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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

#51

I move to random corners of the world every 2-3 years and this is starting to give me real anxiety every time I try to make a purchase. One of my credit cards makes me jump through all of the verification and "Was this really you?" messages, then still locks my account half the time. So many online stores will approve my purchase and bill the card with no issue, then cancel it a few hours later for vague security rea…

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.

Note that this is about large tech service providers “taking this into their own hands.” The basic problem is that a lot of these companies deal with people who store their card information and then use an insecure password or so, or reuse the password at a different website... Someone else gets into the account and requests a transaction to a new address.

Also fun story about how your advice doesn't always work, I was locked out from my money multiple times on my honeymoon in Greece despite repeated calls to the bank, repeated unlockings of said account, “hi I am actually standing at an ATM in this bank branch, can we track this account lockup in real time?”... I think with all of the time on hold I actually might have spent something like 20+ hours in the trip trying to debug it over the several times it happened.

When we finally resolved it, I'm not 100% sure about the explanation, but it was something like “the person you called a week ago put in country code GE for Georgia rather than GR for Greece, and that is the first place everybody else who has serviced your request has probably looked, but they all probably thought GE was right because you have to memorize that DE is Germany and so people get confused real easily...”

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

#52

(Tell HN:) Also: > Yet, many online services are giving me hell with their "smart" anti fraud detection and things like that To provide a contrarian opinion, credit card testing, free trial abuse, and other forms of fraud are a thing, so companies usually have to layer other anti-fraud mechanisms on top of 3D secure. That being said, what service are you facing issues with? I do see Amazon as one of the listed servic…

Currently I'm at the 3rd attempt to unlock my account, let's see, hope you're right.

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

#54
Obviously I sympathize, but I find it extremely odd that OP is complaining about cards being declined but doesn't once explain whether he/she tried phoning their credit card to unblock? Because that generally works -- you call once, let them know you're traveling and where, and then your card works fine. Occasionally you have to call again for a specific high-value ($500+) transaction, but it's rarely more than a 5-minute phone call.

And then as to buying/using gift cards in India, on a non-Indian account, of course that's going to raise every suspicion under the sun, given that that's a mechanism used by some of the most prevalent scams in the world.

So I'm really confused, because this "vent" reads like somebody not going through the basic steps to use credit cards abroad, and then engaging in the biggest red-flag types of transactions.

And the fact that they're complaining the airport doesn't allow them to carry enough cash (isn't the limit $10K?) really raises red flags for me. If you need to transfer large amounts of money safely between countries to your family, that's what wire transfers or Western Union is for. That's been the case for many decades now.

The more I re-read this post, the less and less sense it makes.

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

#56
post #44

I wholeheartedly support digitization, having been involved in the realms of development, system administration, and everything computer-related since my early days. However, what irks me is when I'm bound to use products or services from providers who fail to execute their roles properly despite being compensated for it. A recent incident at my child's school serves as a pertinent example. They transitioned from a t…

Wow, that is bonkers. Could you maybe get them actually to try sending you an email to that address and show them that, yes, you do receive the damnned thing?

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

#57
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment takes an (unfair IMO) position that it somehow matters what country the OP was in. It's not like the auth systems are designed for higher scrutiny in specific countries. There is more than one way to confirm identity, but somehow BigTech and Co keep assuming a happy path environment for you. Case in point: my US bank insists on sending an OTP to my US number (and US number alone) for any transaction, mak…

I worked in the payment card industry for awhile a few years back. There are entire countries that are blocked by card providers due to fraud. Unfair or not, it actually makes a difference. I was in a neat position to see some of the attempts in real time. It blew me away how much attempted fraud there is. Think of it like spam email - it's that bad.

I was the operator of a webserver for a small B2B shop for a number of years. We only had a couple dozen local customers, we hand-delivered custom orders with a dedicated truck. If you weren't local, there was nothing on that website that would have mattered to you.

But there were on the order of 50x more attempts from bots trying to log into our Wordpress instance from India (all illegitimate) than from actual customers. It was ridiculous.

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

#59

You do understand India is a country with huge number of scammers who targets US people, and they are causing US billions of dollars of damage [1] each year? Sure, you might not be a criminal, but how would these companies know? Plus, since you mention "gift card", you do know that scammers use gift cards to launder money, right? India doesn't put heavy hammer on scammers for various reasons. For example, since the s…

Your comment takes an (unfair IMO) position that it somehow matters what country the OP was in. It's not like the auth systems are designed for higher scrutiny in specific countries. There is more than one way to confirm identity, but somehow BigTech and Co keep assuming a happy path environment for you. Case in point: my US bank insists on sending an OTP to my US number (and US number alone) for any transaction, mak…

Just FYI (because your OTP hell was my OTP hell until recently) if you fly to another country, disable roaming in the phone, and don’t make outbound calls, your phone will receive these OTP messages for free with most US cell providers.

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

#60

Obviously I sympathize, but I find it extremely odd that OP is complaining about cards being declined but doesn't once explain whether he/she tried phoning their credit card to unblock? Because that generally works -- you call once, let them know you're traveling and where, and then your card works fine. Occasionally you have to call again for a specific high-value ($500+) transaction, but it's rarely more than a 5-m…

1- The issue is rarely from the debit card it's always accepted, most of the times the payment will be cancelled from the service provider side

2- It's not technically non-Indian account, I'm opening accounts using valid Indian mobile number (tied to my visa and a real address), I always disclose that I'm not Indian when needed.

3- I was even trying to open Indian bank account to transfer money but no success so far (while possible in theory as I understood).

There are legitimate reasons for not wiring money if that was even an option, because you don't pay the hospital large amount ahead, and when it's time there's not enough time to wire the money.

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