Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Casa Client Case Study: The Tinder Trap

blog.keys.casa

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 211 posts

Re: Casa Client Case Study: The Tinder Trap

#171

Post by dang »

jcpham2 wrote: post #42
vishnugupta wrote: post #36

I've been working in the payments industry on and off for 15 years. I am yet to work with a payment method that does not support reversal (except for physical cash). As a last resort victims can file chargeback with their issuers or police. To begin with there are several layers of protection built in at acquirer, issuer, network and so on. Almost at each step there's an option to reverse the payment (or issue a comp…

reversible payments equals double spending, which is fraud, which is your payments industry. read the white paper start over. do not collect $200

Breaking the site guidelines like this will get you banned on HN. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

You've unfortunately done it repeatedly before (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27207170) - this is definitely not cool, so please fix.

Re: Casa Client Case Study: The Tinder Trap

#172

Post by dang »

amarant wrote: post #59
jcpham2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reversible payments equals double spending, which is fraud, which is your payments industry. read the white paper start over. do not collect $200

Because crypto-weebs would never ever make a mistake, ever. So clearly this is better. Sigh

Please do not respond to a bad comment by making thread even worse. That helps nothing and is against the site guidelines in its own right.

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Casa Client Case Study: The Tinder Trap

#173

Post by kzrdude »

papito wrote: post #160
im3w1l wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are only seeing one side of the issue here. Getting drugged out of your mind and telling strangers your mother maiden name and the name of your childhood pet is just not that common of an occurence. The rare lost $500 may be a worthwhile price to pay, to be able to access your money in a pinch. Now when we get to 4-digit sums, the balance starts to shift to caution.

One, yes. It was a fair amount for a hard lesson IMO. But also keep in mind that these people were extremely smooth, confident, and "professional". It was a technique, they were not improvising. The only reason you think this is not a common occurrence is because people don't talk about it, very much like women who are sexually harassed are not vocal about being taken advantage of. Hey, now I know how it feels. I don…

Thanks for telling about it

Re: Casa Client Case Study: The Tinder Trap

#174

Post by theli0nheart »

Nursie wrote: post #96
theli0nheart wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying by cash is irreversible. That’s how payments were until credit cards and the Internet came along. One of the big innovations of cryptocurrency is allowing for electronic, cash-like payments. To solution to coercing a “reversal” of a transaction is use the legal system.

One of the big innovations of non-crypto payment methods over cash was the ability to reverse. > To solution to coercing a “reversal” of a transaction is use the legal system. Or, just maybe, we could have a system which doesn't need to involve the legal system every time, and protects consumers anyway. Which we have.

> Or, just maybe, we could have a system which doesn't need to involve the legal system every time, and protects consumers anyway.

You omitted the part where this solution requires a surcharge of ~3% on every single transaction we make with our credit cards.

In a civilized society, this is how transactions work:

You research the merchant and judge whether they are trustworthy. You decide they are, and purchase an item from them. If you have a problem with the item, you request a refund. They ask for the product back, and then they send you the refund.

Nothing in the above paragraph requires a credit card processor to enable a reversal of funds.

If they refuse to provide a refund, that is their choice, but relying upon a central god-like money authority to judge whether they made the "correct" one is bonkers. That's under jurisdiction of the law.

Re: Casa Client Case Study: The Tinder Trap

#175

Post by kragen »

Nursie wrote: post #170
kragen wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payment reversal is an open invitation to criminals to steal from sellers. A friend of mine had his laptop stolen via payment reversal. Listed it on Craigslist for sale, a woman paid by PayPal and then came by to pick it up, and after she left she reversed the payment. PayPal automatically took her side because he didn't have a shipping tracking number. Cashier's-check scams are another classic form of this crime: ht…

Payment non-reversibility is an open invitation to sellers scamming, something which has been recorded for thousands of years. You’d have to be historically illiterate to want to throw this stuff away. I’m sorry your friend got scammed, but there’s a host of damn good reasons we put the risk on the seller. This is not a set of outdated practices resulting in ‘risk’ to sellers, it’s deliberate consumer protection.

There are indeed cases where transactions involve unavoidable risks, and in some of those cases it is best to force the seller to assume those risks rather than the buyer. (I'm not sure why you've put "risk" in scare quotes; as my examples show, these are real risks.) In other cases, like when I pay the rent for my apartment, or when I sold a used car to a body shop, it would be better for the buyer to assume those risks.

But there are additional, unnecessary risks created by the banking system, and for many transactions (like when the thief stole my friend's laptop, or transactions that result in identity fraud) those risks are the vast majority of the total risk. In those cases, cryptocurrency solves the problem; it doesn't just shift the risk back to the buyer.

Re: Casa Client Case Study: The Tinder Trap

#176

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

user-the-name wrote: post #161
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, nobody ever asked for ransom before cryptocoins. /s Legitimate democracy can't be undermined by an international currency not controlled be the government. In fact, it can be reinforced by it. This issue is very similar to free speech: the good it does by making the government unable to silence political opponents far outweights the harm done by extremists and lunatics of all sorts.

People tried ransomware before cryptocurrencies. Payouts were minuscule compared to what cryptocurrencies are now enabling. And no, it is not at all similar to free speech. Cryptocurrencies do massive harm - to the environment, to innocent people losing their money to scammers and frauds, and to the entire economy through enabling ransomware - and tiny, tiny amounts of good, which dwindle in comparison to the harm.

Do you have some numbers to back these claims about massive harm? Without estimates this sounds like a typical fear-mongering.

If you provide numbers, we can compare this massive harm with some other types of massive harms.

