4 ms·

- "“Conversations with their fraud team by phone and text over a period of several hours became progressively more Kafkaesque, including the bizarre suggestion

- "“Conversations with their fraud team by phone and text over a period of several hours became progressively more Kafkaesque, including the bizarre suggestion that Zoom conversations with my friend could have been generated by scammers using AI,” he says." For him to call that suggestion "bizarre" indicates how badly out-of-touch and vulnerable he is to standard 2020's fraud techniques. But banks should never be allowed to demand private communications; it's a gross indignity and a violation of the very fundamental right of private correspondence. The professor is not wrong to compare to that East German society. - "but still demanded to see my Austrian’s friend’s tax bill, and past examples of our correspondence."

croes 2y ago
Especially they shouldn't treat their customers like children. Warn him of the possible fraud, let him sign some form of agreement but then send the money.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  The point is that they have no idea who they are warning of fraud.
  - wruza 2y ago
    I don’t think that’s the point, unless their protocols allow to disclose information to and request proofs from a presumably omnipotent ai scammer.
- tsukikage 2y ago
  > Warn him of the possible fraud, let him sign some form of agreement Unfortunately, banks that used to take this approach have been stung by people who listened to the warning, signed the agreement, got defrauded, sued the bank /and won/.
  - croes 2y ago
    Blocking a customer to access his money is also a reason to sue and as a bigger negative effect on other customers. I think most people would be surprised you can win a case if you have been warned. But if you block my money that's a lot bigger issue.
- miohtama 2y ago
  The new UK law does not allow this, the new passed law is explicit that banks are forced to reimburse. Revolut customers are forced to take selfies "this is a scam" and they still send the money, and ask it back: https://x.com/moo9000/status/1790275729634029798 https://x.com/moo9000/status/1790275729634029798 As discussed in length in here (now downvoted): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41273554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41273554
viraptor 2y ago
> For him to call that suggestion "bizarre" indicates how badly out-of-touch and vulnerable he is to standard 2020's fraud techniques. I think we're missing a lot of context to say that here. It really depends on whether it was a quick one-off contact about just this issue, or their weekly one hour call. He may be well aware of the tech and know why it doesn't apply in this case.
pbhjpbhj 2y ago
I felt like the [mock?] indignation that it might be possible to clone a persons voice - at telephone compression levels - showed that the person did not have sufficient grasp of the situation to know if they were being scammed. The article says "Having had several telephone calls to establish it was actually her asking for help" and then later that it was "Zoom" sugguesting that it was Zoom audio-only calls. What would be the harm in having the Austrian government confirm the debt here, supposedly the friend, the customer, and the bank all know about it already. Or indeed what would be the harm in sharing the communications -- why would you not want to. Being set against it would suggest something like the messages saying "don't share these messages" which would be a massive fraud flag. We don't learn if the "Edinburgh academic" was ripped off or not. Aside, anyone have an insight into how do you suddenly get a "tax bill" from the Austrian government for 15k Euro?
- vidarh 2y ago
  > Aside, anyone have an insight into how do you suddenly get a "tax bill" from the Austrian government for 15k Euro? Extra income from contracts and failed to set aside enough? I've had big tax bills before, it's not that unusual, and I'd get the temptation of dipping into money set aside if subsequent income has been lower than expected. But tax authorities do tend to be flexible about repayment plans most places. Maybe that's not true for Austria. The bigger issue there for me, though, is that a scammer is not going to hesitate to fake a tax bill. Why the bank think that would prove anything suggests to me they haven't thought this through very well either.
  - henearkr 2y ago
    No, nowadays many official documents come with a URL (often in the form of a QR code) linking to a digital copy of the document stored on a governmental server.
    - vidarh 2y ago
      I have literally never seen this. I don't doubt it can happen, but for that to work it'd rely on the fraud team to 1) know exactly what a letter from the Austrian tax office should look like to notice if there isn't a URL if those letters do have one, 2) if the scammers were to include one, it'd require them to be certain enough about the URL that pointing it to a suitable fake one would be insufficient. I'm not convinced the fraud team wouldn't be easily fooled, in other words. Not that I'd want to try; but for someone already breaking the law there's little reason not to.
vidarh 2y ago
The thing is, if this involved voice cloning, seeing past examples of their correspondence would do very little. Past correspondence would rule out only the scenario where he is actively lying to the bank about this being an old friend... It seems like even if their concern might have some legitimate basis to it, they don't think through the scenarios very well.

