Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret • Hacker News Board

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#121

Post by sverhagen » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 6:06 AM UTC

johnnyb9 wrote: post #114

Aardwolf wrote: post #4

Does anyone know the cause of the large and long standing difference in banking in US vs Europe? In europe: -for 15 or so years already, web banking has been with 2nd factor authentication (since its inception I assume). In previous decades we would get devices where you need to type numbers from its lcd screen into the webpage login. Today mobile auth apps are taking over. -I have never seen a bank have security que…

- We don't use 2FA authentication, I guess because there are more cost effective ways of verifying our identity (probably not going to last much longer with all the breaches) - ACH in the USA is free and fast (one business day)... and that's the main way of receiving salary, paying bills, etc. Is Europe really any better in this regard? - No one uses paper checks here either...

Not true. If you get any kind of refund on your Wells Fargo credit card, and you want to move it to your checking account, they send you a check by snail mail, which you then deposit. If you use Bill Pay to a recipient that isn't one of the few companies they have electronic clearing with, they make you enter a physical address, for... right, mailing them the check. There is no universal system advertised by the banks I've been with to send money electronically between consumers. If I want to pay my homeowners association's dues (which, coincidentally, I am in charge of, too) I have to use a check. All the above thus includes two scenarios where I essentially end up sending a paper check to myself. I'm European import to the USA, so I may not have figured it all out, but boy, I tried.

Edit: Forgot about this one: good luck being a foreigner paying the USA government for your immigration proceedings... right, all paper...

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#122

Post by sverhagen » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 6:13 AM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #56

alsetmusic wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of the banks I have accounts with ever gave me a chequebook. We have to request them and pay a small fee for them. They aren’t typically issued when you open the account. You just receive a debit card. Exceptions may exist. This is only my experience.

Oh, I'm sure you can get them somehow, I'm just saying that they're so rare that no bank gives them out by default (nor have I ever seen one or know what to do with it).

Is there still a universal system of acceptance of checks, though, like there was Eurocheques before 2001? Any bank can presumably issue checks, but if no car dealerships take them...?

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#123

Post by always_good » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 6:21 AM UTC

yawaramin wrote: post #53

jjeaff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may work in cases of online password resets, but I believe it has been demonstrated that they are not great for social engineering reasons. A hacker can just say, "oh I just mashed the keyboard for that" or worse, the agent thinks it is an error or glitch and let's the hacker in. I think best to use a real, but different last name on all your sites.

Do most websites have call centres where you can try to trick agents? Also, how gullible are call centre agents at financial institutions? If they're really giving out access to random people claiming to have forgotten the security answer, it's pretty clear-cut the bank should be on the hook for damages if money gets stolen. Nothing like the prospect of having to pay out damages for gullible call centre agents to mot…

The customer support rep once let me into my 2FA Bank of America account when I simply lost my phone. Just had to answer some questions you could find in a WHOIS query.

"Surely financial institutions are more secure" is only a pleasant thought.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#124

Post by nickonline » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 6:36 AM UTC

shakna wrote: post #74

lathiat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia is fairly similar to this. Particularly the fee free transfers between banks (for both private and business) What’s interesting is that next year most of the banks seem to be launching an instant bank transfer system - big interbank implementation. Right now it takes generally 1 business day if you’ve transacted with that account before and 3 business days if you haven’t. I assume that’s some kind of anti f…

CommBank and NAB spear-headed instant transactions. CommBank dropped an absolute mint on it, with a goal of sub-second transactions, with decent fraud protection. After a bunch of talks between the big banks, and VISA and MasterCard, and a little bit to do with the ombudsmen from various government branches, it was decided to share out that architecture, including fraud protection. The fraud protection is actually re…

None of the banks really wanted instant transactions, it's expensive, the RBA essentially forced them to.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#125

Post by fh973 » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 6:51 AM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #20

viraptor wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> between european bank accounts is free Between European bank accounts in the same country. Also, not every European country, unfortunately. > paper cheques don't exist since over a decade They still do. They're very rarely used, but they can be useful for cases where you want to buy something like a car without changing the card limits.

