9 ms·

I'm living in Germany, the bank account of my neighbor in Commerzbank was closed because he wrote "hooker money" in description when sending money to one of his

I'm living in Germany, the bank account of my neighbor in Commerzbank was closed because he wrote "hooker money" in description when sending money to one of his friends. At least that's what we believe because they refused to explain why. He could easily open another account in Volksbank and according to him, when the new account manager asked and learned why his previous account was closed, they had a pretty good laugh. I used to get "funny" too when sending money through PayPal to friends, never again.

petre 7y ago
The financial industry has no sense of humor.
alias_neo 7y ago
I've been with my bank for 15+ years. One time I sent a payment of several hundred £s to a friend who's paid my share of a holiday when booking. In the description I put "fun times". I had a call from my bank asking me to explain the payment the next day. I've never been called before nor since that. It certainly feels like they're a bit touchy about certain references.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  At that moment you should have made it clear that it isn't his business at all to disincenitivise future bad behavior. Even as a lazy person I probably would have switched banks.
  - alias_neo 7y ago
    In hindsight, I probably should have switched banks, but ~~15+ years ago~~ I was young enough that it mattered very little to my sense of principle. They've otherwise been quite reliable since so jumping ship now would almost be asking for trouble. Edit: It wasnt 15 years ago this happened, it was perhaps a decade. I'd already been a customer for some time.
  - nothrabannosir 7y ago
    It is; the UK has very strict KYC laws and any institution handling money is quickly on the hook for certain misdeeds by their customers. They need to show diligence in monitoring that activity. > You must meet certain day-to-day responsibilities if your business is covered by the Money Laundering Regulations. These include carrying out ‘customer due diligence’ measures to check that your customers are who they say they are, and risk assessing your business. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/money-laundering-regulations-your-responsibilities https://www.gov.uk/guidance/money-laundering-regulations-you... (That entire page, like the rest of gov.uk, is comprehensive and very accessible to read for a layman. If you have any passing interest in the area I recommend giving it a skim.)
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- bloogsy 7y ago
  It could also be that they're worried about money laundering, or there's someone a little bit keen behind the scenes.
- MisterTea 7y ago
  > In the description I put "fun times". I recently started using Venmo to pay a few people and the things I have wrote are awful. Recent examples include: "Human organ trafficking" "Lunch and murder for hire", "sack of shrunken heads" and so on. Let them call me.
  - maxwell 7y ago
    Get ready for your account to be closed suddenly without warning over the next few years.
    - Haga 7y ago
      Never forget.. It's not personal. It's just a process who wants to shed potential liability by applying pressure on individuals involved. Wouldn't be necessary if we had banking secrecy.
  - cpursley 7y ago
    I put "Crimea" in a venmo transfer to my own wife and they will no longer allow me to transfer funds to her.
    - yosito 7y ago
      I'm American. I went on a trip to Cuba for a free software conference, and someone from the conference borrowed a few Cuban Pesos from me to get some food before going to the airport. Later he sent me USD on Venmo for "Cuban cash transfer" and they threatened to close his account, but he managed to convince them that he was sending me money for lunch at a Cuban restaurant in the US. Ever since then, I'm cautious about descriptions when I Venmo people money.
    - pretendscholar 7y ago
      For some real fun start quoting koranic poetry and start listing random sites in yemen and pakistan.
  - jstarfish 7y ago
    Vice did a writeup where a reporter did this just to see what happened and it ended with the associated funds effectively seized. Maybe they've gotten more permissive but don't do this with money you can't afford to lose.
- merpnderp 7y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
- ksaj 7y ago
  > It certainly feels like they're a bit touchy about certain references. I'd say they quite overstepped the boundaries. What are fun times to you and the recipient is certainly not their business. Why would they even waste time reading the RE line if they aren't doing your accounting for you at the same time? There is even a party rental company named Fun Times. Would they interrogate every cheque written to/from them?
  - alias_neo 7y ago
    I'm really not sure. Perhaps it was flagged as unusual and they looked, saw the reference and then questioned it?
jotm 7y ago
But even paying a hooker would be legal in Germany?
- blkhawk 7y ago
  yes, why wouldn't it be?
  - jotm 7y ago
    So that couldn't have been the reason for account closure, I meant :)
    - mtrovo 7y ago
      Don’t know if it’s only in Germany but banks here don’t need to give you any reason to close your account. There are some stories of how every time they tweak N26 Risk ML there’s a wave of termination letters to customers that didn’t do anything wrong. A bunch of friends got affected by this a while a go, they didn’t do anything wrong and the bank refused to give any reason at all for the termination.
      - Crinus 7y ago
        Does closing your account also mean you lose your money or they give it to you somehow?
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        r3drock 7y ago
        They must give it to you.
      - salawat 7y ago
