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I just lost my wallet on the way home from work
- isp 7y agoSee also ancient bash.org lore: http://bash.org/?814243 http://bash.org/?814243
- degenerate 7y agoWould be amazing if that's where this guy got the idea, from a Bash.org post in 2000
- blunte 7y agoWhen I see bash.org, my first thought is, "I put on my robe and wizard hat."
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- adambowles 7y agoFor reference: http://bash.org/?104383 http://bash.org/?104383
- mileycyrusXOXO 7y agoI forgot about bash.org - there goes 2 hours. Well spent.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- debt 7y agoWhat's a "reference"? You can enter arbitrary info during a transaction? Genuinely curious. Is this a UK thing or available everywhere?
- detaro 7y agoAt the very least with european SEPA transfers and their predecessors, but I would have assumed pretty much all bank transfers where you send money support some way to put a message - how else would you map incoming transactions from previously unknown senders to what they're for?
- Spoom 7y agoIn the US, AFAIK the only metadata you get with a direct / ACH deposit is the sender's "name", usually the company name. I assume that you can't easily change this per transaction. US banking infrastructure is decades behind the rest of the world in many areas. You can include a memo on a paper check though.
- daveslash 7y agoI wonder if you could write a personal check and deposit it to the person's bank account -- write something in the "memo" line and hope that the person checks the scanned images of the cancelled checks. Of course, then that person would also have your bank account number.
- noneeeed 7y agoSo if you were paying an invoice, is there no way to add the invoice number/reference to the transaction? Do people pay everything with cheques?
- Spoom 7y agoFor regular bills, when adding a bill pay account online, the bank will ask for your account number... so there must be some way to specify that with an ACH transaction. I've noticed that the custom input memo field visible to the end user goes away on ACH transactions though, at least at my bank. Perhaps it's just used by the account number automatically? For bills that don't accept ACH bill pay (i.e. most smaller companies and utilities), banks will often print and mail payments via check for free (it just says "signature on file" on the printed check). Like I said, decades behind.
- oil25 7y agoDoes Twitter not allow connection from the Tor network any more? What a depressing reality. > 403 Forbidden: The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it.
- epx 7y agoIf social media posts cost 0.01, things would be way better.
- badrequest 7y agoAgreed, but let's not stop at a penny.
- kart23 7y agothis might actually be a decent idea for an instagram competitor. Sounds dystopian, but I'm sure a good marketing department could make it seem normal.
- epx 7y agoIf I had deep pockets I'd actually work on this idea. One issue I find is the processing cost of such nanopayments. Cryptocoins didn't live up to the promise of enabling this use case :(
- djrogers 7y agoJust bill monthly. Your power company doesn’t process a charge of $.08 every time you use a KWh of electricity...
- snazz 7y agoHave people deposit a few dollars to open an account, then let them reload it when they’ve used up their posts? Edit: actually the sibling comment’s suggestion (bill monthly) is probably better
- mburns 7y agoFurther incentivizing Influencer culture? Sounds awful.
- lucb1e 7y agoEmail spam. I would not think twice about a cent, but people would definitely think twice about spamming a mailing list or sending newsletters to people that you know don't want them.
- journalctl 7y agoThis is neat! I once found someone’s debit card on the street (in the US). It had a small face shot on it, so I found them on Facebook and sent them a message. Of course, Facebook had already started doing the “messages from non-friends are really hard to find lol” UI dark pattern, so like two years later the woman responds thanking me, but also saying she just canceled the card. Which is what I would’ve done, but I at least wanted to provide some peace of mind or closure that it wasn’t stolen or anything.
- mav3rick 7y ago"Dark pattern". Do you know how many unsolicited messages women receive on Facebook ?
- jimmaswell 7y agoWhatever, it's ridiculous I found years-old legitimate messages in there when I looked.
- Double_a_92 7y agoI once won one of those contests and didn't notice until half a year later. They were kind enough to send me an alternative prize.
- crooked-v 7y agoThis is a legitimate concern, but the way to combat isn't to silently hide messages behind unfamiliar UI. For a contrast, consider email junk filters, which generally serve a similar purpose but are accessible enough to easily scan through in case of legitimate messages being lost.
- blackflame 7y agoI've come across a type of scam where someone on a dating app like tinder will pose as an attractive person with the intention of trying to convince the victim to engage in sexually explicit texts or snapchats. Once they do, the scammer then looks up the friends of friends of the facebook profile associated with the number and then tries to blackmail the victim with threats of sending embarrassing texts to their closest friends. There are now TV commercials warning about it too. The best thing you can do is beg the scammer to post the texts, it really confuses the hell out of them and thanks to this facebook feature, the threat is greatly minimized.
- einpoklum 7y agoLife lesson: Keep a note with your email address in your wallet - clearly marked "wallet owner's email". Paranoid version of the life lesson: Keep a note with an anonymized email address, with forwarding set up for the message to go to your actual mailbox, in your wallet.
- simonebrunozzi 7y ago> Advanced/paranoid version of the life lesson: This! You never know.
- periferral 7y agoI assume your drivers license is in your wallet. You are concerned about anonymized email?
- larkeith 7y agoI imagine the bigger concern is that it's pretty easy to social engineer your way into most online accounts with an email and the info from a drivers license.
- lolc 7y agoI stick my email-address on all valuables I could conceivably lose. Just last month the police sent me a message about a camera found in the road with my address on it. I'd been wondering for weeks where I misplaced it. It must have fallen off when I passed there with my bicycle. The poor thing must have seen at least one bout of rain and a lot of sun judging by the ablated jacket. And it still works perfectly!
