[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life...
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Tell HN: Automatic fraud detection is making my life hell
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.
Author : aiProgMach
Score : 154 points
Date : 2023-10-27 14:15 UTC (8 hours ago)
| tpmx wrote:
| 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.
| aiProgMach wrote:
| 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
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| 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-...
| brianmiddleton wrote:
| My favorite was the time I used my Disney credit card to
| book a trip to Disney World - flight, hotel, tickets,
| everything. No problem. Then I get to Disney World and my
| card gets locked when I try to buy a churro because I used
| my card in a new location.
| reaperman wrote:
| Not to mention the number of apps (and increasingly
| websites) which will require location services. So now you
| have a GPS location in India, and you're making credit card
| purchases alternating between USA IP's and India point-of-
| sale machines (and presumably sometimes Indian IP's for
| apps/sites that might block USA IP's) throughout the day.
|
| As a fellow world traveler / international worker, I do
| still think this is wrong-headed on the part of the banks,
| but it's the current paradigm in which we all operate.
|
| In the past it helped for me to call my banks and let them
| know I am traveling "for the next year" and to ease up on
| the fraud protection. But now with more and more layers of
| fraud protection, it's often not my bank that's the
| gatekeeper.
|
| It's things like not being able to download a local version
| of an app, or not being able to get a local payment account
| (like as in UPI payments in India, I don't know if its hard
| for foreigners to get that specifically but in other
| countries it can be very difficult without being integrated
| into the local payment platforms)
|
| P.S. - Re: location services...I like the catchphrase "Any
| device you truly own would lie on your behalf. If it won't
| lie for you, you don't own it." I should be able to tell my
| iPhone to report my location wherever I damn well want to
| pretend to be.
| agubelu wrote:
| 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.
| fishyjoe wrote:
| 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.
| tomschlick wrote:
| 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.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Or, like the original post said, use Tailscale, which can
| punch a hole through the NAT for you.
| Aachen wrote:
| Port forwarding is easy and self-reliant compared to
| using a third party's free service though
|
| Not saying that's for everyone but I do feel like the
| default should be to click the two buttons in your router
| interface and third parties a fallback option or
| conscious choice. Probably just as quick as signing up
| for tailscale, if it weren't for that all routers feel
| like they need to reinvent a UI so it's never twice the
| same
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| kevstev wrote:
| 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.
| sentientslug wrote:
| Great idea, spend your money to earn the privilege of
| spending your money later.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I do the same, and again when I land. Try to double down on
| signaling to the black box.
| m_fayer wrote:
| That is a great idea and as another frequent traveler I'll
| take this to heart.
|
| While shaking my head and muttering to myself that I guess
| this is where we are now.
| al2o3cr wrote:
| 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!
| aiProgMach wrote:
| hmm no, my bank is fine, Amazon customer service told me they
| won't accept my card, that was the only option, but excuse me,
| how is 100-200$ gift card is money laundering?
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Buying gift cards with stolen credit cards is like
| fraud/money laundering 101. The amount is not really a
| differentiator either because a lot of carders will run
| smaller test transactions to see if the card is still active.
| Spriggan1313 wrote:
| 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.
| bryankaplan wrote:
| How do we solve that?
| worik wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I don't think you meant it. But that is blaming the victim
|
| A bit uncool
|
| One of the main features of capitalism is you can dispose of
| your property as you like.
| belk wrote:
| 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
| aiProgMach wrote:
| Nice will try that, thanks!
| tlb wrote:
| 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.
| singlow wrote:
| > 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.
| jwr wrote:
| I run a SaaS based in the EU. Most of my US customers have
| problems with their subscriptions, because US banks automatically
| assume that any "foreign" charge must be fraud, and block it.
|
| I am wasting so much time explaining that they need to contact
| their bank, and they waste so much time calling their banks...
| it's disheartening.
| dakial1 wrote:
| This happens because the cost of developing (or buying) good
| software and people to build a decent anti-fraud system is very
| clear to measure and the impact of the false positives is not.
| Also, as credit card fraud is usually the bank's responsibility,
| it makes sense for the leaders of that area to go towards more
| false positives than false negatives.
|
| But it does not need to be that way and the government can and
| should help.
