The problem the article poses is actually not one of diverting costs, despite how GP's metaphor would indicate... It's that with fraud, only the most draconian

The problem the article poses is actually not one of diverting costs, despite how GP's metaphor would indicate... It's that with fraud, only the most draconian systems can be effective at stopping all fraud. In the above metaphor, it's more like guard rails are already in place, the speed limit is 1/10th a reasonably safe velocity, and the only way you can stop the remaining death-every-decade is to make everyone walk the road instead of driving it, and guarded so that you don't encounter any strangers along the way either. Very safe. But now nobody even wants to take this road. But it's so safe! Zero deaths, no injuries, ever. Sure, the expenses/value argument can be made, too, but that's not ultimately what makes it nonzero. Even if you had limitless resources to apply to the anti-fraud, the only way you're getting nonzero fraud is if a large amount of legitimate customers are inconvenienced or outright denied as well. This is due to how easily fraudsters can still find processes and marks to make it worth their time, and regulations + policies are ever evolving to keep up, but a lot of it comes down to a cost/benefit analysis by the business. The internet just scales this up by several orders of magnitude too.