- caf 7y agoEven better - put a photo or even a drawing of your face on the note as well, to try and evoke some empathy from the finder, increasing the chances it'll be returned to you.
- tobr 7y agoMy bank only seems to allow 12 characters. Why is that? What am I even supposed to do with 12 characters?
- codezero 7y agosend them the name of a file in your very old version of DOS?
- journalctl 7y agoIt’s enough for a phone number, at least!
- lucb1e 7y agoMine allows about an original tweet in length, but forces a line break in the middle, and it disallows dangerous characters. Just the usual suspects that always break everything and cause database tables to be dropped or commands to be injected. Exclamation marks are super dangerous. I never understood this.
- larkeith 7y agoHonestly, I can understand stripping characters at a large organization like a bank. It shouldn't ever be necessary, but it protects against that brainfart/junior dev/marketing analytics software, with little cost.
- ellisv 7y agohttps://www.troyhunt.com/banks-arbitrary-password-restrictions-and-why-they-dont-matter/ https://www.troyhunt.com/banks-arbitrary-password-restrictio...
- detaro 7y agoWhat does that article have to do with comment fields on transactions?
- artsyca 7y agoWhy couldn't they call his bank and get them to contact this fellow?
- jandrese 7y agoThe bank might be suspicious that it's part of some kind of scam. Like they might trust the info more because it's coming from their bank's official number.
- tapland 7y agoNo. People come in to banks with lost wallets and cards they found all the time. But you should do it at an office. You can't just call and have them send messages to users.
- SI_Rob 7y agoEvery so often my pessimistic tendencies get a healthy slap across the face by the actions of someone who took the high road when they easily could have chosen otherwise. It's a couple summers ago, at the height of the summer tourist season and I'm cycling up 4th ave SW in DC. Somewhere between the NASA HQ and the National Mall my camera bag - packed full with a fairly new DSLR, a few lenses, and a secondary cell phone - came unbuckled from my messenger bag and tumbled to the sidewalk. Probably a few thousand dollars of gear, not counting the considerable hassle of resetting 2fa and credentials for every possible account that could be tied to my phone (it was password-locked but I have no idea how well that would survive a determined attack). I was booking it pretty hard trying to catch a metro, so I didn't notice the loss for a couple more blocks. After the only genuinely involuntary (and painful!) facepalm I've ever given myself, I hurried back home (lived in town close by) and immediately started cancelling every account when my main cell phone rang. The bag was waiting for me, all contents undisturbed and intact, in a hotel lobby a couple blocks away. An anonymous samaritan had picked it up, brought it in and gave it to the concierge without a word, then walked away. Concierge called me using my contact info in a business card that was also in the bag. In one instant, some unsung karmic superhero single-handedly erased the work of several hundred asshole double parking jobs.
- shaneprrlt 7y ago> In one instant, some unsung karmic superhero single-handedly erased the work of several hundred asshole double parking jobs. Perfect balance. Yin and yang.
- j2bax 7y agoTwo karmic superhero's. The guy that found it, and the concierge!
- alexis_fr 7y agoIs it actually legal? In France, a bag in a public place is deemed to be a bomb and the military has to come, secure the area and destroy it. Happens on a routine basis, not even worth the newspapers. You don’t have such laws in Washington DC?
- floatrock 7y agoI hate it when my cynicism alarm goes off, but this feel-good tweet about hacking payment transfers for good is written by a guy who's twitter bio says he's a PM at Transferwise ("We’re building the best way to move money around the world.") All the replies are people contrasting shitty experiences they've had with their own wallets and money transfer services. His top pinned tweet is: > Reasons to work at @TransferWise: > 1. Irreversibly change the world of finance to be fairer > 2. Excellent office dogs [video of cute dogs running around] I mean, I'd love this to be true, but the coincidences are uncanny.
- wyxuan 7y agoTransfer wise does forex not traditional bank transfers like this
- floatrock 7y agoSure, but 150k users liked and 30k users retweeted a deep-dive engagement into the intricacies of how hack-ey the current money transfer system is. Some percentage of those people who deal with this stuff on a weekly or monthly basis will say "yeah, this is f'd, there must be a better way..."
- detaro 7y agoWhere is there a "deep-dive engagement into the intricacies of how hack-ey the current money transfer system is" at the link? I see a tweet with a fun story that's about no negative part of banking and bunch of replies about how this is cool or how the commenter also has a story about lost property. If it's deeper I didn't scroll far enough down, and I doubt very many of those interacting with the tweet did either.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoPlenty of people here who are paid or pay someone else in foreign currency. Myself included.
- 7y ago
- crimsonalucard 7y agoOnly in rich countries.
- Rebelgecko 7y agoEven in poor countries, a wallet with money in it is actually more likely to be returned to its owner than an empty one https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/734141432/what-dropping-17-000-wallets-around-the-globe-can-teach-us-about-honesty https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/734141432/what-dropping-17-00...
- clevergadget 7y agothanks for saving me the effort of hunting for this, really good info
- crimsonalucard 7y agoDid not know this. Good to know. Given relative wealth and my own anecdotal experience in poorer countries I would think the opposite. Clearly, I am wrong.
- marcosdumay 7y agoA while ago, there was a fashion of making lost wallet studies around the world. It looks like every factor is more relevant than country (time of day, wallet stile, place, phone number being available, anything), except for those countries where people absolutely do not let things out of place and those where people think everything is a bomb.
- dang 7y agoWould you please stop posting flamebait to HN? We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263246 and marked it off-topic.
