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when it comes to banking, random checking accounts are hacked into very rarely. to the point that in USA the FDIC is protecting your account up to $250,000. I d

when it comes to banking, random checking accounts are hacked into very rarely. to the point that in USA the FDIC is protecting your account up to $250,000. I don't recall last time seeing news on someone's bank account being hacked and drained, if anything its mostly family fraud. also there are all sorts of checks when you try to wire or withdraw more than $10,000, not to mention wire hundreds of millions. Such transaction will manually cross a desk of at least 2 different bank managers.

Consultant32452 5y ago
Wire fraud results in billions of dollars in losses per year from checking accounts. Here's one article from 2019: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/11/email-wire-fraud-cost-26-billion-since-2016-says-fbi.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/11/email-wire-fraud-cost-26-bil... We talk about eth/btc as if they're just covering the function of the checking account, but it's also covering the function of the checks, wire transfers, ACH transfers, etc. So for a real comparison you'd have to count up all the related fraud from legacy checking accounts and their various mechanisms to move money between them.
- thirdwhrldPzz 5y ago
- clpm4j 5y ago
  This article is about people being fooled into wiring money to fraudulent actors, not about hacking.
the_svd_doctor 5y ago
FDIC protects against bank failures (like the bank goes bankrupts and looses all the deposited money). It has nothing to do with unauthorized transactions as far as I know.
- treis 5y ago
  Depends on the transaction type. Checks and debit cards are pretty well protected. Wire transfers aren't protected at all.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rootusrootus 5y ago
> I don't recall last time seeing news on someone's bank account being hacked and drained, if anything its mostly family fraud. Anecdote time. My wife and I have a shared checking account that got hacked and drained. First her debit card got skimmed. Then the perp called USAA a half dozen times claiming to be her and asking for account credentials. Finally they got a helpful account rep to reset the password, disable MFA, and tell them the username. Yep. You heard that right. Social engineering works even on bank tellers who should know better. Fortunately it's just a daily use account and I'm paranoid, so there was only 5K they could access there. USAA owned up to the whole thing and restored the funds, but now they punish my wife with a 10-minute interrogation to prove her identity if she ever has to get them on the phone for a legitimate reason.
- bsagdiyev 5y ago
  Weird, USAA froze my cards and funds immediately the only time I've had suspicious transactions. I guess the social portion is where we diverge though, they definitely tried harder to get in to yours. Ours was just a guy in Vancouver trying to order Thai food through a delivery app.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    They froze the card, but only after six consecutive withdrawals from an ATM in Miami. I was getting notifications on my phone about the withdrawals (did I mention I'm paranoid) but since I was driving, I didn't see them for about half an hour when I arrived at my destination. Called USAA immediately and they had already frozen the card. But the money had already been withdrawn. I can't explain why it took many consecutive withdrawals in a short time, in a city that I've never visited, 3000 miles away from the most recent use of the card, to trigger USAA's protection algorithms. USAA did finally take care of it. My biggest beefs with them are 1) they dragged their feet a couple days on the investigation until I called them myself (I'm the veteran, my wife is not, and they were much more responsive to me), and 2) they really do punish my wife for something not her fault. You know those questions you get which are sourced from your credit file? What street did you live on, what's your mortgage payment, things like that? That's what they ask every time, after asking for a secret password and PIN code to be used for phone calls. I'll give them credit though, for actually sharing the gory details with me once they were done tracking down everything, and admitting that one of their own employees had broken their rules and handed over the credentials to my wife's account.
cecilpl2 5y ago
Story time: I also once had my bank account hacked - in a manner of speaking. I tell you this story in the hopes that it helps you recognize if you have similar flaws in your own security. I used to run a VNC server on my home PC (flaw 1). Chinese hackers discovered it and spent three weeks brute-forcing the password (flaw 2). Once in, they installed TeamViewer to allow themselves future access. Then, they logged in at 3am and used my browser-saved PayPal credentials (flaw 3) to paypal themselves $5k from my linked chequing account (flaw 4). I discovered this several days afterwards when I saw the withdrawals hit my bank account. I then found a few further pending Paypal transactions, and pieced the rest together from VNC and router logs. Thankfully my credit union believed me that I didn't authorize the transactions and reversed them, making me whole again. But damn, it's a scary feeling having someone break into your computer, not knowing what they might have looked at or accessed. Very similar to having your home broken into.
notyourday 5y ago
FDIC does not protect against account hacks. Bank's assets and laws do. FDIC protects accounts against losses caused by bank failures.

