61 ms·
Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts
- actuallyrizzn 3y agoChokepoint 2.0.
- ValentineC 3y agohttps://archive.ph/2023.11.05-111811/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/business/banks-accounts-close-suddenly.html https://archive.ph/2023.11.05-111811/https://www.nytimes.com...
- vfclists 3y ago[flagged]
- capableweb 3y agoNot everyone is using CloudFlare's DNS. These archive links work perfectly fine for me and I'm happy people post them.
- rkagerer 3y agoYeah. They seem to work for me, too. There was a few weeks where one of my devices got trapped in the loop gp described and it was very frustrating. I am not using Cloudflare DNS.
- fragmede 3y agoWhat DNS are you using?
- vfclists 3y agoI changed my DNS and it seems to work now. I will try again from another system to see if it still works. Thanks.
- pipes 3y agoGenuine questio what do you mean? I find them very useful. As in they work. Are you seeing something else?
- capableweb 3y agoThere is a feud between CloudFlare and the person/people running Archive.is/ph, where they blame each other for X, and people using CloudFlare's DNS gets sent into some redirect loop or something when they try to access the website. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317 "Tell HN: Archive.is inaccessible via Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1)"
- pipes 3y agoThanks
- unstatusthequo 3y agoUse NextDNS, makes DNS life better
- dustincoates 3y agoI (and some others I know) have had myriad problems with NextDNS. I switched to ControlD a few weeks back, and it's working well so far.
- Rewrap3643 3y agoNextDNS works fine for me.
- vfclists 3y agoFor those downvoting, this won't help anyone the same problem to discover a potential solution. So do vote it up.
- meisel 3y agoDo they just lose all their money in those accounts?
- RecycledEle 3y agoThe law says the bank must give them their money. But banks are above the law. I know when PaPal codes and account, PayPal usually steals the money. Most traditional banks eventually give you your money if you hire a lawyer, that is, they give the money to the lawyer who keeps it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- edmundsauto 3y agoHow do you know Paypal usually keeps the money, is there a public accounting of this situation? Would be interesting to analyze - please share any info you have on the data.
- kmeisthax 3y agoPayPal's EULA has a "liquidated damages clause", which means that if they think you lost them money and damaged them, instead of having to go to a court, they just charge you what they think the damages are.
- astrange 3y agoYou don't need a lawyer for small claims or for filing a CFPB complaint.
- tomcam 3y agoPayPal gets around this by claiming they are not a bank
- wolverine876 3y agoThe article says they get the money, but sometimes weeks later.
- dv_dt 3y agoSounds like a strong danger of applying a modern form of red lining & financial deplatforming. If you’re a higher risk, of course any financial products that you can access will cost more in fees and interest. Who is considered a higher risk by the impersonal algorithms and bank systems being applied?
- RiOuseR 3y ago[dead]
- wolverine876 3y agoYou can be barred from flying (is that still true?) and now banking, without trial or evidence. It's already highly anti-democratic, but imagine what an aggressive, oppressive government will do with this power.
- sitzkrieg 3y agoas shown in the article!
- raybb 3y agoYup. Reminds me about how Madison Square Garden was using facial recognition to ban its owners enemies https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/nyregion/madison-square-garden-facial-recognition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/nyregion/madison-square-g...
- sneak 3y agoBanking is optional; the problem is that many businesses insist on bank cards to transact. It’s important that businesses be compelled to accept cash for all transactions. It’s particularly bad in some cities. Rather than enforcing access to the special hell that is US retail banking, just prohibit businesses from ripping out their existing cash infrastructure. Even with a bank account, your ability to transact is subject to surveillance and seizure/freezing without evidence or probable cause. Cash has none of these problems.
- noSyncCloud 3y agoCash is absolutely subject to freezing/seizure. Try carrying $25,000 and letting the police search your vehicle.
- Scoundreller 3y ago> letting the police search your vehicle. Good idea to decline those
- 3y ago
- ciabattabread 3y agoAt minimum, there needs to be a law that requires banks to identify to the customer the specific transactions that led to the closing of the account. And if there’s no prosecution related to these transactions after a year, the ban gets lifted.
- slovette 3y agoEhm. No. Innocent until proven guilty, not guilt until proven innocent. Being de-platformed from financial infrastructure is tantamount to being economically jailed and instantly forced into life altering poverty. This isn’t some silly app you’re getting banned from… Banks shouldn’t be allowed to ban anyone. They should need a court order to lock up/ban someone from access/mobility of their own property. That said, this is likely a narrow lens statement. The problem is more complex around governments/judicial systems incentivizing banks to behave like governments. In reality, our regulatory agencies need to do their jobs: regulate/enforce and be held accountable when they don’t (instead of passing that enforcement on to banks through threat of liability).
- nickff 3y agoThe government is the prime culprit when it comes to financially de-platforming people, if you want more secure access to banking, the solution is lighter regulation of banks, not more. Anti-money-laundering (AML) and so-called risk management regulations make it unprofitable and complicated to provided a mount services to many people. The government (and its regulatory bodies) use this ‘flexibility’ to achieve their aims (see operation Choke Point).
- acdha 3y agoI’d say “better regulation” rather than “less” - things like fraud and money laundering are important to fight (consider how bad ransomware would be if the attackers didn’t have to convince their victims to make a cryptocurrency transaction first) but we sacrificed due process to get there. It shouldn’t be impossible to have better regulations but the national security ratchet effect is pretty strong, as I’m reminded every time the TSA scrutinizes my sandals.
- cft 3y agoEventually more and more use cases for Bitcoin will emerge, as the government becomes less competent and more reckless with its fiat. It costs $35,000 for a reason.
- chx 3y agoWe just discussed this on the occasion of SBF being convicted as a fraudster: all crypto is a scam. Them being negative sum games makes them so. Whether the scam is a ponzi, a pyramid scheme or something novel is a matter of debate. That it's a scam is not in debate, that's a plain mathematical fact. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/08/bitcoin-isnt-the-future-of-money-its-either-a-ponzi-scheme-or-a-pyramid-scheme/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/08/bitco... https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/ https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/ https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-ponzi.html https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-pon... https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-ponzi.html https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-ponzi.h...
