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True Link (YC S13) To Help The Elderly Avoid Scammers With Pre-Paid Visa Cards

73 points by clicks 13y ago

aidscholar 13y ago
Bit confused with the difference between this versus something like an Amex pre-paid card. Why would someone use True Link over one of the existing pre-paid card options? A web interface?
- outericky 13y ago
  They aren't just stopping identity theft but allowing care givers to control spending habits. Or being taken advantage of by (legitimate) organizations taking advantage of the elderly.
- eksith 13y ago
  It mentions fairly extensive fraud protection, which other pre-paid solutions don't offer. I've used a few pre-paid cards while travelling and companies pretty much treat them as cash. If you lose it or get scammed, you've just plain lost it. From what I can see, this acts as a bit of a buffer between scammers and your "real" account. "All this goes through a pre-paid True Link Visa card, filled through the person’s checking account, which is free for the first year and costs $20 annually after that. True Link acts as the preauthorizer, giving it the power to see incoming charges and approve or deny them accordingly." What does really interest me is this part... "True Link is currently working on building its list of fraudulent and potentially fraudulent organizations..." There are blacklist organizations for merchants like Bad Customers et al. which I'm very skeptical about since they charge you to be taken out of that list. Of course they don't claim to be "blacklists" since that's too negative, but they essentially are since any company using their services can deny your purchase. I hope these guys have a better vetting and arbitration process or this will end up being another Bad Customers except as a blacklist of merchants.
  - kaistinchcombe 13y ago
    Yeah, I've heard rumors that lot of those blacklists are shakedown operations. We're following our customers' lead on which transactions are unwanted -- if we're getting phone calls where people are saying (e.g.) that they signed up for a free sample and got billed 40 dollars of shipping and handling... well, I don't much care about what the company says, the point is, our customer feels deceived and our customer is who we work for.
- clairethere 13y ago
  Since it's designed for the specific needs of vulnerable seniors, The True Link card has features that are currently not available on other prepaid cards, namely the ability to preset spending limits for individual purchases, to proactively block purchases at individual merchants and categories of merchants (e.g., sweepstakes, unscrupulous charities, gambling institutions),and to send instant alerts about any suspicious transaction to family members. And yes it's all managed through an easy-to-use web interface.
- zt 13y ago
  (Disclosure: I'm an investor in True Link). A key difference is that the True Link card has built in protections against specific cases of elder fraud, not just the general cases of fraud that something like Amex targets. Just to give a concrete example: there are bunch of charities that sound like legitimate ones but aren't. An example is the Cancer Fund of America, which spends less than 1% of their income on charitable activities (see [1][2]). These charities specifically target the elderly, sometimes calling them over and over again to take advantage of cognitive decline (cf. [2][3]). [1] http://www.tampabay.com/americas-worst-charities/ http://www.tampabay.com/americas-worst-charities/ [2] http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/us/worst-charities http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/us/worst-charities [3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-victimizes-one-in-five-u-s-elderly-nonprofit-survey-says.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-vic... [4] http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-07-16/opinions/36887605_1_financial-abuse-elder-abuse-senior-population http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-07-16/opinions/36887...
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    As someone who is signing up his mother today for this, #shutupandtakemymoney. $20/year? Well. Worth. It. Don't even give me the first year free. I'll give you guys the $20 today.
    - kaistinchcombe 13y ago
      Haha, thanks for that. Well taken. The goal is to make sure we've provided the value we promised before we bill you for it.
edw519 13y ago
In Stinchcombe’s words, True Link’s mission is quite simple: "Fuck these scammers." Amazing how fast you can neutralize all that noble work with just 3 words. (FriendAndCoworkerLanguage != BusinessAttractionLanguage)
- clicks 13y ago
