just the usual suspects that always break everything and cause database tables to be dropped or commands to be injected. Exclamation marks are super dangerous. I never understood this.

Honestly, I can understand stripping characters at a large organization like a bank. It shouldn't ever be necessary, but it protects against that brainfart/junior dev/marketing analytics software, with little cost.

Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work

#303

This is neat! I once found someone’s debit card on the street (in the US). It had a small face shot on it, so I found them on Facebook and sent them a message. Of course, Facebook had already started doing the “messages from non-friends are really hard to find lol” UI dark pattern, so like two years later the woman responds thanking me, but also saying she just canceled the card. Which is what I would’ve done, but I…

I've found quite a few things over the years. Phones. Car keys. Cards. Wallets. I've run after people who left purses, bags, chargers, and even a guy who straight-up forgot his laptop on a table. The vast majority of the time, these things happen in some establishment with a lost-and-found I can turn items over to.

I have, though, found a half dozen credit/debit cards in the past two years outside of any good place to leave them (parking lots/garages, streets, sidewalks...). I guess I'm a good-samaritan with a healthy dose of paranoia/skepticism/cynicism. When there's no obvious place that I think the owner will know to look, I tell someone I know that I found it, and promptly cut the card up into fine pieces, mix them, split the pieces into a few groups, and dispose of them in a 4+ trashcans in different locations (this is probably excessive, but my goal is to dispose of the card with as much caution as I would get rid of my own card if I knew it could still be charged to.)

I have weighed trying to return them, but I ended up triangulating against the chances I'll: waste time tracking down someone who has already canceled the card anyways, send the card to the wrong person, completely creep someone out by tracking them down, or get caught with a card that has been reported stolen and have a hard time proving I didn't steal it.

Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work

#304
post #235

Am i reading too much into this? The twitter user just so happens to works for a company that uses the technology the "good Samaritan" used. I just glanced at who the guy was, and found it funny that he works in the industry. Who knows, maybe that's why he found it so awesome. "In April 2018, TransferWise joined Faster Payments as the first non-bank payment service provider to be a directly connected settling partici…

Yes. Pretty much any domestic bank transfer initiated electronically via mobile/online banking will be cleared through Faster Payments up to a limit of about £25,000 ($32,000) for most banks (the theoretical limit is an order of magnitude higher), making it the de facto way of transferring money in the UK. When I was a student, bank transfers by Faster Payments were more common than cash payments for settling small d…

This... In India we have UPI Unified Payment Interface, in which with a bank account & phone number, you can signup to any of the tens of participating banks UPI address, in format of user@bank Mine is dav@hdfcbank. Totally safe & one way only, incoming. You just need to plug this into your bank app, in micro seconds the money will be out of your account & in to my account. Works 24x7x365

Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work

#305
post #288

Two weeks ago in Maui at the visitor center at Mt. Haleakala a distraught young woman came in saying she had dropped her wallet somewhere between the visitor center and the peak. When she went to the women's bathroom in the visitor center to check if she might have dropped it there, she found someone else had forgotten their iPhone by the sink. Within a few minutes an older couple walked into the visitor center and s…

and at that moment the volcano erupted..

Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speeding tickets make sense. They're putting people's lives in danger by speeding. Driving is the most dangerous thing most people do regularly. Having a set of predictable behaviors saves a lot of lives. People who think that think they're "great drivers" or "everyone else is doing it" violate those norms and create risk.

> Speeding tickets make sense. They're putting people's lives in danger by speeding. Driving is the most dangerous thing most people do regularly. Having a set of predictable behaviors saves a lot of lives. People who think that think they're "great drivers" or "everyone else is doing it" violate those norms and create risk. Speed at which you drive has very little to do with your predictability. "Oh, no, Betty is dr…

I signalled and looked over my shoulder before changing lanes today, only to see an unexpected car right behind me when I looked back into my rear-view mirror. I'm still not sure whether they changed lanes into my lane, or if they were going so fast that they weren't in my field of vision until I turned back around. They braked in time, though.

Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work

#307
post #235

Am i reading too much into this? The twitter user just so happens to works for a company that uses the technology the "good Samaritan" used. I just glanced at who the guy was, and found it funny that he works in the industry. Who knows, maybe that's why he found it so awesome. "In April 2018, TransferWise joined Faster Payments as the first non-bank payment service provider to be a directly connected settling partici…

It is coincidental that the person who lost their wallet is working in that industry, but it probably helped the story go viral instead of just disappearing.

I happen to be friends with the guy who found the wallet - we met at the CouchSurfing meetup in Kaohsiung, when he visited Taiwan.

This was his personal reaction:

"I found a wallet in the middle of the road while cycling home from work today. I couldn't find the guy on Facebook, but one of his bank cards had his sort code and account number printed on it, so I got in touch by transferring him 4p and including my phone number in the payment references. It worked, and he tweeted about it, and it's gone viral! Unfortunately so have I (with a cold) but this is making me feel much better"

"A fitting end to perhaps the strangest day of my life. More reflection tomorrow once I've wrapped my head round it all x" (with a link to a video from 7News Australia about it).

Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work

#308
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it happens, and sometimes not. I lost my wallet 4 times in total, 3 in Brazil (which is $HOME), 1 in Germany. Got it back 3 out of 4 times. Guess where.

Are you sure you didn't lose your wallet 1 time in Brazil and 7 times in Germany?

good one!(americans will not get it)

Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work

#309
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK the details needed to transfer money into an account are on most bank cards (Account Number and Sort Code), so that's enough identifying info. That would also mean someone can send you money if your card is blocked or cancelled. Account number and sort code don't change when you get a new card. Also, "Faster Payments" is the name of the normal system to transfer money between accounts in the UK. It doesn't…

I'm curious about this. I've always banked with NatWest so I'm only really familiar with their cards, but my bank account number is definitely not printed on the card (the sort code is). Do some other UK banks really print the account numbers on their cards? Or is there some way to send a Faster payment to a debit card number?

I'm with Starling Bank, and along with the usual Mastercard numbers (card number, expiry, CVV etc.) it has the account number... though not the sort code, strangely. I guess you could look it up if you wanted to, but you'd need to know this 8-digit number with no label was the account number. Weird.

Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a legitimate concern, but the way to combat isn't to silently hide messages behind unfamiliar UI. For a contrast, consider email junk filters, which generally serve a similar purpose but are accessible enough to easily scan through in case of legitimate messages being lost.

I've come across a type of scam where someone on a dating app like tinder will pose as an attractive person with the intention of trying to convince the victim to engage in sexually explicit texts or snapchats. Once they do, the scammer then looks up the friends of friends of the facebook profile associated with the number and then tries to blackmail the victim with threats of sending embarrassing texts to their clos…

Actually, the best thing you could do would be to not send someone pictures of yourself you wouldn't like shared. Also, the scammer could just add them as friends first.
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