- krupan 3y agoAll crypto is a scam. Bitcoin is not crypto
- krupan 3y agoFine, I clicked and read a couple of those. I like the 3rd one that defines a ponzi scheme: "A Ponzi scheme, or "ponzi" for short, is a type of investment fraud with these five features: 1 People invest into it because they expect good profits, and 2. that expectation is sustained by such profits being paid to those who choose to cash out. However, 3. there is no external source of revenue for those payoffs. Instead, 4. the payoffs come entirely from new investment money, while 5. the operators take away a large portion of this money." This is great because points 3 and 5 are trivially proved false for Bitcoin and shows that is no more a ponzi scheme than stocks or real estate or any other common investment. Thank you for the insight.
- 3y ago
- euroderf 3y agoSomeone's social credit score went negative, for no comprehensible reason.
- pauldenton 3y agohttps://youtu.be/B9IrNcv_OdM https://youtu.be/B9IrNcv_OdM Nigel Farage brought a lot of attention to the Debanking scandal
- pipes 3y agoAnd the regulator pretty much said it is all fine, nothing to see here!
- raincom 3y agoThe regulator didn't go through Nigel's case at all, as 'it is understood that the data does not cover his case, given that the bank never followed through with the closure' [1]. What FCA found that banks never debanked people based primarily on political beliefs[1]. However, Banks can use political beliefs secondarily to debank, and that's what Natwest did. Nagel sought documents from Natwest using Subject Access Request, there it is "found that an internal committee had deemed his views did not align with the bank's own. This formed part of the basis for cutting him, the document showed, alongside commercial considerations." [2] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/19/nigel-farage-fca-review-coutts-politicians-debanked-no-evidence https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/19/nigel-farag... [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/natwest-meets-quarterly-profit-forecast-amid-farage-debanking-row-2023-10-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/natwest-meets-quart...
- pipes 3y agoInteresting, then what was their primary reason for debanking him?
- cwillu 3y agoIt's remarkable how totalitarianism seeps in.
- jonahbenton 3y agoIt's interesting, it really isn't totalitarianism, actually the opposite, in a way that 20th C writers were simply not able to imagine. There is no centralization/dictatorial dynamic for this in the US, at all. It is all decentralized, at best these outcomes fall into the "unintended consequences of regulation" category, which is rather well studied, but in a much more simplified world model than we face today.
- wrycoder 3y agoThe actors know their lines well, they don’t need direction. In German, it’s called Gleichschaltung.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoHow is it not ? > If the bank has filed a SAR, it isn’t legally allowed to tell you, and the federal government prosecutes only a small fraction of the people whom the banks document in their SARs. Sounds worryingly similar to an effective violation of habeas corpus ? P.S.: To make the matters worse, it looks that trying to rely more on cash as an insurance against getting debanked, raises your risk of getting debanked !
- pas 3y agothat's not totalitarianism. it's a shitty system with a ridiculously bad trade off (catching some money launderers versus fucking innocent customers) the problem is that banks can't handle this requirement well. if they think something is suspicious, sure file the SAR/CTR, and then if they think there's a need for KYC, tell the customer that. the customer provides information about the transaction, the bank then can chill the fuck out. if this keeps going on they can eventually tell the customer that okay, it's too much work for them, please close the account in 1 month. but no, they immediately switch into this crusader mode, because it's just easier for them, and customers have no recourse.
- linusg789 3y agohttps://ghostarchive.org/archive/jEBXz https://ghostarchive.org/archive/jEBXz
- robbywashere_ 3y agoI have a crazy idea that might just work. What if we could create something that has the privacy of cash, is uncensorable like cash but could also be digitally transmitted like electronic payments?
- jowea 3y ago> What if we could create something that has the privacy of cash, Unless you're implying Monero I don't think so. > is uncensorable like cash Uncensorable until you get sanctioned like Tornado Cash? Or this is also about Monero? > but could also be digitally transmitted like electronic payments? At the same speed, convenience, security and efficiency level?
- _lvbh 3y agoNot OP but I immediately thought of Monero. I wish we could have something like Monero run by the Government backed by gold.
- RockRobotRock 3y agoJust say crypto. Stop being a sarcastic ass and just say crypto
- krupan 3y agoBitcoin, not crypto. And poster has to be cryptic and/or sarcastic because even though it's a solution to this very problem staring us in the face, people here shut down any intelligent conversation about it both with down votes and tired, long winded, oft repeated, uninformed arguments against it. It's pretty discouraging, honestly
- astrange 3y agoBitcoin absolutely does not have the privacy of cash! It is cash like in that if you typo the destination address you instantly lose all the money, which is sort of like how you can accidentally set cash on fire.
- raincom 3y agoBanks hide behind Bank Secrecy Act and other regulations in order to debank people. Chase closed my account, and the reason Chase gave: "Financial institutions have an obligation to know our customers and monitor transactions that flow through our customers' accounts. After careful consideration, we decided to close your account because of unexpected activity on these or another Chase account." I didn't dispute any transactions, nor did I deposit any fraudulent checks, no check bounces, no overdrafts, no cash deposits, no wires, not an instance of disrespecting any Chase employee either on phone or in person. Yes, I used Zelle often, I deposited checks often. When people complain about debanking, many folks defend these banks, saying that there are good reasons for these banks to close (some transaction, etc). Banks are heavily regulated, I understand. Regulators want to see a certain number of SAR and CTR filings based on the size of bank. If a bank has 1M accounts, regulators want to see a certain number of SAR/CTR filings, a certain number of account closures; regulators go hard on financial institutions, if the latter don't follow the industry average (#SARs, #CTRs, #closures). This has created a vicious loop: banks use machine-learning/AI to flag accounts; then, back office employees 95% of the time just close these accounts. Welcome to the new debanking world. Chase and many others also monitor your political activity, social media, protests, etc. If they don't like you, they can close your account by simply stating that "we have an obligation to know our customers; after careful consideration, we decided to close your account". When banks decide to close your checking accounts, beware that they also close your credit cards (esp Chase is notorious for this).
