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I've also had plenty of false positives, but my bank (Bank Of America) has caught multiple actual fraudulent charges. It's easy to hate on big banks and big da

I've also had plenty of false positives, but my bank (Bank Of America) has caught multiple actual fraudulent charges. It's easy to hate on big banks and big data and the loss of privacy, but it's pretty cool when your bank calls you up and says "We don't think that was you buying skateboards and polo shirts in Eastern Europe."

comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
I have had this happen a couple time. I got a call one Saturday morning asking about 3 recent charges, including a Men's Warehouse in Waikiki. My response: "You are calling me at my California home number. I WISH I were in Waikiki right now. How about you reverse everything today and send me a new card in the mail?"
- MartinCron 13y ago
  That reminded me of one false positive that may be of interest to the HN community: I was buying a custom-made suit at Indochino's "traveling tailor" event. It was at a pop-up storefront in Seattle (where I live) but my bank thought their mobile point-of-sale card processing system was in Vancouver, BC and declined the transaction until I explained to them what happened. And the suit? It's wonderful.
shavenwarthog2 13y ago
I'm happy to hate on Bank of America, but they've caught multiple fraudulent charges for me too. Good for them!
ubernostrum 13y ago
I live in a sort of love/hate relationship with BoA's fraud-detection system. On the one hand, I had a number genuinely stolen a while back in the PSN hack, and a case where someone tried to use my debit card in a hotel in Tennessee. In both cases, I got a phone call almost immediately, was out zero dollars and had a new debit card number within 24 hours. On the other hand, I travel a lot. Emphasis on a lot. And I have begun simply planning trips around the expectation that at least one of my BoA cards will be frozen every time I do so, because their systems don't seem to actually work off usage patterns. Instead, use of the card beyond a certain mileage radius from home address triggers a fraud alert. So even though quite a bit of my travel is to a small number of cities, I still have to deal with occasional random fraud alerts freezing my cards (example: I've been to Washington, DC around six times in the past year. Despite that -- and despite making the booking in advance, including the card number -- I still had one of my cards frozen when trying to check into a hotel there a while back). Their customer service people have confirmed that it's just mileage radius, and anecdotally it seems that the radius is around 600 miles (I am based near Kansas City, and can safely use BoA cards in Denver and Chicago, but has a problem once in Austin, IIRC). Which probably makes sense for most people, but I am more than 600 miles from home at least a couple times every month. And there seems to be nothing for it aside from calling their fraud-prevention department every time I'm about to go somewhere, which is equally impractical.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  For what it's worth, I found out that you can inform BofA about your travel plans via online banking. A lot faster than calling the fraud prevention line.

comrade_ogilvy 13y ago

I have had this happen a couple time. I got a call one Saturday morning asking about 3 recent charges, including a Men's Warehouse in Waikiki. My response: "You are calling me at my California home number. I WISH I were in Waikiki right now. How about you reverse everything today and send me a new card in the mail?"

MartinCron 13y ago
That reminded me of one false positive that may be of interest to the HN community: I was buying a custom-made suit at Indochino's "traveling tailor" event. It was at a pop-up storefront in Seattle (where I live) but my bank thought their mobile point-of-sale card processing system was in Vancouver, BC and declined the transaction until I explained to them what happened. And the suit? It's wonderful.

shavenwarthog2 13y ago

I'm happy to hate on Bank of America, but they've caught multiple fraudulent charges for me too. Good for them!

ubernostrum 13y ago

I live in a sort of love/hate relationship with BoA's fraud-detection system. On the one hand, I had a number genuinely stolen a while back in the PSN hack, and a case where someone tried to use my debit card in a hotel in Tennessee. In both cases, I got a phone call almost immediately, was out zero dollars and had a new debit card number within 24 hours. On the other hand, I travel a lot. Emphasis on a lot. And I have begun simply planning trips around the expectation that at least one of my BoA cards will be frozen every time I do so, because their systems don't seem to actually work off usage patterns. Instead, use of the card beyond a certain mileage radius from home address triggers a fraud alert. So even though quite a bit of my travel is to a small number of cities, I still have to deal with occasional random fraud alerts freezing my cards (example: I've been to Washington, DC around six times in the past year. Despite that -- and despite making the booking in advance, including the card number -- I still had one of my cards frozen when trying to check into a hotel there a while back). Their customer service people have confirmed that it's just mileage radius, and anecdotally it seems that the radius is around 600 miles (I am based near Kansas City, and can safely use BoA cards in Denver and Chicago, but has a problem once in Austin, IIRC). Which probably makes sense for most people, but I am more than 600 miles from home at least a couple times every month. And there seems to be nothing for it aside from calling their fraud-prevention department every time I'm about to go somewhere, which is equally impractical.

MartinCron 13y ago
For what it's worth, I found out that you can inform BofA about your travel plans via online banking. A lot faster than calling the fraud prevention line.