  Meh, I'll let it pass. Two of my elderly neighbors were really badly fucked by these scammers. Actually, I know a lot of old people who were run dry by these scammers. Think for a moment how disgusting this is -- robbing and manipulating people who are at an age where their wits are leaving them... robbing them of money to live their last years on earth peacefully. I say fuck these scammers all the way, they know exactly what they're doing. To say that those 3 words are 'neutralizing' the work they're doing is a rather ignorant thing to do.
  - edw519 13y ago
    1. I've been an caregiver for 20 years and love this idea. But there's no way I would engage any business that uses the f-word in their promotions. And believe me, I'm not the only one who feels this way, especially in this demographic. 2. My feedback, like much that I've give here in the past 6 years, was sincere. I hate to see a promising business shooting itself in the foot like this. 3. There's not much more "ignorant" that calling constructive feedback from a potential customer "ignorant". 4. If you're going to insult others here, the least you can do is identify yourself in your profile. Comments from anonymous posters like yours send contributors like me away and drive this site further into the toilet. 5. Don't say "Meh".
    - clicks 13y ago
      To the best of my knowledge, the "Fuck these scammers" statement does not appear officially anywhere on their website -- it was something that was said casually in an interview. Let me ask you this: do you use Facebook? Because Zuckerburg doesn't just call "bad people" (scammers, thiefs) names, he calls the users of his own site "dumb fucks". [1] There are greater injustices happening elsewhere in the world right now, save your indignation and outrage for them. [1]: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
rabidonrails 13y ago
...it’s hard to put an exact number on the scope of scams out there. But he estimates that there are 10 million people in the U.S. above a certain age who are living alone and susceptible to fraud. I'm not sure what the point of the latter sentence is - I had to read it twice to make sure that I wasn't missing something...am I?
- sarahkpeck 13y ago
  In answer to this question; the phrasing could be more specific. I believe he's referencing the number of seniors who are targets for scams like these and would benefit from a card like this. In this case, the question is: how many seniors are there in America, who are living alone, with some cognitive decline, and highly susceptible to fraud and scams? See this Bloomberg piece -- 2010 estimates that financial abuse victimizes 1 in 5 elderly; about 7.3 million senior citizens have reported being taken advantage of. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-victimizes-one-in-five-u-s-elderly-nonprofit-survey-says.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-vic... The scary part is that it's likely much, much higher (the number of people being taken advantage of) -- because so much of it goes undetected, or worse, unreported.
ludicast 13y ago
Really like this idea. My grandmother has had alzheimers for about a decade. There was a time at the beginning when this would have helped her spirits.
- rhizome 13y ago
  Prepaid cards have existed for quite a long time.
OoTheNigerian 13y ago
Brilliant stuff. THIS is something we need in my dear country Nigeria. Internet commerce has refused to take off because of the fear (sadly not misplaced). I am thinking if this service is not better positioned towards the Banks than the individuals themselves. There would be default permitted websites and locations from where transactions are permitted. If a new website wants to be "registered" they apply to the bank to be put on a whitelist. Presently, it is a blanket over securing that is taking place that makes it almost impossible to perform online transactions with Nigerian companies. Great job.
soneca 13y ago
Wow! Great idea, great mission. Someone smart and well advised solving serious problems for real people who need help, that makes me happy. My 2 cents: as you want to preserv their sense of autonomy, please use a card design that looks like an usual credit card. The "Visa" is already there, so just use some of these typical shiny, fancy, "3d" background designs of the credit cards we all get used to. If your card is like the one at the picture on the landing page, it looks like a "toy card", something you give to children to pretend they have credit cards. Your customers will notice it and feel their son just substituted their real credit cards for make-believe ones.
philip1209 13y ago
How does this differ from Amex PASS?
smoothierev 13y ago
This is a great idea.
rdl 13y ago
This is awesome. I wonder if they will publish stats and ideally stories about "saves" they make. I guess they would need wide adoption to cause "herd immunity" for non user elderly though.
sjg007 13y ago
I think the hard part is identifying/normalizing the merchant based on the 20 character billing name + phone. Each McDonalds and Starbucks have wildly different text. Large purchases are immediately flagged for sure, purchases outside the local area. There is a lot of low hanging fruit. Crowd sourcing helps too. Interesting idea.