- crimsonalucard 7y agoCan you tell me how this constitutes as flame-bait? From my anecdotal experience I feel my comment is true. The comments in response to mine offer enlightening information to the contrary. I didn't post it to flame anything only to generate interesting responses. I'll try to stop doing what I think you want but note that from my perspective, I just have a different perspective on certain things and I find it only worth saying things that are different or controversial rather than saying things everybody already agrees with. It's not necessarily purposely flame-baiting though differing opinions do tend to look that way as a side effect. I will admit I use sarcasm to illustrate some points, but I can stop that. Just note, that I'm not purposely flame-baiting anyone. I am literally just saying an opinion that I have that many people disagree with.
- hesk 7y agoSince we're sharing, I lost my wallet in the park on the day before I had to hand in my thesis. When I realized it was gone, I just blocked my bank card, but otherwise I put it out of my mind because I was focused on last-minute changes. An hour later or so, the police called and told me that someone had handed it in and that I could pick it up at the station. I told them that I would do that the next day because my thesis deadline was more important. So they sent two officers to my address and and brought me my wallet. Talk about service!
- nostromo 7y agoIt reminds me of the automated collect calls of yore. "You have a collect call from 'GAME IS OVER PICK ME UP MOM THANKS'. Would you accept the call?"
- es-hn 7y agoCoincidentally, I was able to return four peoples' IDs and other cards just this afternoon. Yesterday I was walking in East Oakland and found a pile of credit cards, debit cards, and IDs. Oakland Police Department wouldn't take them so I brought them home and started googling names and addresses. Of the four IDs I found three belonged to adults; the third was a state ID for a minor related to one of the adults. I was able to find a contact number for all three, via relatives, and had reached them all by afternoon. I learned that the person who'd dumped the cards had committed a series of car break-ins in San Jose yesterday morning and had fled to Oakland. They stole purses, laptops, and an iPhone. I wish OPD had taken an interest in the theft or at least in returning the stolen property.
- djrogers 7y ago> wish OPD had taken an interest in the theft Sadly, in California most theft is merely a misdemeanor, and busy PDs do not have time to chase down criminals to give them a ticket.
- bradlys 7y ago> Sadly, in California most theft is merely a misdemeanor, and busy PDs do not have time to chase down criminals to give them a ticket. But they sure do like camping out all the time to give people speeding and parking tickets. Priorities!
- magduf 7y agoWhy should the OPD bother chasing down purse thieves? How are they going to make money for the city by doing that, when they can go after people for speeding and parking violations instead and make lots of money?
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoAre you being serious? I can't tell.
- 01100011 7y agoI found a wallet recently. I found the guy on linkedin, sent a request, and we coordinated the pickup. Less creative than OP I suppose.
- astura 7y agoStupid American question - how does someone get your bank account information from your wallet in the UK?
- chrisseaton 7y agoYou bank account information is written on your bank cards, which are in your wallet.
- astura 7y agoFollow-up stupid American question - what's "bank cards"? Is it like a business cards with your banking information on it that you give to someone so they can send you money?
- scarejunba 7y agoIt's an ATM card.
- chrisseaton 7y ago...it's a card that you use to pay for things in store, taking money from your bank and giving it to the store, and to get money from ATMs, taking money from your bank and giving it to you in cash. I know for a fact you have them in the US. A 'debit card' maybe? It uses the Visa or Mastercard payment networks, supports chip, contactless, swipe, or you can enter the numbers online, and also has useful information like your bank account number and routing number on. If you give other people that information they can pay you money even though you're not a store. Which is what happened here.
- astura 7y agoYeah, debit card or ATM card. I didn't know that bank account number was writen on it in Europe, thanks for the info.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- recursed 7y agoIn Czech Republic, during presidential elections, one of the participants (winner, Milos Zeman) opened a transparent as part of their marketing. That meant that every transaction was visible along with donor, amount and a short message. Because Zeman is controversial person, it turned out badly. People started spamming it with lowest amount possible (about 0.01 CZK) and wrote funny messages. There were people selling their bike or computer, sending messages to their mother from a trip. Two people even played boats there [1]. Even ASCII Pikachu picture appeared there apparently [2]. [1]: https://1gr.cz/fotky/bulvar/19/041/anime/KIT7a6caf_imgbauer_mediadrpl_2017_26866_173351.jpg https://1gr.cz/fotky/bulvar/19/041/anime/KIT7a6caf_imgbauer_... [2]: https://1gr.cz/fotky/bulvar/19/041/anime/KIT7a6caf_imgbauer_mediadrpl_2017_26866_173349.jpg https://1gr.cz/fotky/bulvar/19/041/anime/KIT7a6caf_imgbauer_... EDIT: Transparent account was apparently mandatory for every candidate by law.
- smoe 7y agoWouldn't it be much easier for the finder to just get in touch with the bank and ask them to notify the owner? I once got a call/mail from my bank giving me the contact details of someone who had found my lost keys that had an RSA SecureID token generator thing on them and the finder called the hotline imprinted on it. I don't remember much details around it since it happend in the mid 2000s.
- wues 7y agoNo it wouldn't. Sending three or four transfers from mobile banking app is for sure faster than finding bank number, calling them, listening to the info that the conversation will be recorded, listening to the menu, then listening to music interrupted with "we will be with you shortly" etc. I guess I could send 20 transfers at least during this time.
- JenBarb 7y agoA few weeks ago I found a working iPhone X on the side on the sidewalk. I thought about using siri to call a recent contact and try to get it back to the owner, but I found the language was set to Chinese (which I cannot read or speak) and I gave up and put it back on the sidewalk in case the owner came back. In retrospect, I don't think I could have done anything even if the language was English apart from wait for the owner to call their phone. That said, I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions about how I could have been a better Samaritan.
