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Block: Inflated user metrics and “frictionless” fraud facilitation

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Re: Block: Inflated user metrics and “frictionless” fraud facilitation

#271

Post by knodi123 »

yeahsure22 wrote: post #222
gessha wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, yes, it’s the people who got scammed who are at fault. Everyone should always be ultra suspicious of everyone around them, no happiness or fun allowed. \s I want to live in a world where I can trust a random stranger, not suspect them of robbing me. Justifying some extra protections like a pin or a fingerprint check to finalize a transactions should not be this big of a deal.

You do live in that world. You can trust random strangers but not ones the look like “youths” in Baltimore. Use your brain to asses the risk level.

Can you give me more detail about what physical characteristics define a "dangerous youth" in Baltimore?

Re: Block: Inflated user metrics and “frictionless” fraud facilitation

#272

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #188
finfrastrcuture wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of Brazilian banks which have introduced "Street Mode" to secure your banking app while out of the home: https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/brazil/nubank-wil...

"Brazilianization" is a real phenomenon, isn't it? One wishes we weren't going that way in the West, but we are.

I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. In my city in the US, police have basically said outright they won't respond to a host of petty crime offenses unless there is a severe injury. I was in a blatant hit and run, and police told me they wouldn't respond unless there was an injury, and to just contact my insurance. The obvious morale hazard to this is that there is literally zero downside to running, which basically has resulted in a level of traffic lawlessness that was unheard of 15 years ago. Even with clear dashcam video cops will do nothing.

Re: Block: Inflated user metrics and “frictionless” fraud facilitation

#273

Post by filoleg »

mtoner23 wrote: post #150
user3939382 wrote: post #79

FYI if anyone is interested I can prove it -- Cash App is engaged in a massive stock trading fraud. I noticed one day that my books were off (down) by 1 penny. When I dug into it, I figured out that Cash App is providing their customers with conflicting reports for their stock sales. In the app, the sales report rounds pennies up, in the actual sale, whose records are only available through more complex data export p…

can almost gaurantee you this is not fraud its an odd lot exception. If you dont do trades in round lots brokers are allowed to bunch your orders together and not give you best execution.

I am hesitant to call it fraud yet, but the situation you are describing isn't what the parent comment is talking about.

The issue isn't that it was executed at a higher price than expected or that it was "rounded up" in general. The issue is that for a single completed transaction, in one place (general app UI) it is reported to have executed at one price, and in another place (the data export process) it is reported at a different price.

Re: Block: Inflated user metrics and “frictionless” fraud facilitation

#274

Post by anovikov »

smolder wrote: post #269
anovikov wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it is a bit too much, but in general, Western societies should work on educating people to greatly reduce their amount of trust in other people. Current Western trust levels are simply not reflective of reality: they were meant for a white society with a single, enforced religion, where everyone was shaking in fear of divine punishment. We live in a global world now and vast majority of it never had or expected…

Reducing trust is better in some respects, but deeply harmful in others. What would be great instead is to increase accountability so that it's safer to trust. In the case of scam money transfers, a path to reversal would be a start .

Unfortunately, with the ridiculous level of trust people have in the West, that will be only a vehicle for more scams. Especially "path to reversal". Sure the world is overall low-trust and it creates a lot of friction. Only alternative to avoid the switch would be to never start globalisation.

Re: Block: Inflated user metrics and “frictionless” fraud facilitation

#275

Post by reducesuffering »

trimbo wrote: post #92
overthrow wrote: post #24

I didn't know Square had changed their name to Block. Looks like it happened in December 2021: https://investors.block.xyz/news/news-details/2021/Square-In... That said this really seems overblown. The report seems to mostly just talk about Cash App. Square Payments, Weebly and TIDAL are not even mentioned. Afterpay is mentioned but that was a 2022 acquisition so the problems likely predate Block's involvement. It fe…

> It feels weird that they're using Cash App to indict the company as a whole. Cash App is 60% of their revenue.

Their "revenue" is also trading bitcoins, where people buy/sell bitcoins on their platform and is booked as $28k revenue (current price) where they only ever stand to profit like $10 off that.

Re: Block: Inflated user metrics and “frictionless” fraud facilitation

#276

Post by chucksmash »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #129
jstx1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you have anyone to blame if you give your phone with a logged in money app to a stranger who is begging for money.