croes 2y ago

Especially they shouldn't treat their customers like children. Warn him of the possible fraud, let him sign some form of agreement but then send the money.

llm_trw 2y ago
The point is that they have no idea who they are warning of fraud.
- wruza 2y ago
  I don’t think that’s the point, unless their protocols allow to disclose information to and request proofs from a presumably omnipotent ai scammer.
tsukikage 2y ago
> Warn him of the possible fraud, let him sign some form of agreement Unfortunately, banks that used to take this approach have been stung by people who listened to the warning, signed the agreement, got defrauded, sued the bank /and won/.
- croes 2y ago
  Blocking a customer to access his money is also a reason to sue and as a bigger negative effect on other customers. I think most people would be surprised you can win a case if you have been warned. But if you block my money that's a lot bigger issue.
miohtama 2y ago
The new UK law does not allow this, the new passed law is explicit that banks are forced to reimburse. Revolut customers are forced to take selfies "this is a scam" and they still send the money, and ask it back: https://x.com/moo9000/status/1790275729634029798 https://x.com/moo9000/status/1790275729634029798 As discussed in length in here (now downvoted): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41273554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41273554

viraptor 2y ago

> For him to call that suggestion "bizarre" indicates how badly out-of-touch and vulnerable he is to standard 2020's fraud techniques. I think we're missing a lot of context to say that here. It really depends on whether it was a quick one-off contact about just this issue, or their weekly one hour call. He may be well aware of the tech and know why it doesn't apply in this case.

pbhjpbhj 2y ago

I felt like the [mock?] indignation that it might be possible to clone a persons voice - at telephone compression levels - showed that the person did not have sufficient grasp of the situation to know if they were being scammed. The article says "Having had several telephone calls to establish it was actually her asking for help" and then later that it was "Zoom" sugguesting that it was Zoom audio-only calls. What would be the harm in having the Austrian government confirm the debt here, supposedly the friend, the customer, and the bank all know about it already. Or indeed what would be the harm in sharing the communications -- why would you not want to. Being set against it would suggest something like the messages saying "don't share these messages" which would be a massive fraud flag. We don't learn if the "Edinburgh academic" was ripped off or not. Aside, anyone have an insight into how do you suddenly get a "tax bill" from the Austrian government for 15k Euro?

vidarh 2y ago
> Aside, anyone have an insight into how do you suddenly get a "tax bill" from the Austrian government for 15k Euro? Extra income from contracts and failed to set aside enough? I've had big tax bills before, it's not that unusual, and I'd get the temptation of dipping into money set aside if subsequent income has been lower than expected. But tax authorities do tend to be flexible about repayment plans most places. Maybe that's not true for Austria. The bigger issue there for me, though, is that a scammer is not going to hesitate to fake a tax bill. Why the bank think that would prove anything suggests to me they haven't thought this through very well either.
- henearkr 2y ago
  No, nowadays many official documents come with a URL (often in the form of a QR code) linking to a digital copy of the document stored on a governmental server.
  - vidarh 2y ago
    I have literally never seen this. I don't doubt it can happen, but for that to work it'd rely on the fraud team to 1) know exactly what a letter from the Austrian tax office should look like to notice if there isn't a URL if those letters do have one, 2) if the scammers were to include one, it'd require them to be certain enough about the URL that pointing it to a suitable fake one would be insufficient. I'm not convinced the fraud team wouldn't be easily fooled, in other words. Not that I'd want to try; but for someone already breaking the law there's little reason not to.

vidarh 2y ago

The thing is, if this involved voice cloning, seeing past examples of their correspondence would do very little. Past correspondence would rule out only the scenario where he is actively lying to the bank about this being an old friend... It seems like even if their concern might have some legitimate basis to it, they don't think through the scenarios very well.