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I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

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Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#261

Post by delecti »

smachiz wrote: post #182
delecti wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, that exact confusion is why he made the third transaction for $9,975. The refund on his second transaction will either be for $25 or $10,000, so his third transaction will either be refunded in full or not at all.

If they refund the entirety of the second transaction, logic follows a third transaction of $9,975 would be correct if you actually wanted to buy $10k. I suspect that's not what's going to happen though. OP will get a refund of $25 + $9,975.

But would you be willing to bet $850 that your interpretation of the error message is correct? Because that's the decision the author had to make. (Or I suppose they'd be betting $850 minus 8.5% of $25)

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#262

Post by nelsondev »

tomatowurst wrote: post #251
prepend wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a big deal, it’s just the author did a bonehead move and it writing it up because it’s funny. I think it’s appropriate to say they made a stupid mistake and move on. The author is likely a little frustrated so I can forgive their shade throwing at treasury.

Felt like a wallstreetbets post. Inflation is only at "8%" (still remember back in 2021 calling this a conspiracy), so 8 / 12 = ~0.7% = 700 USD loss / month on 10k deposit.

70

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#263

Post by Someone1234 »

imranhou wrote: post #233
Someone1234 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the malware is running in the user's context, and has the browser's window handle and instead of using that to hook the child input elements directly, they're going to store an unintelligible stream of keystrokes then use the window handle to bundle that with the window's title? Is that a reasonable way to implement malware? Will it result in high quality data for resale? One of those "Things programmers believe a…

I think a simple keylogger that also reads window titles is much easier to build, than to read and control content inside a browser. This kind of technique would work really well if they are targeting a small group of users. One can argue that reading browser content through a browser extension would be equally easy to implement, but that's harder to hide and limits your scope to only browser activity.

It makes far more sense to assume threat actors are commercial malware authors rather than toy projects, since that's the reality in the world.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#264

Post by scarface74 »

jhanschoo wrote: post #164
jefftk wrote: post #62

> They require you to enter your password by clicking on a virtual keyboard. This pseudo-security measure actually only slows down humans, not bots, because you can still edit the value of the text field using Javascript. I don't think this is generally worth it as a security measure, but the goal is not to protect against automation. Instead, custom on-screen keyboards are attempts to thwart keyloggers.

Especially, I suppose, third-party keyboards on Android. My bank's Android app uses an in-app PIN pad for this purpose.

That’s because of design flaws in how Android handles third party keyboards that iOS has mitigations against for third party keyboards

1. They don’t have network access by default. It’s not a simple confirmation screen to enable network access. You have to go into settings

2. Apps can explicitly disallow third party keyboards for password entry.

3. Keyboards run out of process from the app.

And yes, iOS has extensibility support for third party password managers.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#265

Post by loeg »

ntkachov wrote: post #143
jefftk wrote: post #62

> They require you to enter your password by clicking on a virtual keyboard. This pseudo-security measure actually only slows down humans, not bots, because you can still edit the value of the text field using Javascript. I don't think this is generally worth it as a security measure, but the goal is not to protect against automation. Instead, custom on-screen keyboards are attempts to thwart keyloggers.

Which is ridiculously annoying. I have to edit the HTML every single time to remove "readonly" on that field and paste in my randomly generated password.

Just edit it to 'value="mypassword"' directly.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#266

Post by loeg »

bmitc wrote: post #254
ntkachov wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is ridiculously annoying. I have to edit the HTML every single time to remove "readonly" on that field and paste in my randomly generated password.

Why are some fields like that? I have never understood why. It happens a lot when entering in bank account numbers. I am almost always copying and pasting the bank account number directly from my bank's website, but yet, these fields require me to type it in, increasing the possibility of a mistake.

Faux security measure. You could blame the PMs or the customers. Why browsers enable it, I'm not sure.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#267

Post by tallanvor »

nknealk wrote: post #247
gavinray wrote: post #225

Is this window the author speaks about still open? I don't know anything about money/finance. Can someone ELI5 to me if I can still get the free money from this, this year?

It’s not “free money”. The US Government offers a special savings program called iBonds (not an apple product). Technically they’re referred to as Series I bonds. These bonds are special. Each citizen can only purchase $10,000 per year. The thing that makes them special is that they have really favorable interest rates that are made up of two components. There’s a fixed component largely controlled by the Fed. Curren…

Note that the fixed component is fixed for the life of the bond - so bonds purchased while the fixed rate is 0% will be 0% for the lifetime of the bond.

The rate tied to inflation is set every 6 months (May 1 and November 1), and when you buy a bond, the rate holds for 6 months. So if you bought on April 25, then in October you would get approximately 3.6% of the value of the bonds you bought, and the rate would reset to the current 6 month period, which is expected to be somewhere around 9% when they announce it soon.

You can cash in the bonds after either a year or 15 months (I don't remember for sure), but if you cash them in less than 5 years, you lose 3 months of interest. I'm guessing they don't give you money if you cancel when the rate is negative which can happen.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#268

Post by scarface74 »

leephillips wrote: post #250
adrianmonk wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They assumed the government's software would do this: (1) Purchase #1 for $25 successful --> reduce remaining limit from $10000 to $9975. (2) Purchase #2 for $10000 rejected and refund pending --> DO NOT reduce limit since you know the purchase didn't go through. (3) Purchase #3 for $9975 within limit --> allow purchase, reduce limit to exactly $0. Instead, at step 2, the software seems to handle the purchase by unco…

The email clearly says that the excess purchase will be refunded. He lost me here; I was mystified when he decided to purchase another $9975.

If I have a $10K credit limit, I charge $9975 and then I pay $9975, my credit limit is automatically increased back to $10K before the payment goes through.

She didn’t have a completely incorrect mental model. But the credit card company is being a lot more lenient than the government is being and the government should be more strict.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#269

Post by loeg »

fortran77 wrote: post #185
vasco wrote: post #32

The venn diagram of internet users that read about super specific financial products, decide to buy them, while not even understanding the need to keep an emergency fund such that a move like this leaves them with under $200 in their account seems to be growing. It seems to be a weird mix of wall street cosplay and financial ineptitude.

You can take the money out of an ibond with a small penalty after a relatively short time. So it's not a huge risk if you have enough short-term credit, etc, for an emergency before the time comes when you can cash the iBond.

The lockup period ("relatively short time") is a full year. For immediate cashflow purposes, I wouldn't really consider that relatively short.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#270

Post by cortesoft »

Jenk wrote: post #76
xkbarkar wrote: post #69

I thought this was funny. Weird comments in the thread about how he/she should have known better. Author is not making a complaint to demand internet outrage. There is no inflammatory justice warrior content here. Sheesh! Author admits they screwed up, decided to share the screwup, and who hasnt been trough that exact dunder blunder? Fun short read 8/10.

There is a strange human phenomenon, particularly visible online. Some folk see a title like that and it triggers a "How can I blame the author?" urge within before they even open the link.

This happens whenever something bad happens to someone else, be it a car accident or a major illness or being the victim of a crime.

People want to think it wouldn’t happen to them, so they go through all the reasons they would have been able to avoid the situation so that they don’t have to fear it happening to them.

People really don’t want to admit to themselves that there are a lot of things outside our control that can happen to us.

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