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I am pretty sure I was bitten by this bug, or a similar bug, on an IRA transfer form that I uploaded to a bank. On the scan that I uploaded, one digit in the ac

I am pretty sure I was bitten by this bug, or a similar bug, on an IRA transfer form that I uploaded to a bank. On the scan that I uploaded, one digit in the account number was a clean "5", but the customer service person said it looked like a good clean "6". I presume their document management system was an outcropping of a system originally set up for dealing with faxes, and used that or a similar compression algorithm.

21asdffdsa12 3mo ago
Thus - one could assume that all transfers stored by the bank- before the update would not hold up in court.
- lotsofpulp 3mo ago
  One should assume the outcome of one's case in court is at least partially, if not heavily, influenced by one's political (influential-ness) standing.
  - inquirerGeneral 3mo ago
    [dead]
- mindslight 3mo ago
  I don't know what you mean by "hold up in court". This seems to be an instance of software engineers making sweeping prognostications about legal matters. "Hold up in court" as in was it duly executed and filed by a certain date, regardless of the time and extra management required for the bank's performance? Yes, why not. "Hold up in court" against someone claiming it was an unauthorized transfer? Even without the bug, that can be contested in many straightforward ways! But unless there is a specific legal claim that hinges on the bug being significant, it's pretty irrelevant "in court". I knew about this precisely because the transfer failed to go through due to redundancy - one digit in account numbers is generally a check digit, plus account titles and whatnot. In general you can always challenge the validity of scanned documents, regardless of known software bugs or not! Just like you can always challenge that a paper document is a forgery. You need a specific argument and some evidence though!
  - 21asdffdsa12 3mo ago
    The specific argument could be that the sum entered was falsified by the process digitalizing. And any checksum that would have caught that- would be computed after scanning.
    - mindslight 3mo ago
      FWIW the form I'm referring to didn't have an amount, rather a box checked "transfer entire account". But sure, IFF you had an instance where an amount transferred was wrong and their various settlement/accounting tallies didn't catch it, and the bank refused to look into and fix it on their own, and you had a reason to believe they used a paper form for that, then yes you would have a good argument that could be used in court!

21asdffdsa12 3mo ago

Thus - one could assume that all transfers stored by the bank- before the update would not hold up in court.

lotsofpulp 3mo ago
One should assume the outcome of one's case in court is at least partially, if not heavily, influenced by one's political (influential-ness) standing.
- inquirerGeneral 3mo ago
  [dead]
mindslight 3mo ago
I don't know what you mean by "hold up in court". This seems to be an instance of software engineers making sweeping prognostications about legal matters. "Hold up in court" as in was it duly executed and filed by a certain date, regardless of the time and extra management required for the bank's performance? Yes, why not. "Hold up in court" against someone claiming it was an unauthorized transfer? Even without the bug, that can be contested in many straightforward ways! But unless there is a specific legal claim that hinges on the bug being significant, it's pretty irrelevant "in court". I knew about this precisely because the transfer failed to go through due to redundancy - one digit in account numbers is generally a check digit, plus account titles and whatnot. In general you can always challenge the validity of scanned documents, regardless of known software bugs or not! Just like you can always challenge that a paper document is a forgery. You need a specific argument and some evidence though!
- 21asdffdsa12 3mo ago
  The specific argument could be that the sum entered was falsified by the process digitalizing. And any checksum that would have caught that- would be computed after scanning.
  - mindslight 3mo ago
    FWIW the form I'm referring to didn't have an amount, rather a box checked "transfer entire account". But sure, IFF you had an instance where an amount transferred was wrong and their various settlement/accounting tallies didn't catch it, and the bank refused to look into and fix it on their own, and you had a reason to believe they used a paper form for that, then yes you would have a good argument that could be used in court!