10 ms·

I got burned by Aliexpress and now I highly recommend people use credit cards for all purchases. I had a debit card saved on Aliexpress. The account was compr

I got burned by Aliexpress and now I highly recommend people use credit cards for all purchases. I had a debit card saved on Aliexpress. The account was compromised by unknown means (maybe public wifi). Someone bought several $1,000+ phones from China that shipped to me in the US. I presume the sellers were in on it and were selling me unwanted inventory at inflated prices. Because they had tracking information, my bank (HSBC) said their hands were tied and I lost several thousand dollars overnight. It didn't matter that it was obviously fraud -- I provided customer service emails, logs showing the purchases all happened at 4am local time, and all at the exact same timestamp. Moral of the story: don't use debit cards, don't save your cards online (save them in your browser and unselect "save this card"), don’t expect your bank to have effective fraud detection, and don't trust Aliexpress to have your back.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
101keyboard 5y ago
My Citi Dividend 1% Cash Back card allows me to create Virtual Cards for such things. Any other cards anybody can recommend?
- pishpash 5y ago
  Capital One has that, and Paypal.
  - PhantomGremlin 5y ago
    Capital One has that Sort of. Do they still require using Chrome for that feature? Fuck Google, I'm not about to use them for that!
    - 101keyboard 5y ago
      Use Chromium. Also you should use several browsers anyway.
ed_elliott_asc 5y ago
I haven’t had anything this bad but always use credit cards online and maybe even in real life and pay off the balance as the protections are so much better - it is stupid really.
- clairity 5y ago
  yes, never use your debit card and use only credit cards online, but cash is better for non-major in-person purchases as it's inherently private and anonymous. it's also better for the payee (hopefully a local retailer not a mega-corp), since they don't have to pay the fees. for major in-person purchases, the extra (fraud, warranty, etc.) protections provided by the credit card may be worth the privacy/anonymity tradeoff.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "non-major in-person purchases as it's inherently private and anonymous" Most of the time that's an anti-feature - there is no point of hiding transactions of you buying bread, it could provide you an alibi in case you are accused of a crime, but there is no conceivable way it could be used against you.. (people don't stop to buy bread on the way to the crime scene)
    - clairity 5y ago
      how many common crimes are you committing for that to be your primary concern? sometimes you just don't want to share every single bit of purchase data with hoarders like visa, chase, kroger, and google.
      - nobody9999 5y ago
        > how many common crimes are you committing for that to be your primary concern? sometimes you just don't want to share every single bit of purchase data with hoarders like visa, chase, kroger, and google. I think that GP is concerned with being able to show that they didn't commit a crime, rather than that they frequently commit them. That said, I generally prefer cash for in-person transactions, not just for the anonymity, but because most smaller retailers pay much higher fees to the credit card processors than big ones. An excellent example is NYC taxis. The CC processing goes through a couple different levels of "service" providers and the drivers get dinged for 5% on every transaction. Whereas a large retailer is likely only charged 0.5-0.75%. Which can make a big difference for people like cab drivers. As such, I always pay cash for taxi fares.
figassis 5y ago
My solution to this is having a debit card connected to an account that has no funds and allows no overdrafts. And I only load the account when I specifically want to pay for something. I do this for everything, incl. Spotify, Netflix, etc. I pay a subscription when I want to pay for it, so usually at the end of the month I load the total of my subscriptions and they all go away. This also helps me keep track of my spending and is a good way to see how little things add up, like apple in app subscriptions. I do this religiously because once I was traveling in the winter and suddenly I had $200 disappear from my card and I was unable to get a cab/uber and almost froze to death. Had to get help from police officers. I swore to never again let anyone just take money from me without my approval, whether I owed them or not. So you find my card in the wild, good luck.
- prepend 5y ago
  How is this better than using a credit card?
  - figassis 5y ago
    Some people can't have credit cards bc they're not us citizens or permanent residents.
  - chemmail 5y ago
    Some people can't control themselves.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Debit cards has orders of magnitude less fees per transaction. You might be fine paying 3% of your money to credit card companies but a lot of others would be fine with a debit card. The US system makes everyone share the burden of paying for credit cards, but in Europe they can't do that so people mostly go with the much cheaper debit cards.
bluedevil2k 5y ago
Privacy.com - I use it for any recurring payment or overseas purchase
jopsen 5y ago
> Because they had tracking information, my bank (HSBC) said their hands were tied... But a lawsuit might untie them. That said fraud can sometimes be too hard to prove.
Fnoord 5y ago
You can save your debit/credit card, just don't save the CVV (if it is static). My debit card provider also has a feature to randomizes CVV every 5 minutes ie. for every purchase (I can enable or disable the feature). CVV is mandatory for online usage of debit/credit card. The same provider also give 25 IBANs per account. I could, for free, put 25 virtual debit cards on them, and have the IBANs empty unless I put money on it. Good luck scamming me this way. After all, the accounts are empty except for a few min when I put money on them to spend it.
- passerby1 5y ago
  > My debit card provider also has a feature to randomizes CVV every 5 minutes What's name of your debit card provider?
  - heffer 5y ago
    Likely referring to the European neobank Vivid Money.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    Bunq.
- floatboth 5y ago
  Random CVV sounds fun, but that's kinda in the same "fun only" space as port knocking in networking. There are real auth methods that solve this, i.e. 3D Secure.
jacquesm 5y ago
Funny how the banks are able to roll back at will when they are defrauded but when it is their customers they pretend that they can't do anything. I've seen transactions six months old rolled back because it benefited the bank.