|
| In my country (Brazil) banking is well regulated industry and we
| also have some good consumer laws. Both those things help a lot
| to show a clear impact of badly designed anti-fraud system to the
| banks. For example, the central bank has an online channel, where
| you can open a complaint, which the bank is obligated to
| answer/solve in 5 days and might get fined millions if they get
| lots of valid ones.
|
| I used to get my card denied very often, with no heads-up or call
| to confirm. So I raised a complaint at the Central Bank, got an
| apology letter and call from my bank manager and I never again
| had my credit card blocked anywhere.
| aiProgMach wrote:
| My problem is different, the bank approve my payment after 3D
| secure check, the offender is the service provider, they cancel
| the order and issue a refund with a vague statement!
| Aachen wrote:
| The cost of false positives is obvious though: lost custom?
| brianmiddleton wrote:
| I move to random corners of the world every 2-3 years and this is
| starting to give me real anxiety every time I try to make a
| purchase. One of my credit cards makes me jump through all of the
| verification and "Was this really you?" messages, then still
| locks my account half the time.
|
| So many online stores will approve my purchase and bill the card
| with no issue, then cancel it a few hours later for vague
| security reasons. I remember when the credit card companies ran
| commercials about how easy and secure credit cards are,
| especially compared to checks, but now I feel like a criminal
| every time I try to use mine. I wonder if this violates any part
| of the merchant agreement that these stores are getting a 100%
| valid authorization on my credit card, but still aren't willing
| to accept my payment.
| vertis wrote:
| Highly recommend: https://wise.com
| giardini wrote:
| 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.
| brianmiddleton wrote:
| That does help a bit with the banks, but I've not had any
| luck at all with the stores who cancel my orders after the
| payment goes through. They refuse to budge, assuming I even
| get a response, and won't give me any information about why
| my orders are cancelled, citing more vague security reasons.
|
| I did have success with a privacy.com card once, at a store
| that cancelled orders from all of my other cards. I'm
| guessing they see it as a prepaid card and can't get as much
| info on those.
| ghaff wrote:
| Neither my bank nor my credit card company even want pre-
| notification at this point and don't provide a way to do it
| at this point. I admittedly haven't had issues either
| internationally or in the US for quite a few years at this
| point, but I always carry a varied set of credit cards when
| traveling.
| baq wrote:
| Stores are not payment processors and don't want to be due
| to compliance reasons. You'd have to ask who is processing
| their payments and contact those people _and_ have the
| store also contact them most likely and that still doesn't
| mean you'll get anything done.
| nonsense123 wrote:
| > 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_ "
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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.
| crdrost wrote:
| Note that this is about large tech service providers "taking
| this into their own hands." The basic problem is that a lot
| of these companies deal with people who store their card
| information and then use an insecure password or so, or reuse
| the password at a different website... Someone else gets into
| the account and requests a transaction to a new address.
|
| Also fun story about how your advice doesn't always work, I
| was locked out from my money multiple times on my honeymoon
| in Greece despite repeated calls to the bank, repeated
| unlockings of said account, "hi I am actually standing at an
| ATM in this bank branch, can we track this account lockup in
| real time?"... I think with all of the time on hold I
| actually might have spent something like 20+ hours in the
| trip trying to debug it over the several times it happened.
|
| When we finally resolved it, I'm not 100% sure about the
| explanation, but it was something like "the person you called
| a week ago put in country code GE for Georgia rather than GR
| for Greece, and that is the first place everybody else who
| has serviced your request has probably looked, but they all
| probably thought GE was right because you have to memorize
| that DE is Germany and so people get confused real easily..."
| another-dave wrote:
| When I worked at a bank, I heard that the travel
| notifications weren't actually used by the fraud department
| at all and were just there as window dressing to make the
| customer feel better.
| qup wrote:
| Have you tried the temporary/virtual card numbers?
|
| (I have no idea if they would work, I'm just curious)
| neilparikh wrote:
| When I was traveling abroad, I placed an order on Walmart,
| shipping to my home address, so that it would be there for me
| when I got back home. Walmart cancelled the order, "due to
| location restrictions on placing and shipping orders", even
| though the delivery address was in the US! I have no idea why
| the physical location of the computer placing the order should
| matter to Walmart. Eventually I just had to get my friend order
| for me.