- faeyanpiraat 7y agoUse google translate text-to-speech function, and make your phone ask the other phone in Chinese to "call mom".
- netsharc 7y ago"Wei?" Then what? (It's the Chinese greeting when picking up the phone)
- njx 7y agoYou could have given it to some near by store saying someone dropped it and maybe he or she may come looking for it.. Long time ago, I came out from Denny's during lunch and just after walking on the right edge of the parking lot, found a bundle of 100 dollar bills. There were several restaurants in the same location. I walked into the same Dennys and gave it to the cashier saying I found it in the parking lot and probably belongs to someone who might have visited here and then left. Next day I get a call from Dennys saying the owner of the cash wants to thank you and reward you. I said thanks but not needed.
- ghaff 7y agoProbably contact Apple with the serial number.
- astura 7y agoDrop it off at the local police station.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- m-i-l 7y agoNice hack. The "official" way of dealing with lost property in the UK is to take it to your local police station. If no-one claims it within 6 weeks, you might be able to keep the item. I certainly remember doing this a few times when younger. Not so sure many people know this nowadays. Anyway, my mother lost her purse a few months back in the small town in Scotland where she lives. Someone suggested she try her local police station (actually not so local any more thanks to the current government having closed over 600 police stations[0]) and lo and behold someone had handed it in there! [0] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/600-police-stations-shut-in-eight-years-nvjdjwmwj https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/600-police-stations-shut-...
- OJFord 7y agoThe one time I tried, Bobby wasn't interested! I think my father managed to find the owner from the wallet's contents in the end.
- m-i-l 7y agoSeems like the practice came to an end last year in England and Wales: "From 1 October, anyone who contacts the police about something they have lost will be redirected to private websites"[0]. [0] https://news.sky.com/story/43-police-forces-in-england-and-wales-to-stop-dealing-with-lost-property-11513918 https://news.sky.com/story/43-police-forces-in-england-and-w...
- tapland 7y agoGoing to a local bank also works. And you want to do that to get their cards replaced/blocked as well. And they have the owners contact details.
- Marsymars 7y agoI've found bank cards a few times and have called the bank in question, they've just thanked me, made a note of it, and asked me to destroy the card myself.
- phjesusthatguy3 7y ago"We've detected that JavaScript is disabled in your browser. Would you like to proceed to legacy Twitter?" Yeah, whatever. But I apparently also need a cookie or something to see what this is about, so no thank you.
- sincerely 7y agoOn the flip side, I knew a woman who started being stalked by her ex after they broke up. Even though he was blocked on everything he was sending her e-transfer requests with abusive stuff in the comments field.
- jslakro 7y agoLots of comments talking about a possible fraud behind the story, if that's the case why anyone use the expression growth hacking, it wouldn't be the appropiate term ?
- Sarahz92 7y agofeel like a large part of where we are in the world now is because in 2015 or so, YouTube mindlessly and singlehandedly funneled millions of apolitical young male gamers into gamergate extremism. It took forever for YouTube to stop giving me personal recommendations for various alt-right content no how many times I told it I wasn't interested.
- sakopov 7y agoSimilar situation with a lost kindle [1] [1] https://twitter.com/MbyM/status/1183796234420736002 https://twitter.com/MbyM/status/1183796234420736002
- 97b683f8 7y agoAnother solution is to look up the BIN (bank account identifier, i.e. the 6 first digits of a credit card number): https://binlist.net/ https://binlist.net/ Then drop the wallet at the bank's closest office.
- throw0101a 7y agoWhile this is neat and kind, wouldn't it have been easier to see which debit / credit cards are in the wallet, and simply take the thing to the nearest branch?
- detaro 7y agoEasier than sending those transactions online, possibly from their phone?
- consp 7y agoThis is very nice use of the (now) mandatory message space for SEPA transfers! Ah, this reminds me from the days when Dutch postbank transfers were instantaneous if not send to another bank. A friend and I did a chat with the short messages you could send. We even got a printout of all the 1 ct messages as that was still a thing back then.
- OJFord 7y agoIt's (UK standard) 'Faster Payments' l, not SEPA. I don't know if it's mandatory, but all the (five that I recall) banks I've used since its introduction have supported the reference/message field. It's usually pretty instant, especially if intrabank.
- jaredsohn 7y agoWithin the past couple of years, I dropped my wallet while downtown and when I got home my wallet was waiting for me there. Was impressed that they went to the trouble of delivering it.
- Stratoscope 7y agoWhat a strange coincidence: just a couple of days ago our local Nextdoor had someone who found a wallet in the street. She found his debit or credit card in the wallet and went to the local branch of his bank. They called him and he got in touch with her, and wallet was reunited with its owner.
- xmly 7y agoI lost my wallet in the gas station and got back from the state police dept after check whether I am the owner for 20 mins. Of course, all cashes were gone.
- midvar 7y agoAm i reading too much into this? The twitter user just so happens to works for a company that uses the technology the "good Samaritan" used. I just glanced at who the guy was, and found it funny that he works in the industry. Who knows, maybe that's why he found it so awesome. "In April 2018, TransferWise joined Faster Payments as the first non-bank payment service provider to be a directly connected settling participant,[23] after being the first of its kind to gain access to Bank of England's Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system.[24]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service "Money transfer firm TransferWise has become the first non-bank company with direct access to Britain’s Faster Payments Scheme, which the start-up said on Wednesday would help it compete with banks on sending money overseas." https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-transferwise-britain/start-up-transferwise-breaks-into-britains-faster-payments-scheme-idUKKBN1HP110 https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-transferwise-britain/start...