- SilasX 5y ago
  Which is why I cringed at patio11's twitter thread where he insisted that the banking system is one giant kumbaya circle that works together to Do The Right THing https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1443745867572277250 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1443745867572277250
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I've worked for a bank, let's just say that I can't agree with that. A US bank at that. I just noticed: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1443756566822285334 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1443756566822285334
    - kasey_junk 5y ago
      I’ve worked for several us financial institutions, including banks and that exchange seems extremely typical to me. Especially the “hold harmless” bits. Which particular part of that story telling rang false to you?
      - SilasX 5y ago
        The part where the banking system is a giant kumbaya circle run on gentlemen’s agreements to do the right thing. When you are clearly defrauded or scammed, banks do nothing about it. His entire thread advertises, “I’ve never wired money to a scammer”.
        Thorrez 5y ago
        The thread seems to be saying banks get along with each other. It doesn't seem to me to be saying banks get along with their customers.
GordonS 5y ago
I got burned by Ryanair at the start of the pandemic. I'd paid something like £2,000 for flights, and for months those scumbags refused to refund me. I'd paid with a credit card, so I asked my card provider to do either a chargeback or section 75 (I forget which) to force a refund, and the money was back in my account within a couple of weeks.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I had a hotel double charge me a number of years back. I called the hotel to straighten it out and got some run around. So, I called my bank (USAA) to ask what I should do. They said “do a chargeback and that’ll force them to show documentation”. “Okay, I’d like to chargeback one of the transactions.” “We’ll just do it for both and let them sort it out.” Hotel never responded at all, so the entire stay was free instead of just being the correct amount.
javajosh 5y ago
Next time that happens, file a complaint about HSBC with the CFPB (https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/). I recently had a problem with PayPal and it was resolved in days after I file a complaint with the CFPB. Also, please don't bank with HSBC. They are the worst of the worst. You'd be better off with Wells, that's how bad HSBC is. https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-vast-sums-of-dirty-money-after-paying-record-laundering-fine/ https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-...
emodendroket 5y ago
Right, it's hard to see what the advantage of debit would ever be. The guy at the bank always looks at me like I'm crazy for wanting just an ATM card and not a debit card, but between credit, cash, and checks, I cannot think of any situation at all where I'd want to use debit instead.
- 8ytecoder 5y ago
  A bit convenient at places that charge extra for credit card and carrying a chequebook is not always convenient. I just load it into Apple Wallet and leave it there.
- adev_ 5y ago
  > Right, it's hard to see what the advantage of debit would ever be. Not being able to indebt yourself is THE major advantage of debit card. Not everybody in this world is reasonable when it is about spending and finance management. In some European countries with a more conservative mindset related to debts (Germany, France, ...), people will tend to have the exact opposite stance : "Why would I ever need a credit card ? It is dangerous. My debit card is accepted everywhere"
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    I am more comfortable with exercising self control than with the idea that if my card is somehow misused I don't have access to my funds until it's straightened out. In fact, if you don't trust yourself, I'd say cash is even better, because the physical act of taking out the money makes you less likely to spend it frivolously.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    There are a number of credit card issuers in the US offering 1.5% cash back. Suppose you charge $1000 each month at the rate of about $33 per day, and also pay it off when the bill is due. In a year, you've gotten 1.5% of $12,000 back which is $180, but you could also look at it as though they are paying you 36% per year to use (on average) $500 of their money. The latter interpretation makes it seem irresistible to me.
magicalhippo 5y ago
> Moral of the story: don't use debit cards I use a debit card for groceries and such. However, just to be sure, my paycheck goes to an account with no cards attached. I then transfer small amounts ($100 or so) every now and then to the debit card account. This limits my exposure to card fraud, and also has the nice side benefit of giving me back some of that "spending feeling" that cash has. If I have to transfer say three days in a row it's noticeable and I can think about what I've spent it on, and maybe slow down a bit if I know I'm running low.
- djbusby 5y ago
  What if you overdraft and then get hit with fees? Or even NSF fees?
  - magicalhippo 5y ago
    My bank doesn't allow overdrafts beyond $10 or so, no fees except a few percent in penalty rate if I keep it negative for a while. There are some edge cases where one might overdraft more (delayed transactions IIRC), but again no fees.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  My wife and I do this, but we still got scammed. My wife's debit card got skimmed, and there wasn't much money in that account but it gave the thief enough info to do a social engineering attack at the bank (USAA in this case). Took several calls before they found a cooperative representative, but they managed to convince them to reset the password, tell them the username, reset the PIN, and disable the two factor token (which is a Symantec app that runs on a smartphone). When the bank fails this badly, nothing can really protect you. Sure was an awkward call with the USAA security department after they worked out the exact timeline and actions of the attack. They didn't really have much to say in their own defense. Cost them about five grand in the end. The really annoying part is that now if my wife needs to call them for anything on the phone they make her jump through many hoops to identify herself. E.g. she has to answer the credit bureau-based questions every time, plus a PIN, plus a phone password. We may move banks just so we're not stuck with an online-only relationship because of this experience.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