| pshirshov wrote:
| A tailscale node on your AppleTV at home will fix the issue
| for you.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Wireguard on a $15 Raspberry Pi Zero works as well[1], for
| those who don't have AppleTVs.
|
| 1. Or OpenVPN on your router. It's probably to gove
| yourself a tunnel to your home-network you can use from
| your phone or laptop from anywhere in the world. Avoid
| default ports if you can.
| snotrockets wrote:
| Tailscale is wireguard, just with outsourced admin.
|
| I'm getting paid to develop and operate network
| infrastructure, I don't want to have a second job doing
| it without compensation.
| DANmode wrote:
| Name and shame so we can avoid if we choose?
| vertis wrote:
| Another workaround: As far as Google Play is concerned just
| create new accounts and add them to your phone. I have this setup
| because I end up having to download region blocked Australian, UK
| and German apps.
| teamspirit wrote:
| Doesn't that then put you at risk of Google's anti fraud
| measures, which, in my opinion, is much more difficult to work
| around? At least with your bank you can call them and
| eventually get it resolved.
|
| I ask because I've thought of doing this but have always been
| worried Google would not only shut that account down but my
| main one as well.
| CrendKing wrote:
| 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 scammers are mostly targeting foreign
| countries, and Indian police are well known for accepting bribes
| from these scammers, the scamming business is de-facto welcomed.
| They are too short-sighted to not see that the "industry" is
| damaging India's global reputation, which transitively affects
| you in negative way. It's unfortunate, and hope the situation
| improves over the time.
|
| [1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-
| releases/2023/02/...
| havan_agrawal wrote:
| 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, making it
| impossible for me to move money when abroad. The problem exists
| in the other direction too, my foreign account only allows
| verification thru one mechanism. It's really frustrating.
| PKop wrote:
| >It's not like the auth systems are designed for higher
| scrutiny in specific countries
|
| Of course it matters and of course they are.
|
| Everything you describe and OP describes are frictions that
| apply by virtue of you not being in the US, on purpose.
| MR4D wrote:
| 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.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| 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 customers. It was
| ridiculous.
| aendruk wrote:
| 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.
| woobar wrote:
| > 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.
| harshalizee wrote:
| Nope. I travel to EU often with roaming on. OTP SMSs for
| many services don't come through. It's a real pain.
| woobar wrote:
| 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.
| harshalizee wrote:
| It's weird, regular SMSs do come through, as far as I
| know. It's hard to tell as I don't get many SMSs, mostly
| iMessage and Whatsapp. I'm on AT&T, and something about
| automated messages from those 5-6 digit numbers never
| show up when you want them to.
| codegeek wrote:
| SMS on roaming can be a hit or miss. I travel
| internationally every year and I am always worried that
| some SMSs wont reach and it happens from time to time. I
| especially hate those product/services that only do SMS
| based 2FA.
| bberenberg wrote:
| Just FYI (because your OTP hell was my OTP hell until
| recently) if you fly to another country, disable roaming in
| the phone, and don't make outbound calls, your phone will
| receive these OTP messages for free with most US cell
| providers.
| fredgrott wrote:
| Your comments are ill-informed as several remote terminal
| providers have joined with scam-baiters and India police to
| combat this...new as in the effort started in Jan2023.
|
| You need to update your information and knowledge
| PKop wrote:
| Just because there are efforts to combat the problem to some
| degree does not mean the problem is solved or that there
| isn't a major problem to begin with.
| ta_vf7xjd34cc wrote:
| > 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 and providing protection to events and
| politicians that India's "global reputation" is simply not on
| their radar.
|
| You cannot buy a SIM for your phone or open a bank account
| without providing ten types of identity documents but these
| scammers seem to have an infinite supply of phone numbers and
| bank accounts. That is just the way things are.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > 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.
| aiProgMach wrote:
| Laundering money using 100-200$ gift cards?
| kradroy wrote:
| Absolutely. Walmart used to have a policy of refunding gift
| cards in cash. You'd buy many at one location, and return
| them at another. Less trackable. Gift cards are also used
| quite regularly in human/sex trafficking to control the
| victims.