        This is actually a consequence of what neural network based ML actually does. Machine learning is actually a misnomer. A more accurate term is function interpolation. Let's say I have a training set of 5000 samples. When I kick off the training process, I'm basically telling the NN run until it simulates a function that yields the desired response in those 5000 cases. The rub of course, is that programs aren't only defined by what they do (yielding the appropriate response for the the training cases) but also by what they don't do (excessive false positive/negative generation outside the training dataset). Performing correctly on the training, but messing up on more general tasks (the human equivalent being becoming an excellent test taker, but a lousy practitioner) is called overfishing. A more broad subclass of overfishing that van occur would be undesired/discriminatory/illegal optimizations, such as using combinations of protected classes as a significant data point in coming to a determination. There is no guarantee for any particular training session that you'll arrive at the same weights, or that that set of weights will cover the same set of things that the previous network did. I.e. Your network can make mistakes (just like a person). The irony in all of this, is you're basically training a machine to simulate a human doing a task in reliability/consistency (admittedly without the constraints of interacting with the world through a human body) with all the volatility between training that just being a human from day to day introduces. I'm honestly beginning to wonder if the push for machine learning adoption isn't anything more than the market trying to replace people with models that they don't have to pay benefits for, and onto which they can pass blame trivially because, "Of course we didn't make it to discriminate! There's no way we could have known it would do that ahead of time!"
pgeorgi 7y ago
The law in question was established in 2016 and it calls for a special type of bank account ("Basiskonto") to be made available to all[0]. So the story could predate the law or (which is quite likely) the account might be a regular account, not the fallback. [0] Conditions apply: A bank isn't forced to do business with somebody who defrauded them in the last 3 years, for example. But the decision must be made timely (10 days), it must be explained and there's a well-defined path to legal review. Details at https://www.bafin.de/DE/Verbraucher/Bank/Produkte/Basiskonto/basiskonto_node.html https://www.bafin.de/DE/Verbraucher/Bank/Produkte/Basiskonto...
anilakar 7y ago
Banks in EU are forced to monitor their customers' transactions. I think it's one of the ways to comply with anti-laundering and anti-gray market laws. Last year there was a news article about someone getting a phone call from the bank because the description in a money transfer contained the substring "ISIL".
pluma 7y ago
Generally the advice in Germany is not to use "funny" descriptions, but not because the bank might have no sense of humor but because the tax agency might take it literally. If your friend sends you money "for sexual favors", that might be considered taxable income and you'll find yourself having some explaining to do.
- toyg 7y ago
  Not just tax authorities, but (more importantly) police ones. The laws around things like sex work or drug consumptions, in most countries, are full of grey areas and willfully-contradictory positions (e.g. one can buy but the other can't sell, etc). So as soon as a transaction is categorised as part of a "problematic" economy, then police can get involved. If your bank lets through "hooker money" unchallenged, the police can eventually accuse the bank of facilitating activities which might be, at some level, criminal.
  - pdpi 7y ago
    > willfully-contradictory positions (e.g. one can buy but the other can't sell, etc). This seems weird, but is actually a perfectly reasonable legal regime that's all about power dynamics and enabling the authorities to approach people. Drug users and prostitutes are in much more vulnerable positions than drug dealers and johns respectively. If you make selling drugs a crime, but not buying/owning those same drugs, now the police can approach addicts much more easily, and get them help (this is the much-lauded Portuguese model). The same logic applies in reverse to prostitution: if selling sexual favours is legal, but buying is illegal, prostitutes are enabled to report abusive johns to the police, and authorities can approach them much more easily to try and get them off that life too.
    - toyg 7y ago
      This is the rationalisation of a legal kludge that is only necessary to assuage consciences that the state has not become "immoral". The facts on the ground are that, dissuasion or not, these economies will never go away ("oldest profession", after all). Full legalisation would allow for complete oversight of such murky sectors, which would ensure everyone's safety better than the current arrangements, at all levels. For example, in many countries there is no way for prostitutes to legally ensure their own security, because any sort of professional relationship with a sex-worker is illegal (even if the business itself is not); at that point, whether they have recourse post-abuse or not, is basically irrelevant. The legal situation around cannabis and prostitution is just a shitshow in most places, driven as it is by outdated sensibilities which have ossified through short-term political calculation. There is no point trying to find in it a logic that is simply not there.
pepesza 7y ago
Don't give them any info. Write something along the lines of "transfer of money", always. Use separate channel to communicate "why". Every bit of information you give them will be used against you.
- black_puppydog 7y ago
  including suspicious non-disclosure of the actual "why"...
- sjoebergco 7y ago
  Traditional banking customers are still just a policy change away from a locked account tho. Hard to avoid with current systems.

