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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

#71

Post by Habgdnv »

mrbadguy wrote: post #56
Habgdnv wrote: 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?

And just in case - I am not that weirdo that just refuses google. No - I have google account, youtube premium, etc. But my google account is with my own email and not with gmail.com. I have microsoft, twitter/X, facebook, amazon, everything that you probably have. All sites. And I was there 10 years ago when .international was introduced. I remember few sites that don't accept it in the first year or two. Then everything went smooth. And 10years later someone is creating brand new site and limit the tld in the email to 3 characters :) The last company that I remember that was having problems was Activision/Blizzard. And when I wrote to them and pointed out that they are not potato but tech company and should watch for such things it took them about 1 month to fix all their sites/account management/billing.

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

#72

Post by instagib »

crazygringo wrote: post #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-m…

The problem is it’s in a foreign country which is about to pass up china for population. More people - more scams and pickpockets. The way we pay for things in the USA is very different. You pay with QR codes or apps. Most places in the US has Apple Pay broken sticker on them, does not accept any other method, wants cash, or a credit card.

The verification and such required are difficult. Most cards do not allow you to load INR on them (local currency). So there are a lot of foreign transaction fees.

PayTM, pay through mobile, the country’s biggest online wallet, doesn’t allow you to charge money with a foreign card. This means that PayTM doesn’t work for foreigners. The only way to load money on a PayTM wallet as a foreigner is to have an Indian friend transfer funds with his or her local debit or credit card.

https://travel.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/technology/...

There is a lot of anti-terrorism money laundering issues. Someone I know had their facial recognition stop working and they had to go to the bank to get it working again. In person. Traveling overseas? Sorry.

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

#73

Post by woobar »

harshalizee wrote: post #64
woobar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Very strange. How about regular SMS? Are they dropped too? I had zero issues with TMo, and I don't even need roaming for this.

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

#74

Post by crazygringo »

aiProgMach wrote: post #60
crazygringo wrote: post #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-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…

Ah sorry, it was hard to understand what types of transactions you were talking about. Yes, the reality is that when you try to live in a foreign country and do non-touristy "resident" things like buy things online or pay bills, but when you don't actually have a work visa that allows you to open a local bank account -- the systems aren't built for that. And local merchants really do put themselves at the risk of scams -- even with debit cards, transactions can be reversed by banks (stolen debit cards are a thing), and then the merchant is out of merchandise and money. It sucks, and you just wind up having to rely on a friend or family member to do your online purchases. It's such a small group of people, that companies don't do much to support those edge cases.

I still don't understand why you couldn't wire money though. That's what wiring money internationally is for. If timing with the hospital is an issue, you just wire yourself or your family member in advance -- that's usually more common than attempting to a the hospital directly. (And even if you do have to wire the hospital directly, you can provide proof of the fact that the wire was initiated from your bank.) The only problem I can think of with wiring money is the fact that the money is illegal or someone is trying to evade taxes or something. If the money is perfectly legal, then what is the problem?

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

#76

Post by bryankaplan »

Spriggan1313 wrote: post #32
al2o3cr wrote: post #6

I had to try literally multiple services just to buy expensive gift card So instead of contacting your bank or Amazon, you did the most money-laundering-looking thing you could do. Heckuva job there!

I work in fraud detection in the US and the number of people that end up making their legit purchases look like fraud is way too high.

How do we solve that?

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

#77

Post by aiProgMach »

gorbachev wrote: post #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 n…

I wish I have the same problem :)

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

#78

Post by tomschlick »

fishyjoe wrote: post #30
agubelu wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Raspberry Pi at home running an OpenVPN server, and a client config for each of my devices, and it's been extremely useful ever since.

How do you expose the Raspberry Pi so that you can reach it from the outside internet? My OpenVPN runs on a Digital Ocean droplet and I use it to tunnel into my home network, but having a direct route might be better.

If it's openvpn you can just port forward from your router to the RaspberryPi's internal ip address.

If it's a webserver you can do the same, or use something like Cloudflare tunnels to expose the service.

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

#79

Post by sentientslug »

kevstev wrote: post #40
ryandrake wrote: post #4

Every time I travel abroad, some company's poorly thought out software goes bonkers and then it becomes my problem to solve. Hey, companies: People travel. Sometimes very frequently. This is not an edge case or an obscure P3 bug. If you're assuming that a mere sudden change in IP to a different country is "suspicious" then you're doing it wrong. Your software is a mess and can't seem to deal with it. Maybe take a bre…

One thing I try to do to avoid this is to always make a purchase at the airport before I go overseas. This seems to calm down the algos a bit. I used to go through this a bunch too.

Great idea, spend your money to earn the privilege of spending your money later.

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

#80

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

kevstev wrote: post #40
ryandrake wrote: post #4

Every time I travel abroad, some company's poorly thought out software goes bonkers and then it becomes my problem to solve. Hey, companies: People travel. Sometimes very frequently. This is not an edge case or an obscure P3 bug. If you're assuming that a mere sudden change in IP to a different country is "suspicious" then you're doing it wrong. Your software is a mess and can't seem to deal with it. Maybe take a bre…

One thing I try to do to avoid this is to always make a purchase at the airport before I go overseas. This seems to calm down the algos a bit. I used to go through this a bunch too.

I do the same, and again when I land. Try to double down on signaling to the black box.
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