| CrendKing wrote:
| 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
| uoaei wrote:
| 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.
| dbdoug wrote:
| 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.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| How old was your account when you lost access to it?
| gameshot911 wrote:
| I did a year of travel worldwide in over a dozen countries, and I
| had the most problems using my credit and debit cards in India.
| Particularly online, even at large, legitimate businesses like
| major airlines.
|
| It becomes a tense situation when you are trying to buy a flight
| that you absolutely have to take, and despite 4 different
| credit/debit cards you still can't get any purchase on multiple
| different airlines go through! I even tried to go to the offices,
| but they were often difficult to find, non-existent, or just not
| open at the times you'd expect them to be. And good luck trying
| to purchase on a telephone, between trying to dial in
| international number, bad connections, and language issues!
|
| FWIW, I had the most success with debit cards. I _suspect_ it 's
| because international companies feel more comfortable with cash
| in hand, vs. an American CC which can be easily charged back.
| patrakov wrote:
| That's how I effectively lost my Azure account.
|
| "According to our records, you originally registered this account
| while in Russia, and there is no way to change the country of the
| account. So we will continue to apply sanctions to this account
| despite the well-confirmed fact that you have moved out for good.
| We will also not allow attaching any non-Russian debit cards to
| that account, as we generally prohibit attaching foreign cards to
| any account. Please make a new account and enjoy."
| ellyagg wrote:
| I live in California and nike.com just cancelled my last two
| orders without notice because they "couldn't verify my billing
| information", according to the chat rep. It's the same billing
| information I use everywhere for years.
| tayo42 wrote:
| the 2fa with a phone number drives me crazy when i travel. I
| couldnt get into my accounts because of it on one trip.
| frustrating that sites assume you always have a connected phone.
| had this happen on a airplane too
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| (Tell HN:)
|
| Also:
|
| > Yet, many online services are giving me hell with their "smart"
| anti fraud detection and things like that
|
| To provide a contrarian opinion, credit card testing, free trial
| abuse, and other forms of fraud are a thing, so companies usually
| have to layer other anti-fraud mechanisms on top of 3D secure.
|
| That being said, what service are you facing issues with? I do
| see Amazon as one of the listed services, but they do eventually
| remove such suspensions. (My experience was with AWS though.)
| aiProgMach wrote:
| Currently I'm at the 3rd attempt to unlock my account, let's
| see, hope you're right.
| Habgdnv wrote:
| 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 traditional cash-based food
| delivery system to a new digital platform. While trying to
| register on this platform, I was prompted to provide an "email".
| I input my usual email address only to be met with an "invalid
| email" response. After multiple back-and-forths with both the
| school and the platform's support, I discovered that by "email",
| they actually meant a "Gmail account".
|
| For context, I've been using my own domain for my email, which
| ends in .international, for over a decade now--longer than my
| 9-year-old child has been alive. Despite this, they deemed my
| email domain "new". The situation reached a head when the
| school's principal called me, trying to understand the issue.
| After explaining the situation, he assured me that the problem
| was on my end, stating that he had consulted with other teachers
| and they were in agreement that "<my domain name>.international"
| wasn't a "real platform".
| mrbadguy wrote:
| 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?
| Habgdnv wrote:
| 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.
| Habgdnv wrote:
| 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.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| Well in my opinion, this is what it means to support
| digitisation. It means accepting that these situations will
| become more and more commonplace. It is simply the price you
| pay.
|
| In your other comment you mention that people handling email
| should be familiarising themselves properly with RFCs. Yeah.
| Maybe. Probably actually you're right.
|
| Putting aside the problem of ehether they actually _have to_ or
| _will_ for a second. Do you think it's reasonable that the
| people at your child's school will? No, of course not. And
| they're the ones who will choose these providers. Not you.
|
| To support digitisation is to support the tyranny of technical
| ignorance in every facet of our lives.
| jp57 wrote:
| > 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[?]
|
| There are many payment methods around the world that have
| different rules, but for Visa, MC, and Amex cards issued by
| American banks, the merchant, not the card issuer, has the
| liability to repay fraudulent on-line purchases (so-called "card
| not present" transactions). The merchant is the one accepting the
| risk, not your bank. So they decide which transactions they will
| accept liability for and which they will decline and what you
| need to do to prove that their liability is low.
