This, poche, is spam. Please don't spam the forums! What on earth is there about this story that fits "personal anecdotes, news stories of economic hardship, survivalist tips, rapid price increases, scarcity, outages, vandalism, foreclosures, job losses, etc" ...

Don't give random people your ID otherwise they might impersonate you. Wow, thanks for the tip! Banks are a bunch of dishonest criminal usurers. News!

Perhaps there is news in the fact that when you send a PRIVATE message to someone you can honestly trust (eg: your spouse) giving them your bank details, it is worth being aware that the NSA will be storing it and some unscrupulous person in that HUGE organization will sell your details on.

Quote from: poche

There was a time when I had to deal with the disputed credit cards of teh business that I work for. Part of the liturature that I saw from the banks said that if there was a dispute ratio above a certain threshhold then we would lose our right to accept credit cards. I guess these banks play by a different rule book.

Or maybe the scamming companies abuse the rules.  Perhaps they incorporate and shut down under a different name, use third party merchant services etc.

Banks do have controls to attempt to stop/limit this, but they are a payment facilitator. Without an ability to manage VAST amounts of data to spot suspicious transactions it is very difficult to stop old fools getting scammed.  Those anti-fraud systems are expensive to buy and run.  At some cut off point it is cheaper to pay out for a certain amount of fraud, than have systems in place to detect it.  The good news however is that the anti fraud systems are getting better.  The bad news is that the algorithmic detection mechanisms being developed and refined are exactly the same technology as could be used to detect whether you are a Catholic, what sort of Catholic you are, whether you are male or female, your educational level, IQ and another 4000 data points about you.

If you were willing to give banks access to vast amounts of your personal data and what you spend money on and how, then they could profile you and know with a confidence level that you did not intend to use this company or need this service.  When I went to Africa and used my credit card in a hotel they called me up on my cellphone to check I was not being defrauded.  But think of the cost of doing that.  The entire, fully amortised cost.

If the old man had handed over paper money to a scammer at the door would you say that the Federal Reserve helped to scam an old man?

Imagine a scammer incorporates tomorrow to sell health insurance cards.  He has some legitimate product lines but intends to make most of his money from scamming.  What would you suggest the bank or merchant card services company do to make sure he is not taking payments for scam services rather than legitimate business transactions?  How much money and time should they spend investigating each business that approaches them for payment services?

Who pays for that time and money used up by due diligence?

Quote from: ggreg

Quote from: poche

There was a time when I had to deal with the disputed credit cards of teh business that I work for. Part of the liturature that I saw from the banks said that if there was a dispute ratio above a certain threshhold then we would lose our right to accept credit cards. I guess these banks play by a different rule book.

Or maybe the scamming companies abuse the rules.  Perhaps they incorporate and shut down under a different name, use third party merchant services etc.

Banks do have controls to attempt to stop/limit this, but they are a payment facilitator. Without an ability to manage VAST amounts of data to spot suspicious transactions it is very difficult to stop old fools getting scammed.  Those anti-fraud systems are expensive to buy and run.  At some cut off point it is cheaper to pay out for a certain amount of fraud, than have systems in place to detect it.  The good news however is that the anti fraud systems are getting better.  The bad news is that the algorithmic detection mechanisms being developed and refined are exactly the same technology as could be used to detect whether you are a Catholic, what sort of Catholic you are, whether you are male or female, your educational level, IQ and another 4000 data points about you.

If you were willing to give banks access to vast amounts of your personal data and what you spend money on and how, then they could profile you and know with a confidence level that you did not intend to use this company or need this service.  When I went to Africa and used my credit card in a hotel they called me up on my cellphone to check I was not being defrauded.  But think of the cost of doing that.  The entire, fully amortised cost.

If the old man had handed over paper money to a scammer at the door would you say that the Federal Reserve helped to scam an old man?

Imagine a scammer incorporates tomorrow to sell health insurance cards.  He has some legitimate product lines but intends to make most of his money from scamming.  What would you suggest the bank or merchant card services company do to make sure he is not taking payments for scam services rather than legitimate business transactions?  How much money and time should they spend investigating each business that approaches them for payment services?

Who pays for that time and money used up by due diligence?

In this case the banks had controls and they were monitering. They should have cut certain companies off but they chose not to in order to collect the fees from the fraudulent withdrawels.