Live data from Hacker News

221 Cannon is Not For Sale

fredbenenson.com

111–120 of 278 posts

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#111

1. Author lost me at his first sentence: "Like most people, I’ve had my identity stolen once or twice in my life." I am careful and aware of this possibility, but AFAIK I have not experienced this, nor have "most people" I know. o_O Crazy times. 2. I don't even understand how a title transfer could happen without verifying ownership. Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere?…

In the dark old days before Apple Pay, where it was common in America to hand your credit/debit card to some rando at a restaurant and have them disappear with it for a few minutes, about once a year my bank would call me to ask if I'd been using my card in some far-off locale: "Hi! Are you in Tijuana?" "Not since 1993. Why? What's up?" "So you didn't just try to buy gasoline at a PEMEX there?" "Nope, I'm in San Fran…

I've been using a debit card since the Dubya administration and I have never had someone use my card after I ate at a restaurant. I assume you live in a big metro area?

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the dark old days before Apple Pay, where it was common in America to hand your credit/debit card to some rando at a restaurant and have them disappear with it for a few minutes, about once a year my bank would call me to ask if I'd been using my card in some far-off locale: "Hi! Are you in Tijuana?" "Not since 1993. Why? What's up?" "So you didn't just try to buy gasoline at a PEMEX there?" "Nope, I'm in San Fran…

I've been using a debit card since the Dubya administration and I have never had someone use my card after I ate at a restaurant. I assume you live in a big metro area?

In Texas about a decade ago there was a criminal enterprise out of Houston that was putting swimmers on gas station pumps all over the state. Little towns, big towns, country gas stations. My now wife got hit that way.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the dark old days before Apple Pay, where it was common in America to hand your credit/debit card to some rando at a restaurant and have them disappear with it for a few minutes, about once a year my bank would call me to ask if I'd been using my card in some far-off locale: "Hi! Are you in Tijuana?" "Not since 1993. Why? What's up?" "So you didn't just try to buy gasoline at a PEMEX there?" "Nope, I'm in San Fran…

I've been using a debit card since the Dubya administration and I have never had someone use my card after I ate at a restaurant. I assume you live in a big metro area?

I am, but some of these events were when I was traveling through smaller Midwest towns. There doesn't seem to be a pattern to it.

In any case, it hasn't happened again since I started using tap to pay whenever possible.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#114

1. Author lost me at his first sentence: "Like most people, I’ve had my identity stolen once or twice in my life." I am careful and aware of this possibility, but AFAIK I have not experienced this, nor have "most people" I know. o_O Crazy times. 2. I don't even understand how a title transfer could happen without verifying ownership. Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere?…

So you’re from a different country from the author and don’t know how systems work here but you’re going to judge them for having their identity stolen? Maybe if you actually had any first hand experience you’d be able to muster some empathy. Yea things are decentralized here because we have 50 different states, many more counties, and health insurance is through a mish mash of many insurers and health providers. We are all regularly asked for the exact information needed to steal identity for basic stuff. I got a new dentist last month who has my date of birth, ssn, and home address. I’m going to tell him to stuff it and find a better dentist by, what? Calling around and asking if they require an ssn?

I have also never been the victim of identity theft but if you live here you would know luck plays a major role, always.

If you want to marinate in the superiority of you home country you are welcome to. Maybe don’t post on foreign message boards then.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have been going to some very shady restaurants. I still hand off my credit card to a rando. I did it today. I did it last weekend. I've never had this problem.

Yeah I agree. Not only do I hand off my card, literally everyone I know does so. None have ever had problems. I'm not saying that such fraud never happens, because it obviously does happen. But I don't think it's so overwhelmingly common as is being claimed here.

This source[0] is hardly unbiased, so take this with a heavy dose of "citation needed", but it claims:

> 62 million Americans had fraudulent charges on their credit or debit cards last year alone, with unauthorized purchases exceeding $6.2 billion annually.

However, that jibes with other numbers I've seen.

https://www.security.org/digital-safety/credit-card-fraud-re...

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#116

I have had people show up at my house to ask if it was for rent, based on a fake post on Facebook using photos from Zillow from before my home was sold. My realtor helped me get the photos taken down, but the Facebook ads for it are up to this day. Facebook completely ignores any and all attempts by me to report this malfeasance -- even though these ads literally have my personal home address on them! It's a huge saf…

I would contact Facebook legal directly with documents showing the problem. Legal’s job is always to minimize liability for the company, and they have levers they can pull in any organization, no matter how “hyper scale” they claim to be. Bonus points for figuring out the correct language to use to imply repercussions for failure to act without any actual threats. Patio11 has written about similarly worded letters wi…

"Patio11" itself is a magic incantion for your friendly neighborhood LLM, along with "dangerous professional". You can use these to prompt for suitable language in the email, as well as other courses of action.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#117

I have had people show up at my house to ask if it was for rent, based on a fake post on Facebook using photos from Zillow from before my home was sold. My realtor helped me get the photos taken down, but the Facebook ads for it are up to this day. Facebook completely ignores any and all attempts by me to report this malfeasance -- even though these ads literally have my personal home address on them! It's a huge saf…

Facebook admits around 10% of their ads are fraudulent. I think it's much higher.

The scam is even larger than you see and exploits missing children reports. There are huge automated scam networks that post missing children reports then get people to share them. Then once the post/ad gets traction they change it to a listing of a house that is auto pulled from public information. They then use that to scam people.

PleasantGreen has a series on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uud0wTAOxSc

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#118
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm equally careful and aware. Years ago, now, I discovered that someone in New Mexico (if I recall correctly) was working under my Social Security number. That was likely someone not authorized to work in the US writing random digits on an I9 form. No amount of care will protect against that. It wasn't easy to clear up, either. I'm fortunate that a close friend worked (at the time) for the SS administration, and was…

>That was likely someone not authorized to work in the US writing random digits on an I9 form. I used to work a job years ago with lots of people who snuck in here. In order to get the job they needed to provide a social. Not having any idea wtf a social security number was, just that they needed one, it was a relief when someone they lived with or met on the street informed them that xyz at location abc will sell yo…

Leaked? Isn't it used in the open basically like for everything including student IDs?

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#119

A friend owned farm land in India, he moved to Canada. The property deed was in his name. Someone in India, with fraudulent documents "sold" his land. He only came to know about it when he next visited India. Unfortunately he could not do much. There are people who will actively look through property records - if the person is not a local resident ( lives internationally ), then they are prime targets. This was a dec…

This is very prevalent in South Africa, to the point there is a legal cottage industry around verifying original documents vs counterfits (down to fingerprint testing, chemical analysis of inks).

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#120

For years now I have been regularly receiving unsolicited offers to buy 560 Bluefields Street SE, an undeveloped lot in Palm Bay, Florida. Whether the land is actually for sale, I have no idea; I've never been anywhere near the place, and cannot imagine why anyone would believe I owned land there. I wish I could somehow redirect the speculators who won't stop pestering me to scammers like the ones in this tale, so th…

Check who used to own your place and who owns that lot now and see if any names line up.

I still receive occasional postcards from real estate mogul wannabes for a property out in Colorado (I'm in PA). The previous owners of our house moved to Colorado after they sold us their house, and I assume their name is linked to our address in some gray-market/online DB. Why they wouldn't just send purchase offers direct to the house in CO instead of what they think is the owner's primary address (ours) I don't know, but I'm sure they fire off thousands of these things and don't really care how many are accurate.

Post reply on HN