- vfclists 3y agoThe real issue here is a human rights issue. It is wonderful to hear politicians and the UN speak of our wonderful human rights, but clearly that does not extend to our ability to trade our skills, good and services in a legal manner, in our common currencies. Now how is that for our much vaunted human rights? Is anyone going to propose a constitutional amendment that makes banking a human right not subject to the whims and caprices of anonymous secretive unaccountable govt and banking officials? Of course we could trade in cash, at the risk of having some "law enforcement" officials seizing our cash and asking us to prove we acquired it legally, subject to time wasting and expensive legal process which usually costs more than the amount seized. Habeas corpus doesn't apply to the cash which is why the court cases read State of New York vs $28,777 rather than State of New York vs John Doe. In the EU some countries have placed limits on the size of payments which can be made in cash. As for the US one has to wonder why the $10000 deposit notification limit which was made in 1970 has not been adjusted to account for inflation, which according to Google it is about $79,000 in 2023. Those officials must have been ecstatic at the introduction of computers which makes tracking such transactions so easy. Anyone to campaign for the adjustment of the $10000 figure to account for inflation? We want to party!! Think of how it would improve the liquidity of banks. So much money would come flowing in in full knowledge that it wouldn'tbe subject to needless checks from nosy make busy bank and IRS officials.
- TacticalCoder 3y ago> The real issue here is a human rights issue. However wrong the EU is on many things, at least the EU states that having a "basic bank account" is a right in the EU that cannot be denied: "If you are legally resident in an EU country you are entitled to open a "basic payment account". Banks cannot refuse your application for a basic payment account just because you don't live in the country where the bank is established.". [1] And the European Convention on Human Rights has some implication on banks in the EU, for example when they lend money (say for a mortgage) to an EU citizen. I'd say that that's better than a country where you can be totally de-banked and blocklisted. I don't have any false hope but it's at least better than nothing. [1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-products-and-services/bank-accounts-eu/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-pr...
- darawk 3y agoIf only there were some sort of technological method for disintermediating banks without sacrificing their advantages. Ah well, nevertheless.
- neonate 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20231105205756/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/business/banks-accounts-close-suddenly.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231105205756/https://www.nytim...
- Ajay-p 3y agoDebanking is deeply unfair but more so in our society that is moving increasingly towards a cash-less society. A person can be debanked for no fault of their own and that causes them to be unable to pay rent, bills, etc. Like being arrested - there is little recourse without great expense or effort.
- XorNot 3y agoThere's a very obvious utility in the US which should be able to prevent this: The US Postal Service. It's federally required to exist, and services all Americans already. Basic banking services should be one of the things it is expanded to provide in a minimal, safe fashion (i.e. no loans or lending, but guaranteed electronic banking and funds transfer services).
- xkekjrktllss 3y agoThe US Postal Service did serve as a bank from 1910-1966. It should simply restart.
- petermcneeley 3y agoIf only there was a means to transact money digitally without the need for an interstitial.
- RockRobotRock 3y agoYes, if only there was a practical way to do so.
- petermcneeley 3y agoYes this is what I mean. I dont find bitcoin very practical.
- krupan 3y agoThe crazy thing to me in all this is that the types and amounts of transactions you make with your money and the bank is not criminal and never could be. It could however be a technique used to hide things that are criminal like fraud or theft. Somehow somewhere along the way we as a society decided we were ok with criminalizing the types of transactions that can be used to hide crime. That to me should have been a clear step in the wrong direction. "Money laundering" (however that is defined) should not be a crime. Theft, fraud, etc. should be.
- kmeisthax 3y agoThe way you actually prosecute theft and fraud is by looking at the ledger of transactions to see what happened. Money laundering is any deliberate attempt to make tracing those transactions more difficult. Because it hides the evidence of theft or fraud, we criminalize it the same way we'd criminalize theft or fraud, because it's far easier to prove the cover-up than the actual crime. Furthermore, once you've shown evidence of a cover-up, that creates suspicion to start dissolving privacy to prove the actual crime. Dragnet surveillance is illegal[0], but surveillance with reasonable suspicion is not. In the counterfactual world where money laundering is explicitly legal, crime becomes far harder to prove, the government is far less useful at stopping crime, and people spend more of their time inventing parallel structures to stop crime that are far less accountable than the government is, until we've sleep-walked into anarchocapitalism. None of this excuses 'debanking' of course. In the case of debanking, you aren't being accused of the crime of money laundering, the bank just thinks you might be, so they summarily execute your account in the same way that Google executes[1] spammers. The thing you need to be angry about is the weaponization of freedom to associate, and you need to be calling for common carrier regulation rather than legalizing financial crime. [0] Theoretically, at least - the CIA and NSA have fought tooth and nail to get full take, which is disgusting [1] Metaphorical, at least until 2035 when Google starts livestreaming executions of known spammers
- krupan 3y ago"Money laundering is any deliberate attempt to make tracing those transactions [ones that prove you committed a crime] more difficult." But that's not true. If it's not a deliberate attempt to hide fraud/theft but otherwise looks like actual money laundering, then it is still a crime, at least according to current KYC/AML laws. That's the real problem with this all. That's what makes the debanking problem (which you agree is bad) so easily ignored by law makers and law enforcement.
- RockRobotRock 3y agoSo many restaurants in my city are credit/debit only. That should be illegal.
- votepaunchy 3y agoIt depends on the kind of restaurant, but cash cannot be refused when paying a debt. https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm
- constantly 3y agoThe crux is that they don’t let you rack up that debt in the first place if you’re cash only. ;)
- chungy 3y agoYour own link says that they may decline cash payments. United States currency is legal for all debts public and private (it says so on the notes), but that doesn't mean it's required to be accepted for all debts.
- crooked-v 3y agoNo, it must be accepted for debts. But a restaurant bill generally isn't going to be a 'debt' in that sense... if they only take credit cards and you don't have one after already eating your food, they're just going to write it off and ban you from the premises.
- kylehotchkiss 3y agoProtip to anybody who wants to spend an extended amount of time overseas - you’re looking at a strong opportunity to join the list of people who have their accounts closed. Red flags include quantity of overseas debit card transactions, setting a PO Box (this one apparently is a very big red flag to banks) or a PMB as your bank address, lots of wire transfers. Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use services like wise.com for transfers, and limit your overseas spending with American cards to only a credit card issued with a bank that isn’t the same as your primary accounts. Yay, patriot act. Glad we have so much energy focusing on legit bankers instead of the crypto that is actually funding multiple US adversaries at this very moment
- max51 3y agoThe bullshit you had to go through is the reason why a lot of people believe in bitcoin even if communities like NN love to pretend there is no use case for crypto.
- constantly 3y agoedit
- jdiff 3y agoCrypto has been a scam from the beginning, the only thing that's changed is the public perception after NFTs bombed massively and crypto was once again left without any use case.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoHuh? I've gotten paid for services in XMR. It already works. Even banks see the benefits of Ethereum.