petre 7y ago

The financial industry has no sense of humor.

alias_neo 7y ago

I've been with my bank for 15+ years. One time I sent a payment of several hundred £s to a friend who's paid my share of a holiday when booking. In the description I put "fun times". I had a call from my bank asking me to explain the payment the next day. I've never been called before nor since that. It certainly feels like they're a bit touchy about certain references.

raxxorrax 7y ago
At that moment you should have made it clear that it isn't his business at all to disincenitivise future bad behavior. Even as a lazy person I probably would have switched banks.
- alias_neo 7y ago
  In hindsight, I probably should have switched banks, but ~~15+ years ago~~ I was young enough that it mattered very little to my sense of principle. They've otherwise been quite reliable since so jumping ship now would almost be asking for trouble. Edit: It wasnt 15 years ago this happened, it was perhaps a decade. I'd already been a customer for some time.
- nothrabannosir 7y ago
  It is; the UK has very strict KYC laws and any institution handling money is quickly on the hook for certain misdeeds by their customers. They need to show diligence in monitoring that activity. > You must meet certain day-to-day responsibilities if your business is covered by the Money Laundering Regulations. These include carrying out ‘customer due diligence’ measures to check that your customers are who they say they are, and risk assessing your business. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/money-laundering-regulations-your-responsibilities https://www.gov.uk/guidance/money-laundering-regulations-you... (That entire page, like the rest of gov.uk, is comprehensive and very accessible to read for a layman. If you have any passing interest in the area I recommend giving it a skim.)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
bloogsy 7y ago
It could also be that they're worried about money laundering, or there's someone a little bit keen behind the scenes.
MisterTea 7y ago
> In the description I put "fun times". I recently started using Venmo to pay a few people and the things I have wrote are awful. Recent examples include: "Human organ trafficking" "Lunch and murder for hire", "sack of shrunken heads" and so on. Let them call me.
- maxwell 7y ago
  Get ready for your account to be closed suddenly without warning over the next few years.
  - Haga 7y ago
    Never forget.. It's not personal. It's just a process who wants to shed potential liability by applying pressure on individuals involved. Wouldn't be necessary if we had banking secrecy.
- cpursley 7y ago
  I put "Crimea" in a venmo transfer to my own wife and they will no longer allow me to transfer funds to her.
  - yosito 7y ago
    I'm American. I went on a trip to Cuba for a free software conference, and someone from the conference borrowed a few Cuban Pesos from me to get some food before going to the airport. Later he sent me USD on Venmo for "Cuban cash transfer" and they threatened to close his account, but he managed to convince them that he was sending me money for lunch at a Cuban restaurant in the US. Ever since then, I'm cautious about descriptions when I Venmo people money.
  - pretendscholar 7y ago
    For some real fun start quoting koranic poetry and start listing random sites in yemen and pakistan.
- jstarfish 7y ago
  Vice did a writeup where a reporter did this just to see what happened and it ended with the associated funds effectively seized. Maybe they've gotten more permissive but don't do this with money you can't afford to lose.
merpnderp 7y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
ksaj 7y ago
> It certainly feels like they're a bit touchy about certain references. I'd say they quite overstepped the boundaries. What are fun times to you and the recipient is certainly not their business. Why would they even waste time reading the RE line if they aren't doing your accounting for you at the same time? There is even a party rental company named Fun Times. Would they interrogate every cheque written to/from them?
- alias_neo 7y ago
  I'm really not sure. Perhaps it was flagged as unusual and they looked, saw the reference and then questioned it?

jotm 7y ago

But even paying a hooker would be legal in Germany?