101keyboard 5y ago

My Citi Dividend 1% Cash Back card allows me to create Virtual Cards for such things. Any other cards anybody can recommend?

pishpash 5y ago
Capital One has that, and Paypal.
- PhantomGremlin 5y ago
  Capital One has that Sort of. Do they still require using Chrome for that feature? Fuck Google, I'm not about to use them for that!
  - 101keyboard 5y ago
    Use Chromium. Also you should use several browsers anyway.

ed_elliott_asc 5y ago

I haven’t had anything this bad but always use credit cards online and maybe even in real life and pay off the balance as the protections are so much better - it is stupid really.

clairity 5y ago
yes, never use your debit card and use only credit cards online, but cash is better for non-major in-person purchases as it's inherently private and anonymous. it's also better for the payee (hopefully a local retailer not a mega-corp), since they don't have to pay the fees. for major in-person purchases, the extra (fraud, warranty, etc.) protections provided by the credit card may be worth the privacy/anonymity tradeoff.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "non-major in-person purchases as it's inherently private and anonymous" Most of the time that's an anti-feature - there is no point of hiding transactions of you buying bread, it could provide you an alibi in case you are accused of a crime, but there is no conceivable way it could be used against you.. (people don't stop to buy bread on the way to the crime scene)
  - clairity 5y ago
    how many common crimes are you committing for that to be your primary concern? sometimes you just don't want to share every single bit of purchase data with hoarders like visa, chase, kroger, and google.
    - nobody9999 5y ago
      > how many common crimes are you committing for that to be your primary concern? sometimes you just don't want to share every single bit of purchase data with hoarders like visa, chase, kroger, and google. I think that GP is concerned with being able to show that they didn't commit a crime, rather than that they frequently commit them. That said, I generally prefer cash for in-person transactions, not just for the anonymity, but because most smaller retailers pay much higher fees to the credit card processors than big ones. An excellent example is NYC taxis. The CC processing goes through a couple different levels of "service" providers and the drivers get dinged for 5% on every transaction. Whereas a large retailer is likely only charged 0.5-0.75%. Which can make a big difference for people like cab drivers. As such, I always pay cash for taxi fares.

