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Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell

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Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell

#1
I've been in India for a while now, to support family member as she's here for medical reasons. I rely on online services to save on cash especially that it's hard to carry cash from my country (for "security" reasons, as most airports limit how much cash you can carry).

Yet, many online services are giving me hell with their "smart" anti fraud detection and things like that, at this point I can really understand the position of the people who are dooming about cashless society, because at some point here I felt trapped not being able to get services I needed so much (until I asked shop owner to pay for me and I paid him in cash + small profit...).

The thing is, the attitude of these companies is so frustrating; like if my card was already accepted once and I successfully approved the payment via 3D secure with my bank, who are you (as a random online service) to assume you can act as my big brother? Even more, if I'm using a balance paid by gift card, who give Amazon or other services the right to put my account on hold while it still contains my hard earned money (I had to try literally multiple services just to buy expensive gift card as Amazon payment won't allow me to choose the correct currency of my Card). Mind you, I'm just a random guy and not world class criminal, or an Activist who's being actively targeted, this make me wonder what these services can do once we go completely cashless.

Simple tasks like downloading region-specific Indian apps become unnecessarily complex, as Google play have this "smart" rule that says I can only change my region once per year, what?? It's just an app just give me the apk, and you can just ask for my location! (I had to install the apks from some random websites at risk of getting some malware...).

I would said what this experience taught me as a developer, but it won't matter, as most products are designed to help the stake holders and upper managers and even Governments, and a dev's empathy won't matter much...

Apologies for this vent, but I really felt I need to post something about this frustrating situation I'm in.

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

#3
post #2

A workaround (edit: in some of those cases): Setup a Tailscale exit node in the country where you're normally located - with a residential IP. E.g. in your apartment back home, or at a friend's.

This might help in specific cases yes, but in case of websites that give physical services (e.g delivery of products) it won't help much

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

#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 break from cramming unwanted features and go fix some unglamorous bugs for a change.

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

#5
post #2

A workaround (edit: in some of those cases): Setup a Tailscale exit node in the country where you're normally located - with a residential IP. E.g. in your apartment back home, or at a friend's.

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.

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

#7
tip regarding google play, each account can have an independent region, create a new google account and set it to your new location, keep the original where it was, it has 0 impact on how you use the apps after installation, if the app uses google auth you can login with either accounts

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

#8
post #2

A workaround (edit: in some of those cases): Setup a Tailscale exit node in the country where you're normally located - with a residential IP. E.g. in your apartment back home, or at a friend's.

This might help in specific cases yes, but in case of websites that give physical services (e.g delivery of products) it won't help much

In this case it might actually make it worse. Why are you suddenly, while in the US (for example), ordering physical services in India?

My bank locked my credit card once due to suspected fraud. I asked what triggered it and they said "You never buy gas on this card". This was 15 years ago and I'm sure the algorithms have only gotten better.

A different bank used to ask you to tell them if you were planning on traveling so that your card would continue to work, they stopped doing it and said that they had improved their fraud detection and this was no longer necessary. My guess is that they take the data provided by airlines[0] when you book a flight and use that to tell where and when you're traveling.

[0] https://www.marqeta.com/blog/data-details-what-is-level-1-2-...

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

#9
It is frustrating. From a consumer's POV, the system just denies you stuff for no apparent reason.

From a bank's POV, they're losing billions of dollars to card fraud operations, and there are very clever fraudsters who do their best to be indistinguishable from legit users.

Legit users in rare situations (such as being cross-border) are often collateral damage. You can only understand what heuristic you're triggering by knowing a bit about patterns of fraud, which is an unreasonable demand on innocent consumers.

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

#10
> who are you (as a random online service) to assume you can act as my big brother?

They are not trying to protect you. As a card holder you would not be damaged by fraudulant purchases apart from the inconvenience of reporting them. They are protecting themselves because if that transaction is later found to be fraudulant then they will have to return the funds and will likely be unable to recover the product they shipped or other costs incurred.

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