Live data from Hacker News

NY Payroll Company Vanishes with $35M

krebsonsecurity.com

1–10 of 94 posts

Re: NY Payroll Company Vanishes with $35M

#3

Is it possible to protect one's direct-deposit wages from (unjustified) ACH reversals, by transferring funds into a different account ASAP after the deposit occurs? I.e., by maintaining an account that serves only as a temporary inbox for direct deposit?

This is what I do. Not sure if it’ll work for this case, but my primary reason was to remove a single point of failure from my “banking architecture” and avoid the headaches publicized by people on HN that lost access or to their only bank. Hopefully I never will have to find out if it works!

Re: NY Payroll Company Vanishes with $35M

#4

Is it possible to protect one's direct-deposit wages from (unjustified) ACH reversals, by transferring funds into a different account ASAP after the deposit occurs? I.e., by maintaining an account that serves only as a temporary inbox for direct deposit?

I think that this doesn't protect you and you would just end up over drafting your account, resulting in fees.

Re: NY Payroll Company Vanishes with $35M

#5

Is it possible to protect one's direct-deposit wages from (unjustified) ACH reversals, by transferring funds into a different account ASAP after the deposit occurs? I.e., by maintaining an account that serves only as a temporary inbox for direct deposit?

Yes, and if you don't bank with one of the big banks (BofA, Wells Fargo etc) you'll be fine (those bigger banks deal with so many screwups that they'll just debit a different one of your accounts assuming it was a mistake). Or use two different banks if you can move money back and forth easily and for free.

If you have a company it's really important to create a special account solely for auto debits and move money in there manually. This saved my bacon when ADP mis-debited a couple of hundred $K from a payroll run once.

Re: NY Payroll Company Vanishes with $35M

#8
Interesting, and a bit frightening about the lack of security.

I have had to work with the equivalent process for payments in the UK - we where fixing up a problem when the accounts receivable system would not cut the BACS tape for 6 months!

Submitting a BACS Tape required the use of onetime codes and a physical device and this was in the late 80's

Re: NY Payroll Company Vanishes with $35M

#9
This does seem like a nightmare scenario for the vast majority (4 in 5?) of Americans who live cheque-to-cheque.

Your pay is yanked, life doesn't stop and the bills keep coming. A few days, a week later, it's corrected and the pay reappears. Who's on the hook for your overdraft fees?

Re: NY Payroll Company Vanishes with $35M

#10
post #7

ACH reversals are horrible when they mistakenly happen. They really are a selling point for getting paid in cryptocurrency.

Wouldn't a flag on the ACH that makes it irreversible accomplish the same goal with considerably less overhead? I think it's already possible to do this with a wire transfer.
Post reply on HN