Consultant32452 5y ago

Wire fraud results in billions of dollars in losses per year from checking accounts. Here's one article from 2019: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/11/email-wire-fraud-cost-26-billion-since-2016-says-fbi.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/11/email-wire-fraud-cost-26-bil... We talk about eth/btc as if they're just covering the function of the checking account, but it's also covering the function of the checks, wire transfers, ACH transfers, etc. So for a real comparison you'd have to count up all the related fraud from legacy checking accounts and their various mechanisms to move money between them.

thirdwhrldPzz 5y ago
clpm4j 5y ago
This article is about people being fooled into wiring money to fraudulent actors, not about hacking.

the_svd_doctor 5y ago

FDIC protects against bank failures (like the bank goes bankrupts and looses all the deposited money). It has nothing to do with unauthorized transactions as far as I know.

treis 5y ago
Depends on the transaction type. Checks and debit cards are pretty well protected. Wire transfers aren't protected at all.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rootusrootus 5y ago

> I don't recall last time seeing news on someone's bank account being hacked and drained, if anything its mostly family fraud. Anecdote time. My wife and I have a shared checking account that got hacked and drained. First her debit card got skimmed. Then the perp called USAA a half dozen times claiming to be her and asking for account credentials. Finally they got a helpful account rep to reset the password, disable MFA, and tell them the username. Yep. You heard that right. Social engineering works even on bank tellers who should know better. Fortunately it's just a daily use account and I'm paranoid, so there was only 5K they could access there. USAA owned up to the whole thing and restored the funds, but now they punish my wife with a 10-minute interrogation to prove her identity if she ever has to get them on the phone for a legitimate reason.

bsagdiyev 5y ago
Weird, USAA froze my cards and funds immediately the only time I've had suspicious transactions. I guess the social portion is where we diverge though, they definitely tried harder to get in to yours. Ours was just a guy in Vancouver trying to order Thai food through a delivery app.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  They froze the card, but only after six consecutive withdrawals from an ATM in Miami. I was getting notifications on my phone about the withdrawals (did I mention I'm paranoid) but since I was driving, I didn't see them for about half an hour when I arrived at my destination. Called USAA immediately and they had already frozen the card. But the money had already been withdrawn. I can't explain why it took many consecutive withdrawals in a short time, in a city that I've never visited, 3000 miles away from the most recent use of the card, to trigger USAA's protection algorithms. USAA did finally take care of it. My biggest beefs with them are 1) they dragged their feet a couple days on the investigation until I called them myself (I'm the veteran, my wife is not, and they were much more responsive to me), and 2) they really do punish my wife for something not her fault. You know those questions you get which are sourced from your credit file? What street did you live on, what's your mortgage payment, things like that? That's what they ask every time, after asking for a secret password and PIN code to be used for phone calls. I'll give them credit though, for actually sharing the gory details with me once they were done tracking down everything, and admitting that one of their own employees had broken their rules and handed over the credentials to my wife's account.

cecilpl2 5y ago

Story time: I also once had my bank account hacked - in a manner of speaking. I tell you this story in the hopes that it helps you recognize if you have similar flaws in your own security. I used to run a VNC server on my home PC (flaw 1). Chinese hackers discovered it and spent three weeks brute-forcing the password (flaw 2). Once in, they installed TeamViewer to allow themselves future access. Then, they logged in at 3am and used my browser-saved PayPal credentials (flaw 3) to paypal themselves $5k from my linked chequing account (flaw 4). I discovered this several days afterwards when I saw the withdrawals hit my bank account. I then found a few further pending Paypal transactions, and pieced the rest together from VNC and router logs. Thankfully my credit union believed me that I didn't authorize the transactions and reversed them, making me whole again. But damn, it's a scary feeling having someone break into your computer, not knowing what they might have looked at or accessed. Very similar to having your home broken into.

notyourday 5y ago

FDIC does not protect against account hacks. Bank's assets and laws do. FDIC protects accounts against losses caused by bank failures.