- Symbiote 7y agoThe system has existed for over a decade, and the slower predecessor for over 50 years. It's a normal thing in Britain, and doesn't need to be advertised. I don't think his work has affected his reaction here.
- madeofpalk 7y ago"the technology the "good Samaritan" used" is just what anyone in the UK uses to send money to someone else. It's been standardised for like... forever, and is nothing special or worth astroturfing for.
- p0llard 7y agoYes. Pretty much any domestic bank transfer initiated electronically via mobile/online banking will be cleared through Faster Payments up to a limit of about £25,000 ($32,000) for most banks (the theoretical limit is an order of magnitude higher), making it the de facto way of transferring money in the UK. When I was a student, bank transfers by Faster Payments were more common than cash payments for settling small debts between friends. In addition, BACS/CHAPS transfers (the other two main electronic clearing systems in the UK) typically incur fees, and would normally only be used if the value exceeds the limit for Faster Payments. In addition, Faster Payments normally clears "instantly" (i.e. in seconds); it's literally the most convenient way I know of to transfer money domestically in the UK, and is accordingly ubiquitous: cash requires you to have exact change and have cash to hand, which is increasingly rare in Europe; BTC addresses are too long compared to a UK account number/sort code. Having recently moved to the US for a year, I've noticed that the financial institutions tend to be years/decades behind Europe in terms of electronic payment processing and clearing.
- wruza 7y agoBeware of lost wallet frauds. At some countries they drop a wallet on the road, wait for you to find it and then appear and claim that few hundred bucks (or a local equivalent) are missing. First they try to threat you, and then resort to the police. Your fingerprints are on the wallet. If you want to help, make sure you have a stranger witness at least, who is willing to help, or better look for a policeman nearby.
- EpicEng 7y ago>First they try to threat you, and then resort to the police How could they pull this off? It's 100% he said, she said. What court is going to see such a case through and find in favor of the fraudster?
- wruza 7y agoIt never goes to a court, obviously. Your choice is to spend hours at crappy room with other unsocial dudes waiting for more important cases to be documented before yours, -or- take a shortcut by just giving them what they claim. You’ll also be confused if it is a fraud or you just found a recently stolen wallet. That’s how fraud works.
- EpicEng 7y agoI have a hard time believing you would even be arrested, but I suppose I have no clue as to whether or not it's actually happening.
- wruza 7y agoSimilar fraud: a guy who looks like a bad guy “finds” the wallet near you, makes sure you seen it and then inclines to split it. “Don’t even try to call cops!”, take your cut, etc. If you take it, even out of confusion, bad guy vanishes and their friends come and claim they seen all in reverse and that you took most of the money. Banknotes with known serials / pen marks are in your pocket, threats, police.
- 7y ago
- taude 7y agoI was riding my mountain bike in the woods about 5 years ago. I found someone's wallet in there. Looked them up on Facebook and LinkedIn and sent them some messages. Never heard back from them for a few years. Then one day, they responded to my Facebook messenger message that they didn't notice my original message. I never looked deep in the wallet, but evidently there was some sentimental stuff in there they were happy to have back. I can't believe I held onto that wallet for so many years.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- callumprentice 7y agoI once found someone's iPhone in a shopping basket at my local supermarket and spent the whole day getting it back to them. I decided to buy a lottery ticket - after all, my cosmic karma must be running at an all time high. But first, I'll make myself a nice cucumber salad and I'll use that new mandoline slicer we got - protective dongle thing be damned (The very same mandoline slicer my wife told me to be every so careful with before she left on her trip). Wow.. this is cool - every slice of the cucumber is identical down to the en.. OW! Sliced my finger opened and spent the evening in the ER getting half a dozen stitches and the top of my finger sewn back on.. So much for karma... The lesson I learned from this is never, ever return a phone you found - it will only lead to pain! :)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- alias_neo 7y agoA few years ago I found an iPhone on the floor in central London. I was on my way to dinner with friends that were in town for a couple of hours, so I put it on the table and waited for something to pop up. Eventually a message popped up with a full First Name and Surname, so I got my phone out, looked up the name and found the guy on twitter, I asked him about who he'd messaged saying I'd found this phone, I'd like to get it back to its owner. Before he replies, the device starts ringing because FindMyiPhone had been activated. A couple of minutes later this girl barges into the restaurant, grabs the phone from the table and starts shouting abuse at me and accusing me of stealing it. I apologised and explained that I had been trying to get the phone back to her, but I'm also out at dinner with friends, and I'd found it practically in front of the restaurant, so I hadn't wondered off with it somewhere. The last thing she shouted at me before leaving was "why didn't you just call one of the numbers in the phone then, or message someone?" at this point, my patience had ended with this idiot. "Because it's locked you dumb bitch" as she stormed out. Anyway, this guy replied, turns out it's her cousin, he apologised for her attitude, and thanked me for my effort. I asked him to give her a promise, that if I come across lost property in London again, I'll just step over it and carry on, thanks to her. I don't go out of my way anymore to return things I see on the floor.
- lqet 7y agoThe ticket machines of the German railway system print the ticket before releasing the bank card (to prevent a charge if the printer is broken), which makes it very easy to forget the card in the machine. Happened to me twice, both times someone found the card, brought it to a branch of my bank, which sent the card to the branch in my home town, which then contacted me, saving me the 10 EUR for a new card. Thanks, strangers!
