| ▲ | mlinhares 3 days ago |
| I was once explaining to someone in the US why transactions in Mexico and Brazil take a tumble and start to be rejected at a much higher rate than usual due to banks being more stringent after 10 PM as its much more likely these would be fraud/scam/crime in general in these countries and they were amazed that this was a thing. Its sad that these scams are so widespread today that a heavy handed approach like this is necessary. Unfortunately doing these attacks is incredibly cheap :( |
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| ▲ | kattagarian 3 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's probably one of the biggest criticism about PIX, the Brazilian method of transferring money: it's too easy. Early on, kidnappers started taking people off the streets and forcing them to transfer all their money, because victims had no choice but to give their password, and there was no limit on the transfer amount. |
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| ▲ | catlikesshrimp 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Criminals always find a way Decades ago, there was a popular activity called "Paseos Millonarios" (More or less, Millionare Rides) where criminals at night picked up a victim coming out of an ATM, and took him to several other ATMs around, everytime drawing non-suspicious amounts of money. The criminals didn't even need the PIN. They neither entered the ATM hut because only the card holder was sent in. The final solution was disabling the ATM network durimg night, except the ones located in safe places. Showing you are drawing money in a hurry in a lone hut in the night was a bad idea, anyways. | | |
| ▲ | robocat 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Daily limit for ATM withdrawals exists in New Zealand (NZD2000 I think). Why did they visit multiple ATMs? | | |
| ▲ | teachrdan 2 days ago | parent [-] | | In developing countries, individual ATMs may run out of currency, well before you hit the daily limit. To pay for language school in Ecuador I had to go to multiple ATMs and withdraw as much as they had in each one. Literally every pocket of mine was bulging with paper currency :/ | | |
| ▲ | throwaway2037 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I thought that Ecuador switched to use the US Dollar as their local currency in the year 2000. Was this before the year 2000? Or was your withdraw limit in USD tiny... or was your school bill huge (hardest scenario to believe!)? | | |
| ▲ | teachrdan 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | It was c1998 -- dollarization would have been extremely convenient for me! |
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| ▲ | ryandrake 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Many highly-sophisticated technical solutions are still vulnerable to the "wrench attack". https://xkcd.com/538/ Unfortunately, whenever governments try to solve the wrench attack, they do so by removing the end user's control over their own stuff. | | |
| ▲ | Marsymars 2 days ago | parent [-] | | And if you, as a savvy individual, makes yourself immune to a wrench attack, it’s unhelpful if the person hitting you with a wrench doesn’t believe you. |
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| ▲ | jajko 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Unlimited amount? Sure, I can easily see some non-standard situation where its very beneficial (ie once-a-decade home reconstruction). But only on a limited account having only the amount I don't mind exposing, which normally is very low. | |
| ▲ | dkga 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes, but the Central Bank of Brazil caught up quickly. | |
| ▲ | msm_ 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | >it's too easy To be honest, in my country I can also transfer all my liquid money (not countings stocks etc) with just my phone. The difference is that i'm not afraid of being kidnapped (it's safe here). And anyway, how much does normal person hold in the cash account? People living month-to-month don't have much anyway, while people with savings usually keep them in stocks/bonds/etc. | | |
| ▲ | israrkhan 3 days ago | parent [-] | | That is simply not true. I know people who can have millions in their cash account.
Also sometimes you need to liquidate your money and put it in cash account, for example down payment for an upcoming home purchase. |
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| ▲ | crazybonkersai 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I once wired som money to an acquaintance in Ethiopia using Western Union. The clerk made sure several times that I knew that I was doing and he was really surprised when learned that I actually personally knew the guy I was transferring money to. |
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| ▲ | duxup 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Perhaps similar to the situation where if you block internet traffic from a region or country ... you really do reduce the amount of malicious traffic and attacks an application sees, significantly. To the point that if you can, it's surprisingly effective. |
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| ▲ | esafak 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| To me it suggests they don't have the technical- and financial means to detect fraud. |
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| ▲ | dlisboa 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Unfortunately the number of different financial scams is the highest in the world in these countries. US and EU the banks wouldn’t have the capabilities either, it’s simply too much to deal with. You can’t flag everything as fraud. It’s also a different kind of enemy. The biggest crime organization in Brazil has switched their primary focus from drug running to financial scams. They invest millions and set up legitimate companies with hundreds of employees to facilitate these schemes. | | |
| ▲ | Marsymars 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > US and EU the banks wouldn’t have the capabilities either, it’s simply too much to deal with. You can’t flag everything as fraud. They can certainly try. I’ve had a handful of legit fraud instances on my accounts, banks detecting before I do has been close to a coin flip. On the other hand, I’ve had at least an order of magnitude more false positive detections of fraud. | |
| ▲ | xbar 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Three things need to change to reduce it: 1. Banks need to own the risk, not the customer
2. Banks need to spend to defend
3. Laws need to make organized fraud catastrophically criminal. There is a reason Singapore does not have this problem. | | |
| ▲ | oefrha 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Who the hell told you Singapore doesn't have this problem? It took me 5 seconds to find this reporting from 2022 https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/the-pig-... > It hit a record high last year, with $190.9 million stolen in such scams, more than five times the $36.9 million lost in 2019. Can't find more recent concrete figures in a minute or two but their police are busting balls through international collaboration in 2025 so they must have a big problem still: https://therecord.media/asia-scam-center-takedowns-singapore... I've seen bank defending people before with my own eyes. I was at a local branch doing some business and there was an old lady wanting to withdraw something like $50k to "pay a mortgage" or something, it was obvious she was scammed, the bank blocked her transaction and the teller was explaining to her she was scammed, and the old lady was shouting at the teller saying it was her money and they had no right to stop her. That's the thing, a lot of scam victims really don't believe they're scam victims until it's too late, and "it's their money, the bank has no right to stop them". | |
| ▲ | nmfisher 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Singapore definitely does have this problem, there are police/government warnings against scams and fraud plastered everywhere. | | |
| ▲ | ifwinterco 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It's actually one of the hardest forms of crime for state like Singapore to stop - you can police everyone inside the borders of the country extremely effectively, but there's not much you can do against scammers operating out of mainland China apart from trying to stop people falling for it |
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| ▲ | hyperliner 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
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