figassis 5y ago

My solution to this is having a debit card connected to an account that has no funds and allows no overdrafts. And I only load the account when I specifically want to pay for something. I do this for everything, incl. Spotify, Netflix, etc. I pay a subscription when I want to pay for it, so usually at the end of the month I load the total of my subscriptions and they all go away. This also helps me keep track of my spending and is a good way to see how little things add up, like apple in app subscriptions. I do this religiously because once I was traveling in the winter and suddenly I had $200 disappear from my card and I was unable to get a cab/uber and almost froze to death. Had to get help from police officers. I swore to never again let anyone just take money from me without my approval, whether I owed them or not. So you find my card in the wild, good luck.

prepend 5y ago
How is this better than using a credit card?
- figassis 5y ago
  Some people can't have credit cards bc they're not us citizens or permanent residents.
- chemmail 5y ago
  Some people can't control themselves.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Debit cards has orders of magnitude less fees per transaction. You might be fine paying 3% of your money to credit card companies but a lot of others would be fine with a debit card. The US system makes everyone share the burden of paying for credit cards, but in Europe they can't do that so people mostly go with the much cheaper debit cards.

bluedevil2k 5y ago

Privacy.com - I use it for any recurring payment or overseas purchase

jopsen 5y ago

> Because they had tracking information, my bank (HSBC) said their hands were tied... But a lawsuit might untie them. That said fraud can sometimes be too hard to prove.

Fnoord 5y ago

You can save your debit/credit card, just don't save the CVV (if it is static). My debit card provider also has a feature to randomizes CVV every 5 minutes ie. for every purchase (I can enable or disable the feature). CVV is mandatory for online usage of debit/credit card. The same provider also give 25 IBANs per account. I could, for free, put 25 virtual debit cards on them, and have the IBANs empty unless I put money on it. Good luck scamming me this way. After all, the accounts are empty except for a few min when I put money on them to spend it.

passerby1 5y ago
> My debit card provider also has a feature to randomizes CVV every 5 minutes What's name of your debit card provider?
- heffer 5y ago
  Likely referring to the European neobank Vivid Money.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  Bunq.
floatboth 5y ago
Random CVV sounds fun, but that's kinda in the same "fun only" space as port knocking in networking. There are real auth methods that solve this, i.e. 3D Secure.

jacquesm 5y ago

Funny how the banks are able to roll back at will when they are defrauded but when it is their customers they pretend that they can't do anything. I've seen transactions six months old rolled back because it benefited the bank.

SilasX 5y ago
Which is why I cringed at patio11's twitter thread where he insisted that the banking system is one giant kumbaya circle that works together to Do The Right THing https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1443745867572277250 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1443745867572277250
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I've worked for a bank, let's just say that I can't agree with that. A US bank at that. I just noticed: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1443756566822285334 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1443756566822285334
  - kasey_junk 5y ago
    I’ve worked for several us financial institutions, including banks and that exchange seems extremely typical to me. Especially the “hold harmless” bits. Which particular part of that story telling rang false to you?
    - SilasX 5y ago
      The part where the banking system is a giant kumbaya circle run on gentlemen’s agreements to do the right thing. When you are clearly defrauded or scammed, banks do nothing about it. His entire thread advertises, “I’ve never wired money to a scammer”.
      - Thorrez 5y ago
        The thread seems to be saying banks get along with each other. It doesn't seem to me to be saying banks get along with their customers.