|
| In addition, some second-factor systems (like possibly 3D secure)
| shift the liability from the merchant to the issuer when passed,
| but banking rules are arcane, and it is likely that 3D secure
| only shifts the liability for the one transaction that triggered
| it, and not any subsequent transactions.
| codetrotter wrote:
| This sort of thing is where I hope Bitcoin can help more people.
| bryankaplan wrote:
| Yes, but there's still so much supporting software waiting to
| be built.
| worik wrote:
| > This sort of thing is where I hope Bitcoin can help more
| people.
|
| It is a use for a Bitcoin like system
|
| (The transaction costs, planet destroying character, and slow
| speed probably not Bitcoin)
|
| It is the intersection of money laundering and normal
| requirements
|
| Stopping crime by stopping money laundering will always have
| these problems, surely?
|
| Is there a way to inhibit CC fraud, and money laundering
| without making life difficult for people who are in the tails
| of the distributions?
|
| Even cash will not suffice as many places no longer accept it
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| > Stopping crime by stopping money laundering will always
| have these problems, surely?
|
| Yes.
|
| Money laundering detection inescapably relies on private
| actors making a pre-prosecution estimate of whether money was
| earned illegitimately.
|
| Private actors have much less information available to them
| than real law public sector enforcement.
|
| And even with full information, trials cannot be predicted
| deterministically so there will always a gap those publicly
| deemed guilty and those privately deemed guilty.
|
| Those in later category will suffer unjust financial
| hardship.
| NegativeK wrote:
| > Is there a way to inhibit CC fraud, and money laundering
| without making life difficult for people who are in the tails
| of the distributions?
|
| Yes. Have better customer support and actually fix issues
| when they happen.
|
| This ends up costing someone money.
| nonsense123 wrote:
| I only have two data points (well, three now with OP): but I
| susped this is on purpose.
|
| BR and CN both are painful for me for this reason. Try to use a
| credit card, they will try to SMS a phone number I haven't used
| in my bank for 3 or more years.
|
| Now that OP tells us about IN i'm starting to see a pattern: for
| a fraud and insurance company, or being realistic, the payment
| processor middle man who offers those services at a loss, making
| their client lose a few sales while pushing their customers (you)
| to instant electronic payments (BR:pix, IN:UPI, CN:IBPS etc) is a
| much better deal (for the middle man)!
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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-minute phone
| call.
|
| And then as to buying/using gift cards in India, on a non-Indian
| account, _of course_ that 's going to raise every suspicion under
| the sun, given that that's a mechanism used by some of the most
| prevalent scams in the world.
|
| So I'm really confused, because this "vent" reads like somebody
| not going through the basic steps to use credit cards abroad, and
| then engaging in the biggest red-flag types of transactions.
|
| And the fact that they're complaining the airport doesn't allow
| them to carry enough cash (isn't the limit $10K?) _really_ raises
| red flags for me. If you need to transfer large amounts of money
| safely between countries to your family, that 's what wire
| transfers or Western Union is for. That's been the case for many
| decades now.
|
| The more I re-read this post, the less and less sense it makes.
| aiProgMach wrote:
| 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 (while possible in theory as I
| understood).
|
| There are legitimate reasons for not wiring money if that was
| even an option, because you don't pay the hospital large amount
| ahead, and when it's time there's not enough time to wire the
| money.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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?
| starttoaster wrote:
| > because you don't pay the hospital large amount ahead,
| and when it's time there's not enough time to wire the
| money.
|
| This was their justification against wire transfers.
| Obviously I don't know how the accounts receivable
| department works in Indian hospitals because I've never
| been to India let alone a hospital there, but this strikes
| me as unusual. A couple days delay to pay large sums of
| money seems more than reasonable.
| phantomathkg wrote:
| 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.
| instagib wrote:
| 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.
