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Unfortunately, in countries like China, your identity is your cellphone number. Almost all of the internet giants (QQ, WeChat, Weibo, Taobao, AliPay, Online Ban

by devy 10y ago

Unfortunately, in countries like China, your identity is your cellphone number. Almost all of the internet giants (QQ, WeChat, Weibo, Taobao, AliPay, Online Banking apps) predominantly use SMS to authenticate user login and/or as a 2FA step. As a result, identity thefts and telecommunications frauds are very common. Sad state of reality.

AstralStorm 10y ago
In fact, a more important step is to notify the customer immediately through all set channels of critical account changes. 1) Password changes 2) Adding a subuser 3) Weird login attempts Something like whatever Valve is doing in Steam.
contingencies 10y ago
identity thefts and telecommunications frauds are very common Not sure I agree, let's tackle those in order: first, QQ is like ICQ, it's almost dead and therefore irrelevant. On WeChat, phone number is simply used to look people up so you can find them. If you lose a phone or WeChat account, the social identity thing is used to recover it (you get a few friends to send a special magic number to you, then a reset is made). It doesn't trust your number. No idea about Weibo. Taobao does take your phone number but they have to because they need to be able to get in touch with suppliers when there are issues/complaints, and many customers want merchant phone numbers anyway. I don't see trust issues. You can log in with your phone but it's the pre-authenticated instance of your account on a mobile device that it cares about, not your phone number. AliPay, no idea. Online banking is not frequently used because until recently it totally sucked, and often was Windows only (yet macs are really popular), and people here like cash. I think the Chinese ID card number (largely guessable with a birthday and knowledge of where someone was born) is far more dangerous here than a phone number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Identity_Card#Identity_card_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Identity_Card#Identit... I feel like most financial fraud here is confidence and pyramid schemes.

by devy 10y ago

AstralStorm 10y ago

In fact, a more important step is to notify the customer immediately through all set channels of critical account changes. 1) Password changes 2) Adding a subuser 3) Weird login attempts Something like whatever Valve is doing in Steam.

contingencies 10y ago

identity thefts and telecommunications frauds are very common Not sure I agree, let's tackle those in order: first, QQ is like ICQ, it's almost dead and therefore irrelevant. On WeChat, phone number is simply used to look people up so you can find them. If you lose a phone or WeChat account, the social identity thing is used to recover it (you get a few friends to send a special magic number to you, then a reset is made). It doesn't trust your number. No idea about Weibo. Taobao does take your phone number but they have to because they need to be able to get in touch with suppliers when there are issues/complaints, and many customers want merchant phone numbers anyway. I don't see trust issues. You can log in with your phone but it's the pre-authenticated instance of your account on a mobile device that it cares about, not your phone number. AliPay, no idea. Online banking is not frequently used because until recently it totally sucked, and often was Windows only (yet macs are really popular), and people here like cash. I think the Chinese ID card number (largely guessable with a birthday and knowledge of where someone was born) is far more dangerous here than a phone number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Identity_Card#Identity_card_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Identity_Card#Identit... I feel like most financial fraud here is confidence and pyramid schemes.