7 ms·
I'm really struggling to think of what "Alep" even refers to that would trigger this. Surely not Aleppo, right?
by autophagian 4y ago
I'm really struggling to think of what "Alep" even refers to that would trigger this. Surely not Aleppo, right?
- leokennis 4y agoSurely Aleppo. Financial institutions are responsible for making sure their customers don't circumvent sanctions, don't launder money etc. If PayPal would not stopped this transaction, it could be a huge liability for them in regards to financial regulators. Unfortunately, I do not know of a better solution than "match transaction data on this list of regexes" that would scale for the millions of daily payments that banks are processing.
- croes 4y agoYeah because terrorist put the real subject in their transactions.
- leokennis 4y agoSo your solution is?
- mcv 4y agoActually know your customers. Like real banks do. Relying on a free text description on the payment is completely useless.
- leokennis 4y agoYeah because terrorists will definitely not lie when they open a bank account! Also…how would KYC stop a terrorist from abusing your mothers bank account to transfer money? This is why you need KYC and also transaction screening (and also X, Y and Z).
- mcv 4y agoYes, but transaction screening should rely on information about the accounts involved, and not the descriptions on the payments. Because those mean nothing.
- matthews2 4y agoThe real bank that I use in the UK cares about what you put in the reference field. Putting something like "AK47" as the reference quickly results in a phone call from them telling you to not do that.
- croes 4y agoWould it be a problem for a US bank?
- astura 4y ago"Real banks" also will block transactions with the "wrong" keywords in them. They are literally required to do this. For example: Chase Bank blocks California man’s online payment over service dog’s ‘terrorist’ name https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/chase-bank-blocks-online-payment-dog-terrorist-article-1.2579947 https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/chase-bank-blocks-onl... These stories are really common. Usually a phone call fixes it.
- ImHereToVote 4y agoNot wage financial war?
- leokennis 4y agoCome again? Just to make sure we’re on the same page, your opinion is that terrorists should be free to use existing financial instruments (bank accounts, PayPal etc.) to transfer funds for their terrorist needs? Or am I misunderstanding?
- vinyl7 4y agoThat might be less harmful than being overzealous and banning every innocent person.
- nnx 4y agoYes, because the cost of pretending to “do something” is far too high (unbanking unprivileged people and a huge % of the world just because they aren’t born in the ‘right’ country or with the right name) for absolutely no result! By analogy, would members of the KYC/AML cult have the opinion that terrorists should be free to use roads for their terrorists needs? The solution is police roadblocks and checks every kilometer or so?
- claytongulick 4y agoHmm. Maybe? Wouldn't it make more sense to allow these transactions to proceed but report them for investigation? Aiding terrorist organizations is a crime. Wouldn't it be better to know who's doing it? It feels like it would make more sense than automated block lists and account closures. It's sort of similar to how bone-headed the shutdown of Backpage was. Backpage actively and willingly worked with the police to investigate human trafficking etc... It was basically a giant honeypot. From what I've read, when they were shut down the government lost a valuable tool and ally in the fight against sex slavery.
- ImHereToVote 4y agoWhat's wrong with going through the courts?
- KeplerBoy 4y agoHave a system in place to resolve these false positives quickly and painlessly? Of course all positives are going to be false positives, but what did you expect? Fighting international terrorism one regex at a time?
- leokennis 4y agoA system. You mean like sending the owner of the flagged transaction an e-mail? Like what happened exactly in this case? Also, curious about your source that all screening positives are false positives. Can you link to that?
- kube-system 4y agoThe entire country of Syria is under sanction.
- miracle2k 4y ago> Unfortunately, I do not know of a better solution than "match transaction data on this list of regexes" that would scale for the millions of daily payments that banks are processing. I think it would be reasonable to ask you, and other supporters of this, to provide emperical data of the positive law-enforcement impact that grepping transactions for "ALEP" has had, so we can weight it against the human cost (capital and time spent across all sides, including legal departments in financial institutions, Google Docs written, impact on affected customers). Because the default assumption of a normal person is, of course, that this is ridiculous.
- leokennis 4y agoOne data point I can provide is: $900,000,000.00 — which is the cost for a bank for NOT doing this. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ing-groep-settlement-money-laundering-idUSKCN1LK0PE https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ing-groep-settlement-mone...
- from 4y agoIn the case of BNP Paribas, 10 times that.
- miracle2k 4y ago> One data point I can provide is: $900,000,000.00 — which is the cost for a bank for NOT doing this. (It's not at all clear that this fine is due to a lack of regexes.) If the argument is "banks have to do this because of non-sensical and unjust regulations" - fine, that's one for the lawyers and maybe risk managers. I understood your position as defending the regulations itself.
- jollyllama 4y ago"What is Aleppo?"
- adamors 4y agoUnderrated comment
- slenk 4y agoI think it's a city? That's the best I can find. Don't know why saying a city name is bannable
- float4 4y agoAlep is French for Aleppo.
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoSame in slovene https://sl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alep https://sl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alep
- oh_sigh 4y agoWhat's a leppo?
- davidwritesbugs 4y agoYup Alepo & thus ISIS. What a world: where a regex match can kill your business.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoMore accurately, I suspect it's Aleppo and thus Syria, which is under sanctions by the US and European countries.
- Natsu 4y agoYeah, this is almost certainly some AML provision that has gone amuck, but they'd rather inconvenience you in a silly way to prove that they were "doing their job" than to get themselves shut down due to sanctions.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fundad 4y agoAren’t there towns in the US and elsewhere named for towns in other countries? This xenophobia is an albatross.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoThe people of Aleppo, Pennsylvania must have a lot of fun.
- raverbashing 4y agoIt's the dream of box ticking auditors everywhere
- charlieyu1 4y agoMy friend had an account with Isis in the username because she learnt about the Egyptian god in video games. She was panic about that a few years later
- thriftwy 4y agoI remember PayPal restricting some users back in 2014, whose billing address was Simferopol blvd., Moscow, Russia. People of Isis st., somewhere across UK, were also out of luck.
- zabzonk 4y agoisis is commonly used to refer to the stretch of the river thames running through oxford, uk, and to several oxford institutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Isis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Isis
- Fnoord 4y agoIts also a name of a Egyptian goddess, a moon, a Dutch DJ (Dj Isis formerly known as 100% Isis) and a whole lot more [1]. At least the word 'is' did not get corrupted. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(disambiguation)
- memsom 4y agoAnd this British actress is actually called Isis : https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8365231/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8365231/
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoAlso a spy agency from Archer (a cartoon series) Oh, and let's not forget the routing protocol - https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios-xml/ios/iproute_isis/configuration/xe-16/irs-xe-16-book.html https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios-xml/ios/iproute_is...
- ChoGGi 4y agoSomeone wanting to cause world wide disruption should start an organization called a
- gherkinnn 4y agoOh look. Another incident of the Scunthorpe problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
- gadders 4y agohttps://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/sanctions-programs-and-country-information/syria-sanctions https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/... Probably a sanction scanning program.