- vivekd 3y agoDepends on where you live, if you live in Zimbabwe suddenly it starts to look very attractive. Too many countries play fast and loose with their currency.
- zb3 3y agoAML laws do more harm than good.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pard68 3y agoGet an account with a FCU. Not saying it'll solve this out right, but it's nice to be a human and not an account number.
- ThaDood 3y agoFCU? Friendly Credit Union?
- genewitch 3y agoFederal Credit Union, they have the Federal Deposit Insurance. Whatever that means. I do know that when the California Franchise Tax Board erroneously claimed i owed them a few hundred dollars that J.P. Morgan Chase Manhattan locked me out of my account within minutes - and charged me ~$150 for the pleasure - but neither my credit union nor my Mellon bank accounts were affected at all.
- pard68 3y agoFederal Credit Unions or just credit unions. They're smaller, community banks with a different organizational structure. They're something akin to a co-op, so member-owned.
- rafaelero 3y agoBuy Bitcoin.
- silentsea90 3y agoThe only right conclusion. Wish more people understood.
- djaro 3y agoBitcoin does 7 transactions per second and has a latency of hours if you don't want to pay extremely high gas fees, so you can't use it as a currency.
- rafaelero 3y agoBitcoin has similar throughput to Fedwire, so if we can build our current infrastructure using the Fed, we can do the same with Bitcoin.
- advael 3y agoI'm somewhat surprised no one here views this as an automated decisionmaking problem It's increasingly clear that automating important decisions like this is causing a lot of harm while removing most forms of recourse available to those affected. Coupled with the way automated decisions are used to perform and then launder fraud on a massive scale, maybe we should target laws at the automation itself: Require decisions made by automated systems of any kind to be auditable and explicitly define what human is held responsible and what remedies can be applied
- nine_zeros 3y agoBut the productivity gainz from AI!!! Jokes aside, we are entering a world of AI-decision hell. If it is any similar to the algo-decision hell from the past decade, humans are fucked.
- advael 3y agoNot if we successfully neutralize this paradigm's ability to take over crucial institutions, such as by enforcing lines of responsibility as I've suggested
- lazide 3y agoThe hell is guaranteed because no one in the decision making loop cares - yet.
- o11c 3y agoAnd they will continue to not care, because they will be able to avoid being affected. The racism mention in the article is notable - this isn't prima facie racism (and certainly affects more than minorities), but it is derivative racism since "people who can actually be heard to go through the system in the right way" is race-skewed.
- ToucanLoucan 3y agoWholeheartedly agree. If you don't want to pay customer service people, do not enter or build a business that requires serving customers at scale.
- TacticalCoder 3y ago> The goal is to crack down on fraud, terrorism, money laundering, human trafficking and other crimes. Estimated yearly cost of KYC/AML worldwide: $180 bn. Money actually frozen (frozen doesn't even mean it's going to eventually seized): $12 bn. 15x less. Complete, total and utter failure. Basically these KYC/AML rules are profoundly unjust and overwhelmingly only affect honest people who did exactly nothing wrong. The situation is so bad that there even the EU is now trying to rectify things a bit. Here's a recent article I read (in French): https://paperjam.lu/article/liste-contacts-ouvrir-compte-b https://paperjam.lu/article/liste-contacts-ouvrir-compte-b The article says this: "ABBL a échangé avec la Commission de surveillance du secteur financier (CSSF) pour que la réglementation AML/KYC s’applique de manière proportionnée, en conformité avec les textes. L’obligation de diligence variera dans son intensité selon les risques effectifs que peut représenter une structure." Basically: discussions are ongoing to make sure banks use proportionated KYC/AML rules and all the while staying within the letter of the law. For the situation has gotten so out of hand that it's an issue for startups and individuals trying to open bank accounts and it's beginning to have a noticeable effect on the economy. Basically 180 billions, worldwide, burnt yearly in nothing productive: only pointless administrative work. It's not helping poor people. It's not helping the economy. It's helping nobody. It's leeches leaching all the while making everybody suspicious and scared that their accounts are going to be closed. An example: the association of parents at my kid's school wanted a bank account. We're talking about a non-profit with a yearly budget of few thousand dollars. Due to crazy KYC/AML they couldn't. That is not "proportionate". And some of the demands were likely not in accordance with the law. For example I've had sites, to verify my identity, which asked me to film myself while speaking (AirBnB "conciergerie" / high-end thinggy IIRC. Not sure but that "videos of yourself talking" happened to me on several sites). I'm not sure that the EU directives regarding KYC/AML allow the collect of information including videos of people talking. When speaking about things needing to stay proportionate, I've had a notary ask me to trace the source of funds up until 2014. Seriously WTF: there should be a limit as to how many years they can go back in time. I bought an apartment in 2001 and I now want to sell but I'm concerned because I don't have any trace of the money anymore: it's from nearly a quarter of a century ago. I'm concerned that, before the sale, the notary (who's forced to snitch btw) is going to ask me the source of the funds used to buy that apartment in 2001 (nothing shady: I was writing computer books but I don't have any trace of any royalties payment. I don't even remember through which bank I bought it). Another example: I did cancel a private insurance. All that was needed was a proof I moved to another country. Or so I thought. They gave me the full KYC/AML... For cancelling an insurance! Why? I take it because I moved and went living to another EU country: if you move from one country to another, you automatically become someone suspicious. Now where it becomes really vicious: these KYC/AML always go back further and further in time but banks do not allow you to go back more than 8 or 10 years (when you want to check older statements). They then bill you hundreds of EUR, per account, per year, to give you your older bank statements. Which is adding insult to injury: the very same clique that is making your life miserable with KYC/AML is making money for the very bank statements they're asking (well, technically it's bank B asking your statements of bank A... But for another person it's going to be bank A asking that person's statements at bank B). It's so bad I now have a Git-versioned folder only for KYC/AML with proofs of everything. Any wire transfer of more than 10 K EUR I now save and archive for posterity. Another big issue is that none of this KYC/AML nonsense is centralized: so you basically have to do the same fucking paperwork for your insurance, banks, brokers, notary, etc. Fuck KYC/AML. Just fuck it. This horrible, pointless waste of time and energy is bane of my existence and needs to die. These laws/rules reflect the sick mind of those who wrote them and those who voted them (and they're badly failing at actually freezing and seizing drug/terrorist/trafficker' money).
