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Is making it 'hard' to open an account the only way to prevent fraudulent accounts from being opened? I don't think I accept that premise. My argument is that
by maxerickson 5y ago
Is making it 'hard' to open an account the only way to prevent fraudulent accounts from being opened?
I don't think I accept that premise.
My argument is that the party that can actually do something about the fraud is the one that should feel the pain of dealing with it.
- Wowfunhappy 5y agoWell, if you were a bank, and you knew you would be on the hook for a zillion dollars per fraudulent account, wouldn’t you respond by being way mire rigorous about who can open accounts? The potential profit no longer outweighs the potential liability, so you’d certainly want more forms of ID—you might even want to start fingerprinting customers or some such.
- maxerickson 5y agoThey are on the hook for the credit they extend to the fraudulent account, not a 'zillion dollars'. It's likely possible to quantify the effects, regulators could do that and strike a sensible balance between security requirements and so on.
- pc86 5y agoEven well-intentioned regulators are pretty incompetent given the fact they work for the government and all the nonsense that entails. Add in the fact that most regulators are just shills for whatever companies they're supposed to be regulating and "striking a sensible balance" between any two ideals seems pretty unlikely.