41–50 of 69 posts
Quick question : would you pay extra fees for a credit card that only allows transaction from whitelisted stores and if used online, the shipping address could be only to a whitelisted address ?
Wait, I don't get this. The Amex agent called the old phone number on the account. The person who answered gave some indication of being the account owner, but didn't answer quite as many questions correctly as the thief. So what scenario is the agent hypothesizing? The person at the old number was actually the identity thief, and used the account for maybe several years without any challenge, before the actual owner…
While I agree that AMEX should have just locked the account for fraud, one possible explanation that would create this scenario is a relationship breakup. Man breaks up with his partner, and moves out of their shared home. He changes his phone number to be his new home. Amex calls the old number, gets the old partner who is particularly vindictive and decides to answer the questions as well as he can. When I worked i…
Don't allow people to share accounts? That seems to solve a lot of problems. What problems does it create?
The best part of the story is how he hacked the US immigration system to be able to stay in the US after serving his time: > Factoring in time served and a reduction for good behavior, Naskovets got out in September 2012. He faced a deportation order that would have sent him back to Belarus. Representing himself in immigration court, he argued that he risked torture if sent home, based on his run-ins with the KGB. As…
On the other side - that Boston gangster, "Whitey", was allowed even to kill people as long as he was informing for FBI, so immigration is just a peanuts compare to it.
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While I agree that AMEX should have just locked the account for fraud, one possible explanation that would create this scenario is a relationship breakup. Man breaks up with his partner, and moves out of their shared home. He changes his phone number to be his new home. Amex calls the old number, gets the old partner who is particularly vindictive and decides to answer the questions as well as he can. When I worked i…
> If a husband and wife share and account and share an address do you send them separate statements, or combine them? Don't allow people to share accounts? That seems to solve a lot of problems. What problems does it create?
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> If a husband and wife share and account and share an address do you send them separate statements, or combine them? Don't allow people to share accounts? That seems to solve a lot of problems. What problems does it create?
When you're married, a shared account is pretty important.
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I can't really argue with you but I have lots of sympathy for the kid despite him being a criminal. It's probably because I was born in a country occupied by Russia until the 90s and his is still and I can't bring myself to wish this unto anyone. It's probably not a good idea to trust a con-man but I think he's likely to become a net positive asset to society.
You are misinformed, Belarus is not occupied by Russia.
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When you're married, a shared account is pretty important.
Having never been married, I can only guess. Is it for quickly transferring funds between the married individuals?
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Having never been married, I can only guess. Is it for quickly transferring funds between the married individuals?
No, it's for having a shared pool of money. Both regularly deposit some amount of money into it, and it goes for shared expenses like food, house maintenance, gas...
Anyone have any idea whether this could have been prevented if banks in the US required PIN to process a transaction? Would fraudulent transactions go down significantly if stolen cards couldn't be used without PINs?
Not requiring a PIN is an example of this. If your customers have to memorize and enter a PIN, this added friction will cause at least some of them to pay cash (or whatever other payment method) instead. That's lost revenue.
Similarly, it shocks many people to learn that credit card merchant agreements forbid requiring customers to show ID as part of the transaction. Seems like a sensible way to fight fraud, right? But it also adds friction, which reduces credit card use rates, which hurts card company profits, so they don't let you do that.
This stuff is all a careful tradeoff. They know how much they lose to fraud, and how much they gain in legitimate transactions from making things easier. The goal is not zero fraud, but rather whatever level of fraud is optimal for their profits, which is almost certainly not zero.