- xyst 3y ago> Banks dislike any patterns that look like scams and will shut down behavior that seems suspicious. Yet, Chase did not do anything against Bernie Madoff for decades [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jpmorgan-madoff-deal-idUSBREA060JL20140107 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jpmorgan-madoff-deal-idUS... central banks suck. rich get the benefit of doubt. everyone else gets rugged capitalism treatment.
- krick 3y agoIs this about USA, or does it happen, like, in EU?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jmyeet 3y agoHere's what companies are trying to do: replace people with "AI". Why? Because people are annoying. They demand wages, breaks, medical care and so on. Of course what happens to companies when there's no one left being paid to afford their services never enters the picture. Here's what companies should be doing: using AI to easy the work of their workers. What's the difference? Well, in this case, closing an account is a serious action. It should always require human review. Mistakes do happen. Bugs happen. So, automated systems should simply allow one person to review many more accounts and/or to require less time to review such actions. Companies should always be responsible for the consequences of these automated actions including all damages plus punitive damages. Want to know how this can go (and has gone) horribly wrong? Hertz had an automated system that was falsely reporting rental cars as stolen [1]. People were charged and spent time in jail for this (eg [2]). This should never happen. Any police report like this should require human review where the human is responsible for the consequences of that. Automated system or not, Hertz made false police reports. That's a crime. Or it should be if it isn't. We are rapidly heading towards a dystopian future where ordinary life is impossible and nobody knows why because none of these systems explain why you're being imprisoned and your money has been seized. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusation-stealing-cars-settlement https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusa... [2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-marine-arrested-charged-hertz-falsely-accused-him-stealing-rental-car/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-marine-arrested-charged-...
- cryptoegorophy 3y agoNot a severe example but my card gets flagged constantly for supplier doing a small under a dollar refund. No matter what notes they put on their back end it still triggers it.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoIt's the intersection of Kafkaesque social credit by corporations and security theater spilling over from Snowden-revelations of government overreach by ancillary watch lists with millions of names. Have a family member who hangs out with "shady people" or live somewhere a criminal lived, and be guilty by association and discriminated against by algorithm without being aware of it and without any recourse except to waste the target's time and money with layers of bullshit. Such scoring and grading by correlation with arbitrary datapoints and secret evidence determines if a customer is treated well, charged more, or fired. "Know your customer" but entirely lacking in a human in the loop to avert significant automated harm. Widespread disenfranchisement risks a quiet, at first, socioeconomic apartheid, instability, and more homeless people. The root cause is the oligopolic concentration of power by too few corporations and regulatory capture leading to little-to-no oversight to civically murder or banish a person arbitrarily. A number of potential remedies include: 1. Decentralization (credit unions, breaking up corporations that are too big) 2. Regulation (antitrust, consumer protection, and algorithm standards) 3. Public utilities for essential services (postal banking which already occurs partially in the US with money orders) Closely-related book Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent by Silverglate.
- RagnarD 3y agoAre account balances stolen along the way? How do people get their funds out?
- pjmorris 3y agoI moved from <large national bank> to a local credit union back in ~2007 and remain glad I did for an ever renewing fountain of benefits, rooted in separation from the class of large national banks.
- nubela 3y agoWhat can entrepreneurs do about banking alternatives? (Don't mention cryptocurrency)
- Tao3300 3y agoProbably make sure you owe lots of money to the oligarchs so they have an interest in keeping you from being debanked.
- xbmcuser 3y agoIts funny how people made a big hoopla about chinese system of black marking individuals to me this seems to be the same. And from the looks of it in China at least prosecutes you or you know why you have the black mark. In the US you get black mark then are not even told why so not even sure what you did wrong just like the US no fly list. The land of the free.
- jopsen 3y agoThese things simply don't compare. Any such attempt smells like trolling to me. System that are shitty by accident, do not compare to intentional evil.
- Ridj48dhsnsh 3y agoIs it by accident though? Aren't US regulators intentionally (but quietly) pressuring financial institutions to do the enforcement of policies that they know wouldn't stand up to public scrutiny?
- pas 3y agolook, US politics is a shitshow, regulators are beholden to politics, lobbying is a very big influence in the US. from the crazy anti-porn, anti-abortion, anti-gay/trans, anti-welfare xenophobic fundamentalist anti-anything lobby to the anti-gun, super-duper-pro-trans, militantly-feminist, pro-eat-the-rich lobby. and during all this banking in the US suffers from all the usual problems, it's 50+ regulatory regimes all in one, banking systems are laughably ambivalent old and legacy plus too new and full of bugs, and so on. it's not surprising that things are not ideal. there's no need for some extreme conspiracy. big banks are user-hostile. just as the police, as healthcare, and so on.
- Ridj48dhsnsh 3y agoAre things like Operation Chokepoint [1] still a conspiracy theory? It appears to me like a sophisticated and coordinated operation, not the accidental result of bureaucracy. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
- tmaly 3y ago"Multiple SARs often — though not always — lead to a customer’s eviction." Justice is never applied evenly.
- Kalium 3y ago> “And in this scenario, you can’t really negotiate,” he said. “You aren’t talking with a person who has the power to tell you what went wrong and what didn’t go wrong.” I find this one of the most telling bits of this entire article. It says the quiet part out loud - people are often not looking purely to understand. People want information so they can negotiate, reason, or argue with the decisions.
- shinryuu 3y agoSure, if you feel that you are wronged then that is natural. Having your account closed for any reason is also strange.
- AndyMcConachie 3y agoBanks deserve nothing less than multiple molotov cocktails through their windows.
- ArabicBaklava 3y agoBank of america did this to me, in the same weekend i was moving out. All my stuff was in the car, it was a friday at 3PM and i was in the gas station. I couldn't fill up my gas. Called and they told me to come to the bank with two forms of ID. When I arrived to the bank the fraud department was operating in NY (3hrs ahead) and they were closing, so they told me to come next tuesday (it was a long weekend). I went homeless for 1 week with no food. It was my last semester in university and couldn't pay for tuition because my bank acc was locked, so the university dropped my classes and i was not able to graduate, as failing to stay enrolled (international student) i had to go back to my country. - 3 days before i received a transfer from my brother (6k usd) to pay for tuiton and new place - no unusual transactions, never reported any fraud before, just was hit with the "per our agreement we can close your account without notification." and they provided me the balance 1 week later.
