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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

#61

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…

Laundering money using 100-200$ gift cards?

A few years ago, gift cards are THE currency in scamming world for shifting funds between victim and money launderer. They would ask victim to go to 8 different department stores to buy as many gift cards as the store allows then tell them the card number. It's pretty normal the victim hands them over 20 $200 gift cards. And the scammers will keep phishing the victim over and over again until there is no more money to squeeze.

Nowadays many scammers switch to digital concurrency like Bitcoin, which is even less traceable and hard to shut down, but that's only because banks and stores have put in the counter-measurements you encounter to combat them.

There are many scamming related materials available online. Many scam-baiters put their video on Youtube, such as Jim Browning [1] and Kitboga [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@JimBrowning

[2] https://www.youtube.com/@KitbogaShow

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

#62

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…

If I did not misunderstand what OP was saying, I think he is saying Amazon or other company hold his account but not the card issuing bank itself.

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

#63
Interestingly I, kind of, have the opposite problem, so to speak.

I recently moved to a foreign country, admittedly an "easy" western European country, and I fully expected my credit cards to start refusing more or less every transaction. Not so. Not a single transaction has been delayed, or denied.

I travel back and forth my home country and my new home semi-regularly with no issues with using my credit cards. I'm not sure this is a good thing either.

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

#64
post #50

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…

> sending an OTP to my US number (and US number alone) for any transaction, making it impossible for me to move money when abroad Strictly speaking it doesn't make it impossible. You have made a choice not to pay roaming fees while using your USA number while abroad.

Nope. I travel to EU often with roaming on. OTP SMSs for many services don't come through. It's a real pain.

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

#65
post #19

I have completely lost access to my Amazon account because I had the audacity to use a correct login and password from a recognized machine in a different part of the world from my shipping address. I called customer service and they said the only thing I can do is create a new account with a different email.

Strange. I live in Canada, and visit Brazil often. I have never had any trouble using my only Amazon account to log in to Amazon USA, Amazon Brazil, or Amazon Canada. I have both Brazilian and Canadian addresses set up as shipping options on my account, and I often make purchases on Amazon Brazil while in Canada and have them shipped to the Brazilian address.

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

#66
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?

I initially wrote a much longer comment, detailing multiple instances like these from just the past few months. But then I just deleted it because it will be too long. As for them - They will just tell "huh, he is hacker and can send fake emails from fake non-existing platforms".

It's like me attempting to demonstrate my possession of a private key for an SSL certificate to someone who lacks even a basic understanding of what a "browser" is, or who has never encountered terms like HTTP or HTTPS.

Another thought, more closely aligned with the original poster's point: if someone pushes to transition everything to a digital format, he must first understand what that means. For instance, if you're looking to gather email addresses, take the time to familiarize yourself with relevant RFCs. Understand that the local part of the email is determined by the user, not you. So, if I decide my email address should be "john with space here-doe!@#$%^&"@example.international, and I've set up my server to accept messages directed to this address, and given that IANA recognizes ".international" as a valid TLD, then it's a legitimate email. For clarity's sake, my actual email is of the format first.last@example.international, without any "non-standard" characters.

And as a connection to the OP - they are pushing for debit/credit cards society and when they make sure that all your money are with them and you don't have a single cent on you - they just cut you because you're just 0.001% and an edge case. But that is their point of view. From your point of view its like this: At home if my card stops working i can go to my bank the very next day and get it sorted. I can walk for 15 minutes and be at my mom's place where I can eat everything for free. The next day you are in another country where you don't know anybody and if your card stops there, they just leave you to the wolves. For them you're the edge case - 0.001%. For you - this is all your food, shelter, health. It feels a bit unfair.

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

#67
Tried a premium credit card yet? One that costs $400/yr?

I had a number to call and talk to someone with no wait if I had an issue.

I dealt with some issues and I ultimately found out that they(the store) want to fingerprint you online. Things you do to avoid that make purchasing things online difficult.

My ip address didn’t match the city I was in or receiving the item in = flag. Using a non-default dns service or vpn? I turn all that off and WiFi when I make a purchase.

If you’re okay throwing money at the problem, get a second phone to buy things with that you don’t do anything else on which has separate logins.

My favorite joke scene about a cashless society was that some criminals couldn’t figure out who to rob because no one accepted cash anymore or held it in a store. Their only option was to rob another gang.

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

#68

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.

> I found that notifying my providers of upcoming moves eliminates this. you seem to be older. I used this too. Until 5 or so years ago. Now my bank just says i "don't have to notify them anymore as they don't have this in the system, since it is all automated for my convenience "

Not so much. Many credit unions, including mine, still seem to require it (and absolutely have flagged transactions and our cards when we've forgotten).

But yes, none of my credit cards (Chase, Citi, Amex) require (or even offer) travel notifications.

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

#69

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…

> huge number of scammers who targets US people Scammers, as a category, target everyone. You think Indians don't get conned into sharing their OTP/passwords or financial details? > They are too short-sighted to not see that the "industry" is damaging India's global reputation India has one of the lowest police officers to population ratios in the world. They are so swamped with day-to-day crimes and other nonsense a…

> Scammers, as a category, target everyone. You think Indians don't get conned into sharing their OTP/passwords or financial details?

Right, but it's a lens thing. US merchants don't care that they're also targeting non-Americans. They care about "target US people" as a subset of that.

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

#70
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 custo…

Similar situation for a local small business I’ve worked for. Typically I’d respond to contact form spam with a notice to the source network. US-registered networks tended to reliably address the problem while IN- just ignored me, if their contact information worked at all.
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