- avischiffmann 7y agoBetter to just keep a phone number to call inside your wallet tbh
- joeblau 7y agoAbout 4 years ago, I found this credit card on the street in Pittsburgh when I was walking home. When I got home, I just emailed the persons firstname.lastname@gmail.com. They actually responded and I walked back to near where I found the card and gave the guy his credit card back.
- marai2 7y agoTwo weeks ago in Maui at the visitor center at Mt. Haleakala a distraught young woman came in saying she had dropped her wallet somewhere between the visitor center and the peak. When she went to the women's bathroom in the visitor center to check if she might have dropped it there, she found someone else had forgotten their iPhone by the sink. Within a few minutes an older couple walked into the visitor center and said they had found a wallet on a hike but had lost their iPhone :-) Two individuals each finding the others lost item was pretty karmic!
- mlthoughts2018 7y agoand at that moment the volcano erupted..
- lkrubner 7y agoIn terms of the kindness of strangers, I’m reminded of a friend who decided she wanted to hitch hike around Mexico when she was 18. She was poor but she wanted adventures. She wanted to get away from the beaten path, away from tourist traps, and go out into the rural areas so she could discover what Mexico was really like. Everyone who picked her up warned her that what she was doing was very dangerous. She was lucky, they said, to get a ride from them, and not the criminals all around them. She got ride after ride like that. Family after family picked her up and took her along on their trip and all of them said, “You are in danger! You are lucky we are the ones who picked you up!” In this manner, she traveled around Mexico for a month, and she never had a dangerous ride.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wil421 7y agoThey were picking her up to protect her. I’ve been in Central America and had these types of things happen, never foolish enough to hitchhike. Many times people on buses have explained these types of things to me. Where I need it watch out for my stuff, how to not get ripped off, and which places I should avoid. One example I can remember[1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/28/the-incredible-life-and-haunting-death-of-world-traveler-harry-devert/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/2...
- ericmcer 7y agoI frequently walked home from work in Oakland at 1am when I worked a night shift. I always wore headphones too and people would tell me I was being stupid. After about a year and a half of this I was coming up a hill to a four way intersection when someone popped out from behind a fence just before I passed it, grabbed my shirt and stuck a gun in my stomach. He ended up being not the worst and let me keep my keys and license when I asked. It only takes once, and the consequences for her would probably have been much worse.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
- spoondan 7y agoHmm. That’s neat. But usually someone has a bank card or other membership card with a support line on it. Is there some reason to not just call one to report the found wallet? The times I’ve found a wallet, I’ve called one of those support lines. The support person was able to contact their customer to give them my phone number. The customer called/texted me, and we arranged for them to pickup the wallet. This has worked every time to get the wallet back to its owner within a couple hours of my finding it with minimal inconvenience to me.
- royce 7y agoIt depends on the organization. Some larger financial institutions are sometimes more likely - or even bound by internal policy - to simply trigger their standard card-cancellation procedures. Instead, one could present the financial institution with the hypothetical question, and then only give the specifics if the institution's policies are non-destructive. If the finder is a decent sort, and has the time to try alternatives, I'd rather get the cards back intact than to have to do the cancellation dance.
- OrgNet 7y agoit was clever but he just didn't want to get caught by the surveillance state /s I lost my phone one day and a stranger returned it by guessing my 1111 pin. People are generally good. He threatened me with a $20 fee but I agreed to pay and he refused it.
- jayalpha 7y agoInteresting approach. I would have the wallet given to the bank. The bank can't disclose the phone number of the customer but will be happy to give him a call and tell him he can pick it up in the branch. I remember vaguely having given a wallet with some ID and a business card of a medical doctor to the office of the doctor. They will never disclose private information but will call the owner himself.
- jere 7y agoI worked at a university a while back. Found a student's wallet in a park one day while running, but I couldn't find any contact info. I looked them up in the university database to find their phone number and was able to meet up to return the wallet. I'm pretty sure I could have been fired for that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- concordDance 7y agoI lost my wallet in the centre of town but didn't notice. The next day a stranger knocked on my door on the outskirts of town to give it back! I'm thankful that a drivers license mentions addresa, would have been annoying to replace all those cards.
- logo2k 7y agoIt's so cool
- logo2k 7y agoSo cool
- hayyyyydos 7y agoInteresting that there's an 18 character limit. In Australia, with the NPP (equivalent to UK's Faster Payments), your description can be up to 280 characters including, of course, emoji. Out of curiosity, does Faster Payments allow you to pay to any other identifier (email address, phone number), or only bank account number? More importantly... does it support emoji?
- Liquid_Fire 7y ago> does Faster Payments allow you to pay to any other identifier (email address, phone number) There is a system called Paym which lets you send money to (the bank account associated with) a phone number, but you have to sign up for it explicitly to associate your phone number with your account, and I personally have never used it nor heard of anyone I know using it. > does it support emoji? I believe it's limited to some subset of uppercase ASCII only. However, some banks allow emoji for transfers to other accounts within the same bank (e.g. Monzo).
- lewisjoe 7y agoThe first thing I do with a new wallet is to put a piece of paper in it containing my name and phone number. It stays there forever useless, until it gets lost. I stole the idea from a reddit thread.
- thrower123 7y agoThis is a perfect use case for those free address stickers that you get in the mail.
- blunte 7y agoWhy does "acccount" have three Cs? Is that really production code screenshot?