GordonS 5y ago

I got burned by Ryanair at the start of the pandemic. I'd paid something like £2,000 for flights, and for months those scumbags refused to refund me. I'd paid with a credit card, so I asked my card provider to do either a chargeback or section 75 (I forget which) to force a refund, and the money was back in my account within a couple of weeks.

sokoloff 5y ago
I had a hotel double charge me a number of years back. I called the hotel to straighten it out and got some run around. So, I called my bank (USAA) to ask what I should do. They said “do a chargeback and that’ll force them to show documentation”. “Okay, I’d like to chargeback one of the transactions.” “We’ll just do it for both and let them sort it out.” Hotel never responded at all, so the entire stay was free instead of just being the correct amount.

javajosh 5y ago

Next time that happens, file a complaint about HSBC with the CFPB (https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/). I recently had a problem with PayPal and it was resolved in days after I file a complaint with the CFPB. Also, please don't bank with HSBC. They are the worst of the worst. You'd be better off with Wells, that's how bad HSBC is. https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-vast-sums-of-dirty-money-after-paying-record-laundering-fine/ https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-...

emodendroket 5y ago

Right, it's hard to see what the advantage of debit would ever be. The guy at the bank always looks at me like I'm crazy for wanting just an ATM card and not a debit card, but between credit, cash, and checks, I cannot think of any situation at all where I'd want to use debit instead.

8ytecoder 5y ago
A bit convenient at places that charge extra for credit card and carrying a chequebook is not always convenient. I just load it into Apple Wallet and leave it there.
adev_ 5y ago
> Right, it's hard to see what the advantage of debit would ever be. Not being able to indebt yourself is THE major advantage of debit card. Not everybody in this world is reasonable when it is about spending and finance management. In some European countries with a more conservative mindset related to debts (Germany, France, ...), people will tend to have the exact opposite stance : "Why would I ever need a credit card ? It is dangerous. My debit card is accepted everywhere"
- emodendroket 5y ago
  I am more comfortable with exercising self control than with the idea that if my card is somehow misused I don't have access to my funds until it's straightened out. In fact, if you don't trust yourself, I'd say cash is even better, because the physical act of taking out the money makes you less likely to spend it frivolously.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  There are a number of credit card issuers in the US offering 1.5% cash back. Suppose you charge $1000 each month at the rate of about $33 per day, and also pay it off when the bill is due. In a year, you've gotten 1.5% of $12,000 back which is $180, but you could also look at it as though they are paying you 36% per year to use (on average) $500 of their money. The latter interpretation makes it seem irresistible to me.

magicalhippo 5y ago

> Moral of the story: don't use debit cards I use a debit card for groceries and such. However, just to be sure, my paycheck goes to an account with no cards attached. I then transfer small amounts ($100 or so) every now and then to the debit card account. This limits my exposure to card fraud, and also has the nice side benefit of giving me back some of that "spending feeling" that cash has. If I have to transfer say three days in a row it's noticeable and I can think about what I've spent it on, and maybe slow down a bit if I know I'm running low.

djbusby 5y ago
What if you overdraft and then get hit with fees? Or even NSF fees?
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  My bank doesn't allow overdrafts beyond $10 or so, no fees except a few percent in penalty rate if I keep it negative for a while. There are some edge cases where one might overdraft more (delayed transactions IIRC), but again no fees.
rootusrootus 5y ago
My wife and I do this, but we still got scammed. My wife's debit card got skimmed, and there wasn't much money in that account but it gave the thief enough info to do a social engineering attack at the bank (USAA in this case). Took several calls before they found a cooperative representative, but they managed to convince them to reset the password, tell them the username, reset the PIN, and disable the two factor token (which is a Symantec app that runs on a smartphone). When the bank fails this badly, nothing can really protect you. Sure was an awkward call with the USAA security department after they worked out the exact timeline and actions of the attack. They didn't really have much to say in their own defense. Cost them about five grand in the end. The really annoying part is that now if my wife needs to call them for anything on the phone they make her jump through many hoops to identify herself. E.g. she has to answer the credit bureau-based questions every time, plus a PIN, plus a phone password. We may move banks just so we're not stuck with an online-only relationship because of this experience.