- ArabicBaklava 3y agoWell, this happened in 2017.. fast forward to this account closure effect on my life: I had to go back to my country, without a degree, was not able to land any job. Unfortunately, good places require degrees. Stayed unemployed, hit with chronic depression as anyone would. Lost 4+ years of professional progress. When covid came, i was able to complete my degree online and graduated in 2021, but because all fresh grad programs require a certain age; i did not qualify. Was able to finally land a good job in 2023. This issue needs a resolution, what happened to me might not happen to everyone, i know my situation is different. but financial institutions should be held responsible for actions like this, imagine someone else who needs to pay for his/her medication...
- WinstonSmith84 3y agoSorry to hear, but the bottom line here is to not trusting a single entity. Not having funds split between traditional banks and crypto (exchange + offline wallets) is just asking for problems.
- neonsunset 3y agoI wonder if the bank can be sued for this. That's how random bank managers get found in a river, due to policies like these impacting the innocent.
- DoingIsLearning 3y ago> According to Thomson Reuters, banks filed over 1.8 million SARs in 2022 > The algorithmically generated alerts are reviewed every day by human employees. At 1.8M reports either banks employ an army of reviewers or there is fuck all of a review. > or wire transfers with banks in high-risk countries. Sounds like something ripe for discrimination against immigrants.
- jgilias 3y agoIt totally is discrimination. A friend of mine in an EU country had the experience where a client’s payment to his business rang all the alerts and was delayed by his bank for a month just because it came from an African country. Both totally legitimate businesses doing no shady stuff whatsoever. Try to explain to your employees how their salaries are delayed because your bank suspects you’re terrorists or something. This and some other experiences turned me to someone who believes that the freedom to transact is an inalienable right, and that it should be taken out of the hands of governments and centralised institutions as much as possible.
- kwere 3y agobanks literally operate in a fascist framework, the goverment control literally everything on how they can operate, usually under political logics above sound economics (paper growth by debt creation). By being a sector which consolidate naturally overtime in few conglomerates it becomes quite ripe to corruption and backdealings
- dboreham 3y agoI didn't get de-banked, but I had a similar wacky experience last year with Wells Fargo. I was buying a car from a guy in Salt Lake City. Not a terribly expensive car. I live in Montana but at the time I was physically in Northern California on a trip. I'd driven to SLC and looked at the car, met the seller, and done various things to ensure I knew his identity (e.g. he used his work email and he had a medium profile media job so was listed on his employers' web site with a picture). (for people in other countries: banks in the US make it impossible for regular people to electronically transfer money to someone else, at least not car-sized sums of money) So I initiated a wire transfer to the guy online. Note: his bank account, the wire destination was also a Wells Fargo account. A few minutes later I receive a call from a lady saying she is from Wells Fargo, asks if I initiated a wire. I say yes I did. She asks do I know the recipient. I say yes, and provide some background on how I know him, and how I know he's not a Nigerian Prince. I also mention that his account is at Wells Faro so if they have any concerns, why not pop open his records and check him out. She says that's all great, thanks, good bye. <hours elapse> guy emails me asking if I sent the wire because it's not in his account. I say sure did, but let me check if the funds have departed my account. This is when I discover that WF locked all my online account access. And of course they did not send the wire. This whole mess took nearly the entire day to resolve and required me to go into a WF branch to prove I was myself. And when I did that the helpful WF manager I worked with ended up exasperated at the WF department that had locked my account. She said they ended up suspecting that she was a bad actor, even though she was calling on an internal line! This all makes me suspect that in addition to bad ML filtering, banks also have plain moron/assholes working in their fraud departments. (Yes I got the car eventually and my bank accounts back)
- jacquesm 3y agoI had something similar happen here in NL, so it's not limited the USA, unfortunately. I paid a very modest invoice amount - to another HN'er, go figure - and as a result got locked out of my online banking and the transfer was held. Took a couple of late night phone calls to get that restored, and then, - surprise -, the next day my accounts were locked again. More phone calls and since then it's been back to normal but this is so amateurish.
- gvurrdon 3y ago
- system2 3y agoI always have cash money on the side just in case this happens. Have at least 3-4 months surviving cash because you never know who will do what.
- cobbaut 3y agoI didn't get de-banked, but did have my card blocked by the bank once, so since then I have two banks, and use them both about equally. So if there is a problem with one bank, then I can still get food and stuff.
- moss2 3y agoUSA - The Land of Freedom (from having any rights)
- irusensei 3y agoEven if you are one of those people who thinks surveillance is okay to prevent crimes, wouldn't it make sense instead to tip the authorities and silently watch the transaction patterns until an actual crime is proven and its structures dismantled? Who thinks is the right thing to ban criminals to financial systems like cryptocurrencies where tracking is difficult? Banks obviously! Crime and corruption departments are costly. If you are an actual millionaire they will make a 40 pages report on your political views before kicking you but if you are a small customer paying rent that happens to have a funny name or withdraw cash too frequently its better to just kick you out of the platform... and have you talk to the algorithm. Think of it. If government wants to efficiently catch financial crimes they can instead setup a digital-nomad-crypto-friendly-bank-with-minimal-kyc-plus-eresidency-and-offshore-companies and just follow the money. I suspect this will be a lot more efficient than the current framework. Banks are locking the capacity of an individual or group of people to interact with society and their access to basic living needs while making a mockery of the concept of innocent til prove guilty we built our societies on. The burden to prove you are not a criminal is on you. And while vast majority of people are vocal against xenophobia and racism when its the banks ruining someone life because they have the wrong passport color some people will applaud and justify the systems protecting their sweet homeland from dirty barbarians from the east and south. But even if you think AML laws are a force for good you need to agree this whole situation is very fucked up. I'm normally very against regulation but bank accounts in current digital society should be granted as a basic right.
- AnonCoward42 3y agoI feel like this is the modern version of excommunication. Bank accounts are essential to life in modern societies and if you have none, you are in serious trouble. If there are suspicious activities these should be investigated instead of just closing the account.
- Spare_account 3y ago>Mr. Dubrowski, the JPMorgan Chase spokesman, said the bar’s series of deposits was indeed the problem. >“We must know our customers and monitor the transactions that flow through our bank,” he said. “That includes instances where we see a pattern of cash deposits that are just below federal currency reporting thresholds.” Later in the article: >“We must know our customers and monitor the transactions that flow through our bank,” Mr. Dubrowski said, who stressed that the bank was not accusing Mr. Ladipo of any wrongdoing. “That includes instances where we suspect that the transactions involve parties connected to potential scams.” Is Mr Dubrowski an AI by any chance?