73 points by clicks 13y ago

Bit confused with the difference between this versus something like an Amex pre-paid card. Why would someone use True Link over one of the existing pre-paid card options? A web interface?

outericky 13y ago
They aren't just stopping identity theft but allowing care givers to control spending habits. Or being taken advantage of by (legitimate) organizations taking advantage of the elderly.
eksith 13y ago
It mentions fairly extensive fraud protection, which other pre-paid solutions don't offer. I've used a few pre-paid cards while travelling and companies pretty much treat them as cash. If you lose it or get scammed, you've just plain lost it. From what I can see, this acts as a bit of a buffer between scammers and your "real" account. "All this goes through a pre-paid True Link Visa card, filled through the person’s checking account, which is free for the first year and costs $20 annually after that. True Link acts as the preauthorizer, giving it the power to see incoming charges and approve or deny them accordingly." What does really interest me is this part... "True Link is currently working on building its list of fraudulent and potentially fraudulent organizations..." There are blacklist organizations for merchants like Bad Customers et al. which I'm very skeptical about since they charge you to be taken out of that list. Of course they don't claim to be "blacklists" since that's too negative, but they essentially are since any company using their services can deny your purchase. I hope these guys have a better vetting and arbitration process or this will end up being another Bad Customers except as a blacklist of merchants.
- kaistinchcombe 13y ago
  Yeah, I've heard rumors that lot of those blacklists are shakedown operations. We're following our customers' lead on which transactions are unwanted -- if we're getting phone calls where people are saying (e.g.) that they signed up for a free sample and got billed 40 dollars of shipping and handling... well, I don't much care about what the company says, the point is, our customer feels deceived and our customer is who we work for.
clairethere 13y ago
Since it's designed for the specific needs of vulnerable seniors, The True Link card has features that are currently not available on other prepaid cards, namely the ability to preset spending limits for individual purchases, to proactively block purchases at individual merchants and categories of merchants (e.g., sweepstakes, unscrupulous charities, gambling institutions),and to send instant alerts about any suspicious transaction to family members. And yes it's all managed through an easy-to-use web interface.
zt 13y ago
(Disclosure: I'm an investor in True Link). A key difference is that the True Link card has built in protections against specific cases of elder fraud, not just the general cases of fraud that something like Amex targets. Just to give a concrete example: there are bunch of charities that sound like legitimate ones but aren't. An example is the Cancer Fund of America, which spends less than 1% of their income on charitable activities (see [1][2]). These charities specifically target the elderly, sometimes calling them over and over again to take advantage of cognitive decline (cf. [2][3]). [1] http://www.tampabay.com/americas-worst-charities/ http://www.tampabay.com/americas-worst-charities/ [2] http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/us/worst-charities http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/us/worst-charities [3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-victimizes-one-in-five-u-s-elderly-nonprofit-survey-says.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-vic... [4] http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-07-16/opinions/36887605_1_financial-abuse-elder-abuse-senior-population http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-07-16/opinions/36887...
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  As someone who is signing up his mother today for this, #shutupandtakemymoney. $20/year? Well. Worth. It. Don't even give me the first year free. I'll give you guys the $20 today.
  - kaistinchcombe 13y ago
    Haha, thanks for that. Well taken. The goal is to make sure we've provided the value we promised before we bill you for it.