- anonytrary 7y agoWhen I was in grad school, I was 10 miles from home without a phone. I had been walking for miles, and eventually found a beat up old Galaxy-S3 on the road. I picked it up, turned it on, and it happened to still be logged into Facebook. So, I posted a new status on their Facebook account: "Hey, I found your phone -- give me a ride home if you want it back". It worked. About a half hour later, I was sitting in their car, getting a ride home in exchange for the phone they lost, which I happened to find out in the middle of nowhere.
- bfriedl2 7y agoDang... super unique. We might need to add this approach to our Lost and Found software when the digital outreach and postcards don’t quite get through. Love it.
- chirau 7y agoYeah yeah, they coincided with a good one. I have lost 2 passports, 4 laptops and 6 cellphones on the subway in NYC. Half of those were literally stripped off of me. The other half I was drunk and negligent. I don't believe in good samaritans. People only return wallets when they have no value or gains to be realized from them. The good folk leave it there, the ones with varied motives take it away. Again, congrats for recovering your wallet. I'd never dream of it.
- MayeulC 7y agoI've seen some studies[1] that suggest wallets are returned more often if they contain money. Suggested reason: we tend to surestimate the value of money vs the other contents when we find a wallet. [1] could be https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=734141432 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=734141432
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoI hope it’s not you that comes across something I’ve lost.
- perlgeek 7y agoAround 2007-2009, Germany had fairly expensive SMS on mobile plans, but bank transfers within Germany were usually free, and Swift transfers allowed like 200+ characters of text. Me and some friends knew each other's bank account numbers due to shared orders and stuff, so we would send each some joke amounts typically smaller than 20 cents just for the cool messaging medium.
- trollied 7y agoI once lost my wallet the night of a work Christmas party. Went through the trauma of cancelling cards etc, getting some cash from the bank branch to tide me over, using my passport as ID. A real pain. Found it a few months later in the back pocket of my smartest suit trousers, which I’d drunkenly hung up in the wardrobe. Never thought to look! FML. At least I found £50 that I assumed had gone forever.
- zenit-mf-1 7y agoIt remind me this study “ Would You Return This Lost Wallet?” published on nyt back in June 2019. https://www.google.fr/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/science/lost-wallet-what-to-do.amp.html https://www.google.fr/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/scien...
- hzay 7y agoI've lost my wallet half a dozen times in the US. Twice, people gave my debit card to the bank & the bank called me. :)
- Shorel 7y agoDefinitely not Colombia.
- elif 7y agoI have no problem with the substance of this article, but the title does not seem clear enough to meet HN guidelines.
- neor 7y agoI found a wallet once. It has a bankcard in it, so I called the bank, telling them I had found the wallet of one of their customers and asking them if they could help me return in to the owner. They weren't allowed to give contact details of the owner to me, but they were allowed to forward my contact details to the owner of the wallet. Through this route we eventually got the wallet back to its owner. Took half a day to get everything in order, but man were they happy to get the wallet back.
- jen729w 7y agoSame find, in Australia. But they (Commonwealth) wouldn’t entertain any swapping of details. I was just on the phone to the service centre and I thought all was lost ... but of course they said “just take it to any of our branches and we’ll sort it out”. So I lose the satisfaction of closure — who knows what happened to that thing after I handed it over — but this does feel like the most-safe option.
- ojosilva 7y agoSomeone registered and paid for a new Netflix account with my gmail address plus a point somewhere, which Gmail ignores. So I logged into the Netflix account, thinking it was actually mine and this was some misunderstanding. I realized that was not the case, so I to tried to get in touch with the person but no other info was available, everything was done from his phone apparently according to the account logs. I figured that reporting it to support would not do much since they too did not have his info and no phone number was on record, they would cancel the account and maybe the amount paid would be lost. Finally the only way I found to notify the user was by creating/modifying Netflix users with usernames as short telegraphic messages such as "you registered", "using my email", "*@gmail.com is mine","contact me or change it". That message would be visible as the user opened up any of the Netflix apps or web app. It apparently worked as a couple days later my email stopped being primary on the account and never got any Netflix emails at that gmail inbox.
- peter303 7y agogmail has this weird bug that if I am XY@gmail.com, I also get email from X.Y@gmail.com.
- osrec 7y agoIs that just for you? Or in general for anyone?
- ivanhoe 7y agoFor everyone, that's on purpose. Also xy+anything@gmail.com will go to xy@gmail.com inbox (with anything label added)...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- will0 7y agoGmail ignores periods in emails. It also ignores everything after the +. So if your email is bob@gmail.com you can also use: b.ob@gmail.com, b.o.b@gmail.com, bob+alice@gmail.com, You can use the second one to do filtering. I.e. use a different +{filter} for bills, entertainment etc. bob+bills@gmail.com for bills. bob+spam@gmail.com for sites you know will spam you etc. then setup mail rules to filter based on the +
- bobsoap 7y agoGreat story. I seem to keep finding cash. The first time when I was 9, a couple hundred between racks in a department store. I showed my mom and we brought it to Lost&Found. A year later after nobody had claimed the money, they called us up and gave it to me as the finder. I promptly invested it in a shiny new skateboard. The last time I was walking behind two guys on the street and one of them dropped a bundle of bills. He didn't notice. I picked them up and yelled "hey, stop!" after them. It was dark. I'm sure they heard me, because they stopped talking to each other, but they quickened pace without looking around. I kept yelling at them - in hindsight it must have come across as aggressive, because they just kept hurrying away. At last one of them turned around, saw that I wasn't trying to jump them, and gladly accepted his money back. He wouldn't let me go until I reluctantly accepted $20 as a thank you.