- gadders 3y agoHas anyone got a copy of that Stone Toss rolling boulder cartoon? People were happy when it was only "fascists" getting debanked but now it's happening to normal people they don't like it. Wait until it starts happening to everyone that attended a pro-Palestinian rally.
- rosmax_1337 3y agoStone Toss, the forbidden xkcd. :)
- gadders 3y agoSome of it is pretty controversial. Some of it, pretty sensible.
- kyc_sucks32 3y agoLloyds bank did this to me. It took three calls over 3 weeks to customer services to get it reversed - each over 30min. I explicitly asked and was told it was half driven by algorithm and half by people. When it reversed I was basically told it was a bug. My belief is their is some data science team responsible for this. They are ruining people's lives with their false positives. I hope those people read this message and realise what they are doing. I was lucky. I would've got a marker put against me that could've had every other bank close my account. I only escaped this because of my persistence in calling them and getting lucky with a customer service rep who went the extra mile.
- kyc_sucks32 3y agoI wanted to add that though the banks are at fault, I believe the cause is government. This is the exact response one would expect with the KYC regulation. If a customer falls into the "to much effort" category (note not "done something illegal") then I assume they would not be worth the cost of researching for the bank.
- daedlanth 3y ago[dead]
- egberts1 3y agoOnly an idiot savant would say "let's add AI to the banker's automated decision making process of rejecting a customer".
- tock 3y agoReminder: popular stablecoins like USDT, USDC all have something called a blacklist in the contract using which they can block you address.
- rosmax_1337 3y agoEither we completely get rid of the idea that everyone has a bank account which they use for everyday transactions, going back to cash as default. Or we guarantee everyone an account which can not be closed for any reason whatsoever, at a state run bank. What we have right now, is untenable and a true sign of a society which has lost it's bearings completely. A bank account nowadays is not some kind of privilege which can only be granted citizens which hold the correct political beliefs and have never upset whatever stupid algoritm they have in place to check for "money laundering". A bank account nowadays is simply a modern prerequisite. Let me be clear, if the bank "freezes" someones account, I think they are in moral right to use violence against bank officials in self defense. The bank has attacked the individual in a meaningful way, akin to digital sabotage, but way worse.
- RugnirViking 3y agoI think the part about bank officials detracts from your point. Whether or not its actually correct, I think its a separate and divisive issue than highlighting the contradiction of requiring that everyone should be able to get a bank account while demanding that banks not give bank accounts to some people
- rosmax_1337 3y ago>I think its a separate and divisive issue Right, it is incredibly divisive. So is freezing the bank assets of someone, which can endanger their lives at worst and at the minimum causes major distress. I think it is important to highlight that if you're working at a bank, certainly at a high position, but also everyday clerks, you are lackeys for an organisation that threatens the lives of other people. Those people can choose to retaliate when your organisation gives them no other recourse. It is a fact. Maybe the banks should hire armed private security companies to safeguard the well being of their lackeys? After all: - How are you supposed to hire a lawyer to help get your account back when your account is frozen. - How are you supposed to buy groceries to feed yourself, and your family the within possibly the next few hours. Not everyone has a fully stocked pantry. - How are you supposed to buy life-sustaining medical supplies to for example a diabetic? - How are you supposed to pay rent? Within 1 month, a debanked person will be completely at the whims of being saved by friends and other alternative support networks. They are essentially robbed of everything. 1 month in a bureaucratic context __is nothing__. An issue with frozen bank accounts can take years to resolve, if they are even resolved?! The bank may choose to not give out the money in cash, and may require another bank to receive the funds by wire. What if no other bank takes in this debanked person?! So when people talk about how divisive it is to mention the absolute animosity that these people will feel towards bank personell of all levels, ask who started it. And most importantly, if you can't hire a lawyer, you can't buy groceries, you can't pay rent, you can't even buy gas for your car. Your family is standing in line at a homeless shelter, and your kids are crying. What remains other than desperate violence against people you feel are responsible for putting you in this hell of an existence? If you work at a bank, quit now. Don't wait until you've got blood on your hands because you've been a lackey to an inherently anti-human organisation such as a bank. If you continue working for the banks, even as a private contractor which might be the audience of people reading this, you're potentially in the firing line of very desperate people. And those desperate people are right to be desperate. History doesn't usually change just because someone "filed a complaint", it tends to need to get really bad, and bloody.
- okokwhatever 3y agoBanks business is not people anymore. It's quite easy when you understand the business of small cash operations are not attractive for the industry and also fintech has been the new player since a decade managing mostly every transaction online. The situation is gonna be weird whenever CBDCs are gonna be imposed and the ban will be executed by the government. Good luck with your complains to the gov.
- patwolf 3y agoI do wonder if the problem lies with the banks or with the amount of federal regulation that makes certain customers unattractive. I had a small business bank account, and one day I got a call from the bank asking to go through my transaction list and provide explanations for all the transactions. Fortunately they didn't close the account, but given the fact that it was costing them to investigate my account, it did make me wonder if they would have closed it if it wasn't profitable enough.
- raincom 3y agoIt is combination of both factors, along with others. (a) big banks (b) BSA compliance manuals (AML, KYC) (c) regulators slapping huge fines against big banks for "weak controls" (d) an algorithmic solution to show that banks have "strong controls" (b), (c), (d) force banks to wage war against cash. So, if you have a small business that accepts cash, your bank doesn't want your business as a customer, as they don't want to accept cash deposits, nor do they want customers who withdraw cash regularly. That's why large retailers have their own shadow banks to get around the push towards anti-cash.
- o11c 3y agoI can't help but wonder if it's malicious compliance: * no industry likes regulation (except as a weapon against competition) * banks previously made billions helping criminals * now the government says "stop helping criminals", so they invented a system that will inconvenience voters until the government gets off their case
- dsign 3y agoLet's call this what it is: streaks of totalitarianism. Beyond the specifics of closed bank accounts, what are we are seeing is the following pattern: - Government pushes regulation on banks to monitor their customers for X, Y, Z - Banks, on behalf of the government, collect data on individuals for X, Y, Z. - When banks are not satisfied, they either de-bank their customers or file a report with the government. Banks, which are supposed to work for their customers, instead end up being coerced to watch their customers on behalf of the government. Because more and more transactions are digital, the net result if that the government has found a new venue for (totalitarian?) surveillance of almost all economic transactions of their subjects. Back in the day, the KGB would have dreamed of having something like this. Of course, one needs to live to see how bad it will get, and if people will get more accustomed to holding cash[^1] in a hidden safe. [^1]: Or a cash equivalent. In certain places, there is talk to make do without any cash at all.