> I don't think you have anyone to blame It’s a negligent move for sure, but a crime is still a crime. Having someone steal your money without your consent is still theft and they are still the perpetrator of the crime. The victim-blaming mentality on the internet is wild. Being negligent or naive doesn’t shift 100% of the blame to the victim when a crime occurs.

> The victim-blaming mentality on the internet is wild. Being negligent or naive doesn’t shift 100% of the blame to the victim when a crime occurs.

Nobody is claiming the criminals are blameless or that a crime is not a crime.

It's astoundingly dumb to hand a piece of electronics worth several hundred dollars to someone in such an interaction, even if they cannot use it to electronically steal your money.

The criminal is a criminal, and the person who hands their phone to someone under these circumstances is mind bogglingly naive. The former fact is tautological so it's natural to focus on the latter part, the one that boggles the mind. How could anybody possibly fall for this? Were they very young? Were they old? Were they distracted or drunk or lulled by the perpetrator? Were they out of towners? Were they intimidated? One wonders.

Re: Block: Inflated user metrics and “frictionless” fraud facilitation

#277

Post by Fatnino »

reaperducer wrote: post #208
cal5k wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Risky move, given that Georgia is a constitutional carry state and castle doctrine extends to occupied vehicles.

Risky move, given that Georgia is a constitutional carry state and castle doctrine extends to occupied vehicles. Not really. By the time a seat-belted person gets to their gun, whether in a holster, under the seat, in a purse, or in the glove box, the thief is long gone. Real life is very different from the movies.

You are asserting that it takes a long time to get a gun out.

I remember a few years back there was some controversy about how police are trained to shoot first and one of the things that bubbled up then was a video (I think produced by someone teaching the police) of a seated driver drawing a gun and having it pointed out the window in a fraction of a second. The gun was in a holster down by the seat belt buckle. And the next instant it was pointing out the driver's window.

Re: Block: Inflated user metrics and “frictionless” fraud facilitation

#278

Post by [deleted] »

chii wrote: post #42
overthrow wrote: post #24

I didn't know Square had changed their name to Block. Looks like it happened in December 2021: https://investors.block.xyz/news/news-details/2021/Square-In... That said this really seems overblown. The report seems to mostly just talk about Cash App. Square Payments, Weebly and TIDAL are not even mentioned. Afterpay is mentioned but that was a 2022 acquisition so the problems likely predate Block's involvement. It fe…

> It feels weird that they're using Cash App to indict the company as a whole. they profit off shorting. So it makes sense to target them if the company has _some_ issues with fraud, even if it's a small part of their business, as it hasn't been priced in yet before this news breaks and people are positive about the company. They aren't doing a public service or anything. It's a reason why companies like credit suiss…

[deleted]

Re: Block: Inflated user metrics and “frictionless” fraud facilitation

#279

Post by kolbe »

olalonde wrote: post #244
lanstin wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corpus of libertarian writing in social media about crypto and banking regulations and fractional reserve banking and FDIC would tend to disprove your statement about libertarian beliefs. No doubt in some academic tower of excellence, the arguments are tightly wound and full of data, but it isn’t propagating to the common discourse.

I meant to reference Block CEO Jack Dorsey in my comment. I'm pretty sure he knows the intended objectives behind AML regulations and so on. I doubt that he would go "oh! I didn't think about this" if someone were to explain their purpose to him. Plus, in case that was your point, Chesterton's Fence is about a lack of reasoning about the purpose of the rules, not a bad reasoning.

At the Dorsey level, the "rule" could be something entirely different. The existing industry rule could be that human review is necessary to comply with AML laws. Dorsey thinks technology can take care of it while cutting costs, totally unaware of the decades and decades where existing money transfer businesses experimented with it, and saw how it didn't work.

Re: Block: Inflated user metrics and “frictionless” fraud facilitation

#280

Post by djbusby »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #240
djbusby wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zelle has the same issue. Cannot unwind a fraudulent transaction. So, just avoid CashApp and Zelle.

It's not that you can't unwind them, it's that you can't do so through normal channels. Complain to the Office of the Comptroller of Currency and it will get fixed. I'd still avoid those apps, but I don't want anyone who got scammed to read your comment and give up hope.

Didn't work for me.
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