- antihero 7y agoCheaper than SMS used to be :)
- tim333 7y agoIt's a shame Apple makes it so hard to return their devices. I've tried with a locked phone and AirPods but thought they have serial numbers and probably Apple's databases have owner info they totally refuse to forward any "it's been found" type messages.
- pflenker 7y agoI think with "find my phone", it's possible to display a message on the phone - provided it is switched on and connected.
- esseti 7y agoHas anyone understood how this has been done? how can you place a message in a transaction like this? If not mistaken this was done via contactless payment, right? how is that possible to add a message? (maybe you can in some country)
- stef25 7y agoWhen I send a payment I can either include a structured message (a code in the format xx-xxx-xxxx) or a "free text" message in which I could easily write "found your wallet contact me on abc@email.com"
- Liquid_Fire 7y agoIt's not a contactless payment, it's a bank transfer. The person who found the wallet sent payments of £0.01 to the owner. When you make bank transfers you can include a short payment reference which can be any text you want, and it appears on the other person's statement. The UK has the Faster Payments Service which enables most bank transfers to be completed in a few seconds, so they would have seen the messages immediately as soon as they logged into their bank account to freeze the lost card.
- esseti 7y agonow i got it, so he sent the money to the owner, and the owner had the switf & co in the wallet, but not his data. that's strange :)
- Liquid_Fire 7y agoIt's not so strange. Many debit cards in the UK have the sort code and account number printed on them, which is all the information you need to send money to that account.
- calewis 7y agoI left my laptop (£2,000+ MBP) on a train in the UK (South eastern rail). Some amazing human handed it in, yay! The rail company charged me £30 to collect it as an admin fee. Now, when I find things, and this happens relatively often (I've no idea why) I find the individual using social channels like LinkedIn or waiting them to call the phone.
- major505 7y agoWas easier just to call the bank, and leave a message to the manager. I once found credit card on the floor. I searched the agency on the internet, talked to the account manager, and left my contact info. The manager talked to the owner, and the guy give me a call.
- major505 7y agoI once was comming back from academy, and was late, so I didn`t want to stay and shower there, and decided to go home in may exercise clothes. When I was going inside the car, I put the duffle bag containing wallet, clothes and watch, OPN the car roof to open the door, and forget there. When I was on my way home, it fell somewhere. I didn`t even notice. I got home, showered, I was getting ready to go to bed when I got a call from some guy. Turns out he was walking with his dog, and saw the duffle bag fall of the roof. He took a look inside, and there was my Id and a business card, but not my contact information. He recognized the business card because it was someone who got to med school with him. I was my step mother busIness card. She gave he my cel number. I was incredible luck that day.
- needle0 7y agoAnything that can hold arbitrary text and can be seen by more than one user eventually becomes used as email. About a decade ago, I discovered a featurephone-based BASIC programming environment (as in, you write code directly using the phone itself) where you can upload programs you've written and download programs by others. There had sprung up a cottage industry of programming kids whose sole access to technology were their phones; that was pretty amazing & amusing in itself, but I laughed out loud when one of the uploaded programs consisted entirely of comment lines, essentially using uploaded source code as a message to one of the users of the service.
- mmmbn 7y agoA little over 2 years ago I found an iPhone while I was passing by Subways in downtown Palo Alto at around midnight. Before I had time to figure out how to get the phone back to his owner the owner called and I told him in the first sentence that I just found his phone, where I am and that I‘ll wait for him to pick it up.
- Fnoord 7y agoI've lost my wallet multiple times in my life. Always got it back, intact (ie. nothing missing). Why? Because most people (99%) are good, and people are empathic to such circumstances. They'll help you out. I've done the same (in The Netherlands, the police will forward it to the city council). Last time was a year ago. I lost my wallet out of my back pocket at a tunnel, on the road. I did not even know I was missing it, when someone was on the door. His son found it. I gave him a bottle of wine as a gesture (couldn't come up with something different, it all went fast).
- confidantlake 7y agoMy license dropped out of my pocket when I was visiting a friend in a town 2 hours drive away. Didn't even notice until I got home. 3 weeks later it shows up in the mail. A stranger went through all that trouble to mail it back to me.
- dawsoon 7y agoI can understand you because I also lost my wallet few days ago. After it I decided to buy smart wallet with gps tracker on https://wallor.co/ https://wallor.co/ It is well-known brend in New York. So I hope I will not lost my wallet again
- henvic 7y agoI feel pleased reading the stories on the comments here. Two years ago, I was in a mountain ski resort in Big Sur with some friends and found an iPhone (with no emergency contact) with a wallet case containing an ID card on the floor. They were afraid of taking it from the floor. Still, I had just been past the security office, took it without thinking at all, and went straight to it while trying to find the girl who lost if on Facebook to send her a message. When I arrived there, I was holding the ID to copy the person's name in the Facebook search. There was a queue with some people talking with the security officer there. Once it was my time, I was putting back the ID. The officer was such an asshole, I thought he might call the cops to question me about it. I said I found the phone on the floor. The officer kept me asking why I went through someone's else things. Multiple times like I was doing something evil. I got upset really quick and told something like 'look, I found this on the ground full of snow and am trying to find the owner' and left the office immediately. I told my friends (all Brazilians, like myself), and they told me the culture there was different, and probably I should have asked someone to come over to retrieve the object instead of taking it there on my own, as I didn't want to be accused of anything. I never bought this explanation. Despite what happened, I'd have done the same again.
- BrandoElFollito 7y agoIn the thread somebody mentioned that they used Siri to get the name of the owner. I asked my Android phone and it replied that technically I am a Homo Sapiens...