- lacrimacida 3y agoThis could easily kill small business in favor of big players. Let’s not accept the status quo here. Banks should be only allowed to close accounts with proper investigation and transparency, not rely on some dumb algo or poor thought out process.
- ticviking 3y ago“We must know our customers” The bank will take any approach other than having an account manager who knows each customer individually. This is the biggest reason I make it a priority to bank locally and in person.
- nonford150 3y agoExactly why I use multiple financial facilities and keep a good amount of cash on-hand.
- averageRoyalty 3y ago> Instead, a vast security apparatus has kicked into gear, starting with regulators in Washington and trickling down to bank security managers and branch staff eyeballing customers. Despite the article and the comments, this isn't an American thing. There are stories on line that are near identical to these from all over the world.
- Night_Thastus 3y agoThese kinds of experiences are exactly why I stay with a small, local credit union. No bullshit fees. I can get to a real person quickly. No stupid algorithm running in the background ready to banish me the moment something unusual happens. There are legitimate reasons to use a bigger bank, but I'd wager that for 90% or more of people, a credit union would be a net improvement.
- elzbardico 3y agoBanks should close accounts for administrative reasons only, with ample notice period, and give full disclosure of the reason. Balance should be made available as soon as possible once the customer present an alternative account, or he should be able to get a check. For regulatory reasons, only the government should be able to mandate closure and for that it should be backed by a judicial order. I don't fucking care about idiots mumbling about "muh, terrorism! money laundering", fuck you and your safetyism. We live in a democracy, and nobody should be punished except after a judicial procedure with ample defense rights. Banks regulatory requirements should stop at making sure they collect all the required information and report suspicious activity to the government. They are not in the business of policing people, investigating, judging and punishing people. They don't have this mandate.
- raincom 3y agoTwo things: (a) Banks can be vague in their SAR filings with “transaction with no apparent economic, business or lawful purpose” (b) What BSA manul says: "No bank, and no director, officer, employee, or agent of a bank that reports a suspicious transaction may notify any person involved in the transaction that the transaction has been reported." [1] This deadly combination is enough for banks to NOT disclose. That's why a vague reason is provided by banks; here is Chase's template: "Financial institutions have an obligation to know our customers and monitor transactions that flow through our customers' accounts. After careful consideration, we decided to close your account because of unexpected activity on these or another Chase account." [1] https://bsaaml.ffiec.gov/manual/AssessingComplianceWithBSARegulatoryRequirements/04 https://bsaaml.ffiec.gov/manual/AssessingComplianceWithBSARe...
- elzbardico 3y agoThe manual says that customer should not be informed for the reasons of reporting. But it doesn't say the banks should close the accounts.
- raincom 3y agoSince the first SAR is filled with “transaction with no apparent economic, business or lawful purpose”, subsequent transactions from the same account would become "transactions with no apparent economic, business or lawful purpose". So, Banks are on the hook to file subsequent SARs. Banks exit customers after a couple of SARs in the name of de-risking. One way to avoid getting out of this trap is to join the club of "private banking" services provided by big banks. It is like Airline's first class vs. economy class customers. Banks put different resources for private banking clients such as: (a) manual override by humans (b) reduce false positives by algorithms by tweaking parameters (c) specialized representatives, cust service folks.
- gainda 3y agoi worked in the field for seven years and saw some of this firsthand. i was the guy at the desk making the call and relaying the bad news from the back office. it always seemed deeply unfair & quite rich seeing as almost all of these institutions are busted for far more egregious behavior than what they suspect of the customers they de-bank. one additional scenario that always stuck with me as to how wacky banks can stretch their power: i had a woman who had her own sole-owned accounts, a joint account with her mother, and her mother had her own accounts. the mother had overdrafted her sole account a few hundred dollars, and per the bank agreement, they took money from the joint account & the daughters sole-owned account to offset the balance. she was completely blindsided & distraught once it all became clear as anyone would be. how is that fair? this was in 2015. hopefully things have changed.
- ElizabethMorgan 3y ago[dead]
- bratbag 3y agoMy personal experience of this is that you can have direct, hard evidence of someone commiting fraud, and they will still jump on social media screaming that they are being persecuted.
- ultrahax 3y agoCitibank did this to me. Venmo'd my architect for some work he was going on my house, kablammo, account closed, no notice. Was just lucky it was an account set up specifically for work on that house and not my that's-where-my-paycheck-goes account.
- dandy23 3y agoIt's funny how the banks say the reason is that they must know their customers, but they clearly show they do not. They probably know equaly bad the customers whis accounts they do not close. Both banks and the banking regulation is a joke. They could certainly do some more manual verification of suspected cases to clear out the obvious mistakes, but they only care about the bottom line and to not be fined.
- maxslch 3y agobanking simply shouldn't be in the hands of the rich, corporate and lawyers. Bitcoin solves this.
- norswap 3y agoHaters gonna hate, but crypto solves this. Recent events show even in our liberal democracies, governments can't be trusted with the power they already have, and the enormous power that technology does and will afford them. (The most salient example is the Trudeau government freezing the bank accounts of trucker donators.)
- uconnectlol 3y agowhy would a bank just close your account because of a false positive i read through most of the article and could not find discussion of such an obvious question do you get to re-open your account after they realize they're wrong? does this actually affect credit scores? big if true. i realize this is probably just a bug due to security theater with unwillingness to fix the bug being part of the security theater. we already knew the bank polices every single transaction we make (which is absolutely intolerable and should be illegal, along with most of the credit system which is also just surveillance), but closing accounts in any meaningful way would be new. and this is another dipshit article that doesn't actually even name the problem. instead they point to unprovable discrimination as usual. NO. the problem is that what someone does with their money is a private matter, like none of your fucking business. there wouldn't be any discrimination if the bank just was a real product and not a one sided """relationship""" which is just code for "we shove our noses into every transaction you make for your own good, loser". what i imagine is that in actuality what actually happens is you have to do a bunch of annoying phone calls and "security" crap like going on a website and doing captchas, receiving 6 digit codes through SMS, whatever new security theater fad is current like spinning around in front of a camera, etc then you get your account re enabled.
- FilemonHen 3y ago[dead]
- Arnold07 3y ago[dead]