edw519 13y ago

In Stinchcombe’s words, True Link’s mission is quite simple: "Fuck these scammers." Amazing how fast you can neutralize all that noble work with just 3 words. (FriendAndCoworkerLanguage != BusinessAttractionLanguage)

clicks 13y ago
Meh, I'll let it pass. Two of my elderly neighbors were really badly fucked by these scammers. Actually, I know a lot of old people who were run dry by these scammers. Think for a moment how disgusting this is -- robbing and manipulating people who are at an age where their wits are leaving them... robbing them of money to live their last years on earth peacefully. I say fuck these scammers all the way, they know exactly what they're doing. To say that those 3 words are 'neutralizing' the work they're doing is a rather ignorant thing to do.
- edw519 13y ago
  1. I've been an caregiver for 20 years and love this idea. But there's no way I would engage any business that uses the f-word in their promotions. And believe me, I'm not the only one who feels this way, especially in this demographic. 2. My feedback, like much that I've give here in the past 6 years, was sincere. I hate to see a promising business shooting itself in the foot like this. 3. There's not much more "ignorant" that calling constructive feedback from a potential customer "ignorant". 4. If you're going to insult others here, the least you can do is identify yourself in your profile. Comments from anonymous posters like yours send contributors like me away and drive this site further into the toilet. 5. Don't say "Meh".
  - clicks 13y ago
    To the best of my knowledge, the "Fuck these scammers" statement does not appear officially anywhere on their website -- it was something that was said casually in an interview. Let me ask you this: do you use Facebook? Because Zuckerburg doesn't just call "bad people" (scammers, thiefs) names, he calls the users of his own site "dumb fucks". [1] There are greater injustices happening elsewhere in the world right now, save your indignation and outrage for them. [1]: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg

rabidonrails 13y ago

...it’s hard to put an exact number on the scope of scams out there. But he estimates that there are 10 million people in the U.S. above a certain age who are living alone and susceptible to fraud. I'm not sure what the point of the latter sentence is - I had to read it twice to make sure that I wasn't missing something...am I?

sarahkpeck 13y ago
In answer to this question; the phrasing could be more specific. I believe he's referencing the number of seniors who are targets for scams like these and would benefit from a card like this. In this case, the question is: how many seniors are there in America, who are living alone, with some cognitive decline, and highly susceptible to fraud and scams? See this Bloomberg piece -- 2010 estimates that financial abuse victimizes 1 in 5 elderly; about 7.3 million senior citizens have reported being taken advantage of. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-victimizes-one-in-five-u-s-elderly-nonprofit-survey-says.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-vic... The scary part is that it's likely much, much higher (the number of people being taken advantage of) -- because so much of it goes undetected, or worse, unreported.

ludicast 13y ago

Really like this idea. My grandmother has had alzheimers for about a decade. There was a time at the beginning when this would have helped her spirits.

rhizome 13y ago
Prepaid cards have existed for quite a long time.

OoTheNigerian 13y ago

Brilliant stuff. THIS is something we need in my dear country Nigeria. Internet commerce has refused to take off because of the fear (sadly not misplaced). I am thinking if this service is not better positioned towards the Banks than the individuals themselves. There would be default permitted websites and locations from where transactions are permitted. If a new website wants to be "registered" they apply to the bank to be put on a whitelist. Presently, it is a blanket over securing that is taking place that makes it almost impossible to perform online transactions with Nigerian companies. Great job.

soneca 13y ago

Wow! Great idea, great mission. Someone smart and well advised solving serious problems for real people who need help, that makes me happy. My 2 cents: as you want to preserv their sense of autonomy, please use a card design that looks like an usual credit card. The "Visa" is already there, so just use some of these typical shiny, fancy, "3d" background designs of the credit cards we all get used to. If your card is like the one at the picture on the landing page, it looks like a "toy card", something you give to children to pretend they have credit cards. Your customers will notice it and feel their son just substituted their real credit cards for make-believe ones.

philip1209 13y ago

How does this differ from Amex PASS?

smoothierev 13y ago

This is a great idea.

rdl 13y ago

This is awesome. I wonder if they will publish stats and ideally stories about "saves" they make. I guess they would need wide adoption to cause "herd immunity" for non user elderly though.

sjg007 13y ago

I think the hard part is identifying/normalizing the merchant based on the 20 character billing name + phone. Each McDonalds and Starbucks have wildly different text. Large purchases are immediately flagged for sure, purchases outside the local area. There is a lot of low hanging fruit. Crowd sourcing helps too. Interesting idea.