4 ms·

> If gift cards are suspicious and cannot be reliably secured, then why are they even sold? I just imagined for a minute - what if someone asks for a birthday

> If gift cards are suspicious and cannot be reliably secured, then why are they even sold? I just imagined for a minute - what if someone asks for a birthday present with cards and his friends bring him a pack. It's a GIFT and it's named GIFT card

salawat 4y ago
Yes, but... That "GIFT" card, is a printed PAN, plus metadata that acts as close as you can get to a bearer account in the modern financial system. It's an endpoint that is incredibly difficult to really secure. KYC makes it a fraught thing to deal with, and organized crime knows and actively uses these mechanisms on a regular basis. Your activity pattern, like it or not, is mirrored by drug dealers, arms dealers, scammers, and other criminal enterprises looking to clean up ill gotten funds. We can't have nice things, because as soon as we do, some jerkwad starts running his profits from human or narco tracking through it. Further, there is something known as "structuring" which by itself, is a federal crime, and no, the feds are not too picky about who they deem to be actively structuring. Stucturing is moving money around in such a way as to avoid triggering reporting requirements. $2000 worth of gift cards is a dead giveaway. That's right on what eould normaly be reported as a CSR or SAR if done all at once if I recall. If you actively inquire about said reporting limits, that generally has to be reported or noted somewhere too. There is a right way to do things in the financial system, and there is the wrong way. You definitely hit on the wrong way. Is it annoying? Yes. So sorry. However... It is what it is. If you want to know another thing that is the same way, look at Terms of Use/Licensing agreements/EULAs... etc... If you want to redline something and negotiate something else than the canned stuff legal blessed, sorry bout it, but it is cheaper to forego your business rather than accommodate you. We cannot have nice things, because every time we try to make nice things, jerks ruin it for everyone else. Also, an additional bit: most companies do gift cards in order to either manage float (money held for a time to accrue interest before being spent), or to harvest consumer purchasing data to monetize. Often, they are trying to localize on one particular person, per account, and want to do so cheaply, and easily. You getting say 50 different cards makes 49 other people's data they are missing out on. No one wants that. It's a degenerate state for the business/surveillance capitalism model. Therefore, you're going to find organizational policies will make it hard for you to do that. Nor, mind, are they likely to try to help you remediate your errant behavior. That's a lot of clean up and paperwork, particularly for such a small amount (in their view), and also because, formalizing such a process encourages the use of it, which is non-value generating for the company/host-state. Again, and with 100% sincerity, I regret to inform you, you are currently residing in the worst timeline, second only to the ones in which you are dead, in imminent risk of dying, or on fire. If you were physically closer, I'd offer you one of those little hats you can fold out of a periodical or aluminum foil, or a paper bag to wear over your head... It wouldn't help in terms of changing the world to make your problem no longer a problem, but you'd at least be a rung up into the "free hat and not on fire" timeline. Welcome to the "life in the edge cases" club.
- alymaly 4y ago
  Thank you so much for your response. Yes, the situation is becoming clearer now.
- jensensbutton 4y ago
  This is a lot of words to say that Apple should then stop selling gift cards if they can't even verify the automated flag. Burden should still be on them since they sold the gift cards.

salawat 4y ago

Yes, but... That "GIFT" card, is a printed PAN, plus metadata that acts as close as you can get to a bearer account in the modern financial system. It's an endpoint that is incredibly difficult to really secure. KYC makes it a fraught thing to deal with, and organized crime knows and actively uses these mechanisms on a regular basis. Your activity pattern, like it or not, is mirrored by drug dealers, arms dealers, scammers, and other criminal enterprises looking to clean up ill gotten funds. We can't have nice things, because as soon as we do, some jerkwad starts running his profits from human or narco tracking through it. Further, there is something known as "structuring" which by itself, is a federal crime, and no, the feds are not too picky about who they deem to be actively structuring. Stucturing is moving money around in such a way as to avoid triggering reporting requirements. $2000 worth of gift cards is a dead giveaway. That's right on what eould normaly be reported as a CSR or SAR if done all at once if I recall. If you actively inquire about said reporting limits, that generally has to be reported or noted somewhere too. There is a right way to do things in the financial system, and there is the wrong way. You definitely hit on the wrong way. Is it annoying? Yes. So sorry. However... It is what it is. If you want to know another thing that is the same way, look at Terms of Use/Licensing agreements/EULAs... etc... If you want to redline something and negotiate something else than the canned stuff legal blessed, sorry bout it, but it is cheaper to forego your business rather than accommodate you. We cannot have nice things, because every time we try to make nice things, jerks ruin it for everyone else. Also, an additional bit: most companies do gift cards in order to either manage float (money held for a time to accrue interest before being spent), or to harvest consumer purchasing data to monetize. Often, they are trying to localize on one particular person, per account, and want to do so cheaply, and easily. You getting say 50 different cards makes 49 other people's data they are missing out on. No one wants that. It's a degenerate state for the business/surveillance capitalism model. Therefore, you're going to find organizational policies will make it hard for you to do that. Nor, mind, are they likely to try to help you remediate your errant behavior. That's a lot of clean up and paperwork, particularly for such a small amount (in their view), and also because, formalizing such a process encourages the use of it, which is non-value generating for the company/host-state. Again, and with 100% sincerity, I regret to inform you, you are currently residing in the worst timeline, second only to the ones in which you are dead, in imminent risk of dying, or on fire. If you were physically closer, I'd offer you one of those little hats you can fold out of a periodical or aluminum foil, or a paper bag to wear over your head... It wouldn't help in terms of changing the world to make your problem no longer a problem, but you'd at least be a rung up into the "free hat and not on fire" timeline. Welcome to the "life in the edge cases" club.

alymaly 4y ago
Thank you so much for your response. Yes, the situation is becoming clearer now.
jensensbutton 4y ago
This is a lot of words to say that Apple should then stop selling gift cards if they can't even verify the automated flag. Burden should still be on them since they sold the gift cards.