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Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell

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Re: Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell

#191

Post by hornban »

cj wrote: post #137
dreamcompiler wrote: post #131

Wrong assumptions programmers make about fraud prevention: -- A mobile phone number uniquely identifies a single person. -- Every person has a mobile phone number and they only have one mobile phone number. -- If a person's mobile phone number is associated with VoIP or Google Voice, that indicates fraud. -- Every person always has their mobile phone handy and it is always able to receive calls and SMS messages under…

The problem with many of these examples is that 99% of the time, it is a sign of fraud, and 1% of the time it’s a false positive. > If a person's mobile phone number is associated with VoIP or Google Voice, that indicates fraud. I’ve been using this heuristic (along with VPN and IP geo lookup) when screening job candidates after a massive influx of developers outside the US applying for US-only remote roles. I discov…

My primary phone number is a Google Voice number, and I am entirely legitimate. Just curious, how often are other people filtering with this kind of criteria?

I have been considering migrating away from GV for unrelated reasons, but if that sort of thing automatically makes me less attractive when looking for gigs then I'd like to prioritize actually doing that.

Re: Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell

#192

Post by welder »

> who are you (as a random online service) to assume you can act as my big brother?

Card companies make the random online service pay a fee anytime someone does a chargeback. Yes it shouldn't be their job, but card companies make push this responsibility onto them.

Re: Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell

#193

Post by LeonB »

The “fraud prevention” people are told that they are fraud prevention people, even though the rest of the company are “customer service” people.

So they build “fraud prevention” systems, and heavily discount any notion of customer service — they’re perfectly willing to lose some customers in the name of fraud prevention - not because they must, but because their focus and incentives are indifferent to customer service. They see it as an inevitable cost of business - when it’s an inevitable cost of not caring about that aspect of the business.

Re: Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell

#194

Post by oefrha »

tanseydavid wrote: post #133
giardini wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that notifying my providers of upcoming moves eliminates this. Call them, tell them what you're doing and ask their advice (b/c there may be something you overlooked or they may have special problems of their own). Anyway, they're doing you a service and notifying them is good etiquette. And like good etiquette, it often greases the wheels of commerce.

Having to contact the provider to spend one's own money is simply outrageous. And yet, I also have started to make preemptive contact with them to avoid the complete hassle of having the card blocked for fraud that is NOT fraud.

If you’re free to be scammed out of your money, with no repercussions to others, sure it’s unreasonable to stop you. But with (American) credit cards, it’s the backing financial institution that bears the burden of fraud; merchants accepting fraudulent transactions are punished as well.

Re: Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell

#195

Post by gnicholas »

My credit card company likes to aggressively flag transactions as fraudulent "for my protection" — even though it's really for their protection. The upshot is that purchases at my local Apple Store (which is walking distance from where I live) get flagged. I have bought many things from Apple over the years, and buy things there at least a couple times a year. So it's pretty silly for these transactions to be flagged.

The worst part is that they don't pro-actively notify me of the flagging via app notification, email, or phone call. I have to track them down and tell them the transaction was authorized. Or more likely I just get out a different credit card and use that one instead.

Re: Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell

#196

Post by jey »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #166
jey wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would LEO satellite internet cause frequent change of IP addresses? Shouldn't all that moving-satellite stuff be handled on a lower level of the OSI Model (probably Layer 2: Data Link), and the IP stuff at Layer 3 isn't affected?

With Starlink, the downlink location determines your externally-visible IP address and that can change every 90 seconds or so based on where the closest satellite to you is at the moment. I'm in New Mexico and I frequenly see ads on web pages directing me to shops in Denver or Dallas because those are the downlink locations for me. You can see the issue better on this visualization: https://starlink.sx/

OK that's strange but makes sense, so it's the publicly-routable IP after "network address translation" (NAT) that keeps changing.

Re: Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell

#197

Post by squeaky-clean »

ajb wrote: post #148
quags wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these can be the wrong assumptions for sure. Working in a space with some fraud though I can tell you the majority of users verify fine and there ate only the few percentage that don’t for any number of reasons some what you have given above. For smaller vendors though things to consider are - a charge back can come up to 6 months later. A loss of that is not only a loss of funds but a charge back fee - too many…

The problem is that it's not acceptable for online providers to converge on making life miserable for "a few percent" of people. This is a market failure: to save the cost of a few bucks, huge costs are imposed on these individuals. The answer is to have some mechanism whereby people who run into these issues can pay ( once ) the small cost of being validated in an alternative way (like, actually talking to a human a…

It's not to save the cost of a few bucks. Once people find out your site is easily susceptible to fraud, the majority of your traffic will be fraudulent. It only takes a few minutes to post a repeatable scam you found in a scamming discord for bragging rights, or to write a Python script to repeat the task over and over.

Re: Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell

#198

Post by teddyh »

OJFord wrote: post #140
cycomanic wrote: post #110

One of my favorites amongst this stupid platforms is PayPal. I have moved countries/continents. Once I forgot to close my account before moving (still had some $100 on it), after I could never access it as it wanted a phone call to my non existent former phone number to confirm this is really me, ok my fault. Now I have moved again when I want to pay with PayPal I can't because my account is associated to a different…

PayPal refuse to close an account(↑) I didn't knowingly consent to the creation of, and certainly never provided any photographic ID for, because I refuse to 'prove my identity' to delete it. There's not even a real phone number (0s) or address (ABC nonsense) on the bloody thing, but of course giving up some PII they don't have will somehow verify that I have the authority to close an account which is basically name…

Note: You probably meant †, not ↑

Re: Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell

#199

Post by quickthrower2 »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #131

Wrong assumptions programmers make about fraud prevention: -- A mobile phone number uniquely identifies a single person. -- Every person has a mobile phone number and they only have one mobile phone number. -- If a person's mobile phone number is associated with VoIP or Google Voice, that indicates fraud. -- Every person always has their mobile phone handy and it is always able to receive calls and SMS messages under…

- Twilio etc. cam deliver SMS to any network

- The networks Twilio etc. can’t deliver to are small and don’t have millions of users

Re: Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell

#200

Post by oooyay »

cj wrote: post #137
dreamcompiler wrote: post #131

Wrong assumptions programmers make about fraud prevention: -- A mobile phone number uniquely identifies a single person. -- Every person has a mobile phone number and they only have one mobile phone number. -- If a person's mobile phone number is associated with VoIP or Google Voice, that indicates fraud. -- Every person always has their mobile phone handy and it is always able to receive calls and SMS messages under…

The problem with many of these examples is that 99% of the time, it is a sign of fraud, and 1% of the time it’s a false positive. > If a person's mobile phone number is associated with VoIP or Google Voice, that indicates fraud. I’ve been using this heuristic (along with VPN and IP geo lookup) when screening job candidates after a massive influx of developers outside the US applying for US-only remote roles. I discov…

You could use identity verification:

https://plaid.com/products/identity-verification/

https://stripe.com/identity

https://www.id.me/

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