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| > Most places in the US has Apple Pay broken sticker on them
|
| Citation needed. At least in my experience, over the last 12
| months, the last time I saw "Apple Pay broken" was at one
| location, affected all tap-to-pay, and lasted for maybe 2
| days.
| instagib wrote:
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255199188
|
| I have seen them at Starbucks at airports and a few
| restaurants. A few people have issues with their Apple Pay.
| It's probably an issue with the customer's phone or setup
| and the employee wants to get on with their day, then they
| post a sign.
|
| I hope it gets wider adoption.
|
| https://nitter.net/search?f=tweets&q=apple+pay+not+working&
| s...
| its-summertime wrote:
| > (until I asked shop owner to pay for me and I paid him in cash
| + small profit...).
|
| I tried that once, family member specifically. They ended up
| getting blocked too. Customer support told me to take a hike.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Tell HN:
| gorbachev wrote:
| 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.
| aiProgMach wrote:
| I wish I have the same problem :)
| instagib wrote:
| 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.
| RadixDLT wrote:
| you are using the wrong credit card/bank if you travel overseas.
| You should try something like Wise bank that will let you deposit
| money in different currencies
| gdulli wrote:
| I am no longer allowed to buy anything at Ikea. The web site
| declines both my credit card and debit card. I called my credit
| card company, and no issues there. I called Ikea and tried to
| order through a person, but my cards were also declined that way.
| They can't give me any explanation. This happened in 2019 and
| again the next time I tried in 2021.
| pshirshov wrote:
| > as Google play have this "smart" rule that says I can only
| change my region once per year, what??
|
| Create a work profile and a separate Google account with Island
| or Shelter.
| pshirshov wrote:
| When I was on a trip to another country, Revolut blocked my card.
| I complained, they apologized, gave me EUR20 as a compensation
| and seemingly fixed something, at least it didn't happen again
| during several subsequent trips. Speak with your bank. Maybe
| change your bank.
| anish_m wrote:
| I worked on one of these Fraud detection systems at Airbnb.
| Statistically, You are in 1% population with the your usage
| patterns. For most part, all ML models which are used to detect
| fraud have to take a trade off between precision/recall - meaning
| how often they let good guys suffer vs let bad guys in. BUt what
| most of these systems are missing is the appeal and escape path.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| > But what most of these systems are missing is the appeal and
| escape path.
|
| Are there any such systems that do have effective escape/appeal
| paths? If so, what do they look like?
| goodboyjojo wrote:
| that sucks man i know your pain. i hate having to jump though
| hoops just to do transactions online. i understand the things
| they do is to prevent fraud but treating everybody as a potential
| criminal is mildly disrespectful
| starttoaster wrote:
| > is mildly disrespectful
|
| From their perspective (at least in this case), it's just
| business. Using one currency to buy gift cards in India's
| currency is a huge red flag in and of itself. Scammers exist
| everywhere, surely, but I don't know of many other countries
| where it's common news to see an entire office building full of
| scammers working telephones and computers with remote desktop
| sessions open on "client" computers to extort money from
| unsuspecting people (often using gift cards on services like
| Google Pay or Amazon as the vehicle.)
| didip wrote:
| To quickly solve some of your pain, pay a VPN node in America and
| just proxy requests through it.
|
| Small amount of money compared to the stress.
| deepsun wrote:
| Well, you cannot blame companies from protecting their
| businesses, as long as you don't have to use them. Just use cash.
|
| However, if that becomes problematic (like WeChat in China), then
| things go bad very quickly.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| > it's hard to carry cash from my country (for "security"
| reasons, as most airports limit how much cash you can carry).
| cycomanic wrote:
| One of my favorites amongst this stupid platforms is PayPal. I
| have moved countries/continents. Once I forgot to close my
| account before moving (still had some $100 on it), after I could
| never access it as it wanted a phone call to my non existent
| former phone number to confirm this is really me, ok my fault.
| Now I have moved again when I want to pay with PayPal I can't
| because my account is associated to a different country. It is
| impossible to change the country. The FAQ say you have to close
| and reopen a new account), but if I try to close the account I
| get to an error page. This would all be not so bad if it wasn't
| for the merchants who use PayPal and disallow payment without an
| account. In the end the easiest was to just open a new account
| with a different email.
