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

An Identity Thief Explains the Art of Emptying Your Bank Account

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 69 posts

Re: An Identity Thief Explains the Art of Emptying Your Bank Account

#51

Post by mikeash »

_yosefk wrote: post #23
kriro wrote: post #20

Commit crimes, get relatively short term sentence and pay 200$ fine, stay in the U.S. Crime does pay. Sucks pretty hard, identity theft is really nasty if it happens to you. That being said while slightly exaggerated the claim of torture in Belarus isn't far fetched. Dude in charge is pretty much a crazy dictator. I remember during the (last?) elections his main opponent was mysteriously beaten up and he said in an i…

The idea that you arrest someone to serve time in your prison because he broke your laws, and then you cannot send them back because of another law is just mind-blowing.

How so? That's sort of the whole point of law and the government. You may not follow the law, and you may be punished if you don't, but they are always supposed to. You don't forfeit all your rights just because you break the law.

Re: An Identity Thief Explains the Art of Emptying Your Bank Account

#52

Post by t0mbstone »

mettamage wrote: post #48

Why don't credit cards have a secret password like a pin code? I find it strange that all the security information is available on the card itself.

Because credit card companies are run by imbeciles who don't understand security. Instead of actually solving their security issues, they just crunch the numbers and mitigate their risks with accountants. They are still raking in buttloads of money (like 3% of every transaction), so even with all the theft, they are insanely profitable.

Re: An Identity Thief Explains the Art of Emptying Your Bank Account

#53

Post by t0mbstone »

manishsharan wrote: post #29

Quick question : would you pay extra fees for a credit card that only allows transaction from whitelisted stores and if used online, the shipping address could be only to a whitelisted address ?

Why should there be extra fees for that? If anything, the fees should be LESS because there's less risk on the credit card company's side of things of having to refund invalid/stolen transactions.

Re: An Identity Thief Explains the Art of Emptying Your Bank Account

#54

Post by mikeash »

t0mbstone wrote: post #52
mettamage wrote: post #48

Why don't credit cards have a secret password like a pin code? I find it strange that all the security information is available on the card itself.

Because credit card companies are run by imbeciles who don't understand security. Instead of actually solving their security issues, they just crunch the numbers and mitigate their risks with accountants. They are still raking in buttloads of money (like 3% of every transaction), so even with all the theft, they are insanely profitable.

I don't know that they are stupid. Security is a tradeoff, and if their optimal profit level is one where fraud happens at a decent level, is that really wrong?

This reminds me of the Potato Paradox article posted on the front page. Imagine if the card company comes up with some way to cut fraud by 50%, while the added hassle has a minor impact on legitimate transactions, reducing them by 1%. That's likely to be a significant net loss for them, because of the relative proportion of legitimate to fraudulent transactions in the first place.

Re: An Identity Thief Explains the Art of Emptying Your Bank Account

#55

Post by mcherm »

stephengillie wrote: post #42
timv wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that AMEX should have just locked the account for fraud, one possible explanation that would create this scenario is a relationship breakup. Man breaks up with his partner, and moves out of their shared home. He changes his phone number to be his new home. Amex calls the old number, gets the old partner who is particularly vindictive and decides to answer the questions as well as he can. When I worked i…

> If a husband and wife share and account and share an address do you send them separate statements, or combine them? Don't allow people to share accounts? That seems to solve a lot of problems. What problems does it create?

The problem it creates is that you lose customers.

People want the ability to have joint accounts. A joint account generally has a credit limit set by the income of the higher-paid (or wealthier) of the two but allows both people to have a card and make payments. Imagine a simple scenario: one spouse works, the other does not; the one who doesn't work often does the shopping.

Re: An Identity Thief Explains the Art of Emptying Your Bank Account

#56

Post by bargl »

coldpie wrote: post #47
stephengillie wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having never been married, I can only guess. Is it for quickly transferring funds between the married individuals?

No, it's for having a shared pool of money. Both regularly deposit some amount of money into it, and it goes for shared expenses like food, house maintenance, gas...

I'm going to add that it's also really nice for budgeting. If you want 2 people to get on the same budget you have to show the benefits of the budget.

Also I don't pay 1/2 my mortgage and my wife pays the other 1/2 we pay it all together (from the one account). We actually turned down an account with Plastic because no shared accounts.

We each have an individual credit card but that's more for tracking if we are meeting our own budgeting goals. But those are still linked to the other person.

Also, joint accounts make a situation where something happens to your spouse MUCH easier to handle. If something were to happen to me I'd want my wife to still be able to pay for Daycare, Mortgage, etc for as long as our savings would allow.

This is part of why divorce is hard on so many levels. The paperwork alone is crazy.

Re: An Identity Thief Explains the Art of Emptying Your Bank Account

#57

Post by jjp »

mettamage wrote: post #48

Why don't credit cards have a secret password like a pin code? I find it strange that all the security information is available on the card itself.

Worth a read for comparison of relative merits of different methods of credit card authentication - http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/10/chip-pin-vs-chip-signatur...

Re: An Identity Thief Explains the Art of Emptying Your Bank Account

#58

Post by jjp »

mettamage wrote: post #48

Why don't credit cards have a secret password like a pin code? I find it strange that all the security information is available on the card itself.

Worth a read for comparison of relative merits of different methods of credit card authentication - http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/10/chip-pin-vs-chip-signatur...

Re: An Identity Thief Explains the Art of Emptying Your Bank Account

#59

Post by stephengillie »

mcherm wrote: post #55
stephengillie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a husband and wife share and account and share an address do you send them separate statements, or combine them? Don't allow people to share accounts? That seems to solve a lot of problems. What problems does it create?

The problem it creates is that you lose customers. People want the ability to have joint accounts. A joint account generally has a credit limit set by the income of the higher-paid (or wealthier) of the two but allows both people to have a card and make payments. Imagine a simple scenario: one spouse works, the other does not; the one who doesn't work often does the shopping.

How is this different from a business account with 2 cofounders?

Re: An Identity Thief Explains the Art of Emptying Your Bank Account

#60

Post by stephengillie »

bargl wrote: post #56
coldpie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's for having a shared pool of money. Both regularly deposit some amount of money into it, and it goes for shared expenses like food, house maintenance, gas...

I'm going to add that it's also really nice for budgeting. If you want 2 people to get on the same budget you have to show the benefits of the budget. Also I don't pay 1/2 my mortgage and my wife pays the other 1/2 we pay it all together (from the one account). We actually turned down an account with Plastic because no shared accounts. We each have an individual credit card but that's more for tracking if we are meet…

So how do business partnerships share funds? I doubt both partners commingle their personal finances.
Post reply on HN