As for tiny amount of good - reclaiming control over storage of value from The Man is such a tremendous achievement that will help us fight tyranny everywhere. Bitcoin donations was the only type of funding russian government failed to stop when it started to clamp down the opposition. For me, this capability trumps your concerns about environment and crime any day.

Re: Casa Client Case Study: The Tinder Trap

#177

Post by Nursie »

theli0nheart wrote: post #174
Nursie wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big innovations of non-crypto payment methods over cash was the ability to reverse. > To solution to coercing a “reversal” of a transaction is use the legal system. Or, just maybe, we could have a system which doesn't need to involve the legal system every time, and protects consumers anyway. Which we have.

> Or, just maybe, we could have a system which doesn't need to involve the legal system every time, and protects consumers anyway. You omitted the part where this solution requires a surcharge of ~3% on every single transaction we make with our credit cards. In a civilized society, this is how transactions work: You research the merchant and judge whether they are trustworthy. You decide they are, and purchase an ite…

That’s not an issue in my country where fees are limited.

In your civilised society I will never, ever use a new merchant or a small merchant. One vendor that promises easy refunds would be the only place I would ever shop. Small vendors and new vendors can go hang. Hell, it might just kill internet shopping all together.

In your civilised society, small business is f*cked.

In your civilised society a person who has been ripped off by a merchant who refuses to deal with them or just plain disappears, has to spend time and more money dragging them through the courts, if they can even find them.

Your ‘civilised’ society is carte blanche for unscrupulous merchants to rip people off, something which humanity has been dealing with since the dawn of history.

We have these systems in place for a reason, and it’s to stop uncivilised merchants from doing what they’ve been doing as long as merchants have existed.

You don’t have to take credit cards, by the way, but don’t expect my business if you don’t.

Re: Casa Client Case Study: The Tinder Trap

#178

Post by Nursie »

kragen wrote: post #175
Nursie wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payment non-reversibility is an open invitation to sellers scamming, something which has been recorded for thousands of years. You’d have to be historically illiterate to want to throw this stuff away. I’m sorry your friend got scammed, but there’s a host of damn good reasons we put the risk on the seller. This is not a set of outdated practices resulting in ‘risk’ to sellers, it’s deliberate consumer protection.

There are indeed cases where transactions involve unavoidable risks, and in some of those cases it is best to force the seller to assume those risks rather than the buyer. (I'm not sure why you've put "risk" in scare quotes; as my examples show, these are real risks.) In other cases, like when I pay the rent for my apartment, or when I sold a used car to a body shop, it would be better for the buyer to assume those r…

I’m sorry but the vast majority of risk is sellers, always has been, always will be. They may not make up the bulk of fraud now, but that’s precisely because we have these rules.

Your links to checks are fantastic. Who the hell uses checks any more? Wow.

Cryptocurrency precisely shifts the risk to the buyer, their recourse is gone if the goods they get are substandard. The imbalance of power between merchants and consumers is real, and consumer protections like reversibility are there to address this.

Perhaps PayPal is not the best choice for person to person transactions. I am sorry your friend got ripped off, but perhaps as a seller he should do his research about who he’s selling to. Without reversible mechanisms, every buyer has to research every purchase.

Re: Casa Client Case Study: The Tinder Trap

#179

Post by hooplah »

Nursie wrote: post #168
hooplah wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is for merchants. Chargebacks are abused and can kill your profitability in certain industries. Stripe and PayPal label these has high risks and will shut your account down if you receive too many chargebacks. As someone who uses crypto on both ends, I think no reversal is the fairest way. Both sides lie, but the customer lies quite a bit and is usually favored in CC reversals.

We have literally millennia of evidence that merchants are not to be trusted. “Both sides lie” covers a massive power imbalance as well as just ignoring history.

If you don't trust the merchant don't do business with them.

As a merchant, you have to accept all customers and hope they don't commit fraud, barring expensive fraud filters.

As a customer, you have multiple options which business to patronize and you can screen them based on reviews.

Or how you replied, we have literally a millennia of evidence that people cannot be trusted, merchant or not.

Re: Casa Client Case Study: The Tinder Trap

#180

Post by theli0nheart »

Nursie wrote: post #177
theli0nheart wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or, just maybe, we could have a system which doesn't need to involve the legal system every time, and protects consumers anyway. You omitted the part where this solution requires a surcharge of ~3% on every single transaction we make with our credit cards. In a civilized society, this is how transactions work: You research the merchant and judge whether they are trustworthy. You decide they are, and purchase an ite…

That’s not an issue in my country where fees are limited. In your civilised society I will never, ever use a new merchant or a small merchant. One vendor that promises easy refunds would be the only place I would ever shop. Small vendors and new vendors can go hang. Hell, it might just kill internet shopping all together. In your civilised society, small business is f*cked. In your civilised society a person who has…

> In your civilised society I will never, ever use a new merchant or a small merchant. One vendor that promises easy refunds would be the only place I would ever shop. Small vendors and new vendors can go hang. Hell, it might just kill internet shopping all together.

What if that merchant was your friend? Or someone you knew personally? What if the merchant was recommended by someone you trust, like how small business has worked for millenia?

Otherwise, yes, you're right, you shouldn't buy things from people you don't know and/or don't trust, even with the ability to request a chargeback. That should never change.

> We have these systems in place for a reason, and it’s to stop uncivilised merchants from doing what they’ve been doing as long as merchants have existed.

No, that's not at all why these systems are in place. They would never have come to be had the U.S. Congress not passed the Fair Credit Billing Act in 1974 [1], which essentially outlined the mechanics of chargebacks, amongst other billing "errors".

To boot, consumers aren't a blameless party here. Fraud has existed on both sides of transactions since trading was a thing.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Billing_Act

Post reply on HN