|
| Somebody mentioned Google services, and that was a big issue as
| well. I still have bank accounts in my former country of
| residence, so I need access to apps from that country (the 2fa
| App that is used there). On the other hand I need to access some
| apps here (school notifications, banks...) Google obviously knows
| better than to allow me to get apps from different regions. The
| solution was again to just create another account. The whole
| system is really screwed up. I'm not sure what they are actually
| trying to prevent, considering that in the end one can work
| around the restrictions quite easily with multiple accounts, but
| one would think with the world moving closer together these
| things would actually get easier.
| k8svet wrote:
| I have such immense disdain for Capital One and MasterCard for
| how they implement 3DS.
|
| I have been in Germany for 6 weeks. I have spent thousands of
| dollars between flights, train tickets, and hotels. Guess what I
| have to do every, single, time I buy a 3EUR train ticket? Receive
| an SMS on my American cellphone number.
|
| Their "solution" is to have a family member in the US add their
| number to my account, wake up in the middle of the night and
| relay TOTP codes to me. FOR A 3EUR TRAIN TICKET. Multiple times a
| day. From the same damn train company.
|
| I'm willing to pay $1000 yearly fee for a competent credit card
| company that sends me TOTPs over Email (just like they send me
| charges [but of course, not refunds/canceled-authorizations]). Or
| let's me use a Security Key.
|
| The funny thing is, they happily text these codes to VOIP SMS
| numbers, which I can (and do) _route to my email anyway_.
|
| It's abusrd that my Xbox account is both _more secure_ and _less
| annoying_ to use than my credit card. Again, for a 3EUR train
| ticket. I feel like we 're slowly entering this dystopia Kafque-
| esk nightmare, and yet, as always, there's people in the comments
| here insisting this is fine, or that I deserve it.
|
| I'm going to assume the people saying "use cash" have never set
| foot into the real world. Yes, let me put cash into the non-
| existent train ticket machines, or to the non-existent train
| attendants. In the 3 minutes I have before my train comes.
| tim333 wrote:
| wise.com is pretty good for international card stuff. You send
| them a bit of money and they send you a card etc.
| 0x38B wrote:
| Not the same (it's a debit card), but when Schwab locked my
| debit card after I tried to buy a transport pass in Poland, a
| quick phone call got me a human who apologized, put a travel
| alert on my account, and gave me $50 for the inconvenience.
|
| As for C1, they updated the app while I was in Ukraine, and it
| wouldn't even let me log in; I had to use a VPN.
| k8svet wrote:
| If Schwab would fix their account security to allow plain
| TOTP instead of the scam that is Symantec VIP, I would have
| nothing but good... well, there was the two times, yes, two
| times in a month that I had to spend hours on the phone
| telling them to stop letting people randomly transfer
| securities into my account without my consent. They assured
| me that (1) it would be illegal for me to refuse the request
| to take back the money and (2) that I could not block it from
| happening and they could not implement a system requiring my
| authorization before such transfers. The clawback letter from
| the originating bank even pointed out that they hadn't
| noticed until I raised flags.
|
| I loathe American financial companies, mostly because they
| all seem rankly incompetent.
| NOWHERE_ wrote:
| it's not mastercard but your bank. there are plenty of banks
| which implement mastercards 3ds via app (eg N26).
| k8svet wrote:
| And here I am trying to give Capital One some good faith.
| I've called them three times since I've been here and they
| insist that MasterCard forces them to do this.
|
| Just reaffirms my suspicions that I need to shop around. I'm
| traveling and putting enough money on this card to start
| looking at ones that actually charge a fee and have decent
| "rewbates", I mean "rewards".
|
| Less sarcastically, thanks for the heads up. I'd be greatful
| for any other hints of people that might not hate their
| credit card provider they want I do.
| cangeroo wrote:
| Can't you open an account with Revolut?
| k8svet wrote:
| Trust me, I'm taking notes! I've tried researching this, but
| "credit card company that sends TOTP over email" is not
| really Google-able. Revolut is on my list now, though.
| Thanks!
| salad-tycoon wrote:
| I got an Apple Card, tried buying NextDNS with it, it declined
| for fraud detection 9 times over a few weeks(and I manually and
| immediately approved the transaction after each one and also
| called them around the 4th time). I asked Goldman sacks , they
| said NextDNS is not ESG enough or some such trash.
|
| Yeah, I think we should be worried.
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