> Between European bank accounts in the same country. Also, not every European country, unfortunately. Unless I'm mistaken, transfers in Europe are by law required to cost the same inside and out of the country. My Greek bank charges 1 euro for a transfer, no matter if the bank is in Greece or anywhere else in the EU. My German bank doesn't charge anything, and I pay my rent from my German account. > They're very rar…

Interestingly, car dealers in Germany usually require you to pay in cash.

I think this is because getting ownership of a car (the keys and papers) has legal implications and so you need an atomic transaction.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#126

Post by evfanknitram » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 6:57 AM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #117

RandomInteger4 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say fraud, do you mean theft or identity fraud? 2FA is extraordinarily relevant when it comes to theft with regard to online banking. The purpose of 2FA is mostly to prevent automated attacks or remote account entry via password resets by email or something similar. I'm not sure if you're aware, but Europe has proper 2FA in the form of a dongle type device, and not this SMS BS many companies in the US use ou…

>2FA is extraordinarily relevant when it comes to theft with regard to online banking If theft through online banking even exists, it's at such a low volume as to be irrelevant. Most online banking interfaces are a read-only view of recent transactions. Some provide the ability to transfer funds between your own linked accounts at the same bank. Fewer still provide bill pay for a specific set of partner institutions,…

> and a tiny proportion of the most technologically sophisticated banks provide the ability to transfer money to any arbitrary person.

In the country where I live all internet banks supports this. And all of course use 2FA. Most if not all banks here let's me do any kind or transactions. Not just viewing my data but transferring money, buying stock, setting up new bank accounts, pension management and everything else.

Maybe it's the lack of security at your place which prevents useful functionality.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#127

Post by hnonlyforu » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 7:17 AM UTC

It's worse for me, cause Chinese people don't change names when married. It is zero-effort to learn the maiden name since it is still their actual name. However, many Chinese websites still have this question available.

I always give a fake name/addr/, etc. Very hard to remember all those answers, before I know how to use a password manager.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#128

Post by saagarjha » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 7:25 AM UTC

> And how many Indian- or Brazilian-born users went to a high school without a mascot, or grew up on a street with no name?

Was helping my (Indian) grandfather and came across a similar issue–very little applied to him. We finally got him to settle on some questions, but then when he forgot the password and went back to reset it, it kept dinging him because one of the questions was like “what was your third grade teacher’s name” and he had forgotten how he had Anglicized it.

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#129

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 7:27 AM UTC

distances wrote: post #29

kilburn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transfers can be charged, and often are even within the same country. In Spain it is common to have "up to n monthly transfers for free, then you get charged x%". Also, I've received wrong payments on a German account from French people many times, and they claim it's because their bank charges the transaction and I receive the sent amount minus fees, with no possibilities for them to specify otherwise (that's happen…

> bank charges the transaction and I receive the sent amount minus fees Sounds like horrible UX -- how would people be able to pay their bills correctly if the sent value doesn't equal the received value?

I agree

Some banks allow you to specify it it's the receiver, the sender or if the fee should be split

Re: Your Mother’s Maiden Name Is Not a Secret

#130

Post by will_hughes » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 7:34 AM UTC

vadimberman wrote: post #113

lathiat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia is fairly similar to this. Particularly the fee free transfers between banks (for both private and business) What’s interesting is that next year most of the banks seem to be launching an instant bank transfer system - big interbank implementation. Right now it takes generally 1 business day if you’ve transacted with that account before and 3 business days if you haven’t. I assume that’s some kind of anti f…

Australia may not be known as a banking superpower but it has the most user-friendly, affordable, efficient financial infrastructure of all the places I lived in. There's the most kickass Bill Pay system ever and DEFT, which allows paying by several methods including the credit card, potentially gaining reward points for paying rent. (Reward credit cards may be pricey though.) Overseas wire cost a measly flat AU$20 a…

> Nobody uses cheques, obviously (although they do exist).

Cheques are now mainly used for business to consumer payments, and for large value transactions, where it's done as a bank-drawn cheque usually.

The bank I use doesn't have a branch anywhere near where I live, so when I got sent a cheque a while ago I had to ask how to go about depositing it. Turns out the bank I use for my credit card will happily accept them via their ATMs which print out a receipt with a scan of the cheque.