blkhawk 7y ago
yes, why wouldn't it be?
- jotm 7y ago
  So that couldn't have been the reason for account closure, I meant :)
  - mtrovo 7y ago
    Don’t know if it’s only in Germany but banks here don’t need to give you any reason to close your account. There are some stories of how every time they tweak N26 Risk ML there’s a wave of termination letters to customers that didn’t do anything wrong. A bunch of friends got affected by this a while a go, they didn’t do anything wrong and the bank refused to give any reason at all for the termination.
    - Crinus 7y ago
      Does closing your account also mean you lose your money or they give it to you somehow?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - r3drock 7y ago
        They must give it to you.
    - salawat 7y ago
      This is actually a consequence of what neural network based ML actually does. Machine learning is actually a misnomer. A more accurate term is function interpolation. Let's say I have a training set of 5000 samples. When I kick off the training process, I'm basically telling the NN run until it simulates a function that yields the desired response in those 5000 cases. The rub of course, is that programs aren't only defined by what they do (yielding the appropriate response for the the training cases) but also by what they don't do (excessive false positive/negative generation outside the training dataset). Performing correctly on the training, but messing up on more general tasks (the human equivalent being becoming an excellent test taker, but a lousy practitioner) is called overfishing. A more broad subclass of overfishing that van occur would be undesired/discriminatory/illegal optimizations, such as using combinations of protected classes as a significant data point in coming to a determination. There is no guarantee for any particular training session that you'll arrive at the same weights, or that that set of weights will cover the same set of things that the previous network did. I.e. Your network can make mistakes (just like a person). The irony in all of this, is you're basically training a machine to simulate a human doing a task in reliability/consistency (admittedly without the constraints of interacting with the world through a human body) with all the volatility between training that just being a human from day to day introduces. I'm honestly beginning to wonder if the push for machine learning adoption isn't anything more than the market trying to replace people with models that they don't have to pay benefits for, and onto which they can pass blame trivially because, "Of course we didn't make it to discriminate! There's no way we could have known it would do that ahead of time!"

pgeorgi 7y ago

The law in question was established in 2016 and it calls for a special type of bank account ("Basiskonto") to be made available to all[0]. So the story could predate the law or (which is quite likely) the account might be a regular account, not the fallback. [0] Conditions apply: A bank isn't forced to do business with somebody who defrauded them in the last 3 years, for example. But the decision must be made timely (10 days), it must be explained and there's a well-defined path to legal review. Details at https://www.bafin.de/DE/Verbraucher/Bank/Produkte/Basiskonto/basiskonto_node.html https://www.bafin.de/DE/Verbraucher/Bank/Produkte/Basiskonto...

anilakar 7y ago

Banks in EU are forced to monitor their customers' transactions. I think it's one of the ways to comply with anti-laundering and anti-gray market laws. Last year there was a news article about someone getting a phone call from the bank because the description in a money transfer contained the substring "ISIL".

pluma 7y ago

Generally the advice in Germany is not to use "funny" descriptions, but not because the bank might have no sense of humor but because the tax agency might take it literally. If your friend sends you money "for sexual favors", that might be considered taxable income and you'll find yourself having some explaining to do.

toyg 7y ago
Not just tax authorities, but (more importantly) police ones. The laws around things like sex work or drug consumptions, in most countries, are full of grey areas and willfully-contradictory positions (e.g. one can buy but the other can't sell, etc). So as soon as a transaction is categorised as part of a "problematic" economy, then police can get involved. If your bank lets through "hooker money" unchallenged, the police can eventually accuse the bank of facilitating activities which might be, at some level, criminal.
- pdpi 7y ago
  > willfully-contradictory positions (e.g. one can buy but the other can't sell, etc). This seems weird, but is actually a perfectly reasonable legal regime that's all about power dynamics and enabling the authorities to approach people. Drug users and prostitutes are in much more vulnerable positions than drug dealers and johns respectively. If you make selling drugs a crime, but not buying/owning those same drugs, now the police can approach addicts much more easily, and get them help (this is the much-lauded Portuguese model). The same logic applies in reverse to prostitution: if selling sexual favours is legal, but buying is illegal, prostitutes are enabled to report abusive johns to the police, and authorities can approach them much more easily to try and get them off that life too.
  - toyg 7y ago
    This is the rationalisation of a legal kludge that is only necessary to assuage consciences that the state has not become "immoral". The facts on the ground are that, dissuasion or not, these economies will never go away ("oldest profession", after all). Full legalisation would allow for complete oversight of such murky sectors, which would ensure everyone's safety better than the current arrangements, at all levels. For example, in many countries there is no way for prostitutes to legally ensure their own security, because any sort of professional relationship with a sex-worker is illegal (even if the business itself is not); at that point, whether they have recourse post-abuse or not, is basically irrelevant. The legal situation around cannabis and prostitution is just a shitshow in most places, driven as it is by outdated sensibilities which have ossified through short-term political calculation. There is no point trying to find in it a logic that is simply not there.

pepesza 7y ago

Don't give them any info. Write something along the lines of "transfer of money", always. Use separate channel to communicate "why". Every bit of information you give them will be used against you.

black_puppydog 7y ago
including suspicious non-disclosure of the actual "why"...
sjoebergco 7y ago
Traditional banking customers are still just a policy change away from a locked account tho. Hard to avoid with current systems.