Re:Banks, Arbitrary Password Restrictions and Why They Don't...
by TeMPOraL on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @01:24PM
(#21007682)
The simplest heuristic I can think of is that if you made another purchase yourself not long before or after the fraudsters did, it's easy to tell that you'd have to go supersonic for both transactions to be valid.
Re:Banks, Arbitrary Password Restrictions and Why They Don't...
by paranoidrobot on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @06:10PM
(#21010840)
Reminds me of a video on the VINWiki youtube channel[1].
The tl;dr: Apparently Amex have some algorithm that includes flights and road travel options. Doing a Canonball Run (very high speed driving from one side of the US to another) triggers that.
[1] Relevant portion starts at roughly https://youtu.be/HkZNddd9Pxc?t=354
Re:Banks, Arbitrary Password Restrictions and Why They Don't...
by seanmcdirmid on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @12:47PM
(#21007208)
My bank has SMS alerts, I can ok a suspicious transaction just by saying Y. I also chose HSBC because they have branches in China, otherwise they are not a great bank.
Re:Banks, Arbitrary Password Restrictions and Why They Don't...
by jedberg on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @03:13PM
(#21008880)
They most likely saw a bunch of charges from the same place at the same time and yours was one of them. They were probably card running and got caught.
Re:Banks, Arbitrary Password Restrictions and Why They Don't...
by dpark on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @03:28PM
(#21009048)
Or the purchase was made online. I had that happen to me. I was in Detroit. A couple of weeks later an online purchase was made (from Detroit) and flagged.
Re:Banks, Arbitrary Password Restrictions and Why They Don't...
by thaumasiotes on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @04:37PM
(#21009881)
Probably not; if I'm remembering right, the fraudulent purchase was at a gas station.
The first time I went to China, I tried to pay for something with a debit card and my account got locked. I had to call the bank to OK it.
Subsequently, being in China has never been a problem, though I don't bother to tell the bank where I am at any given time.
On the other hand, after a trip to Georgia (the US state), my card information was apparently skimmed and used to make a fraudulent purchase, in Georgia, a week later. My legitimate purchases on the trip triggered no alarms, but the fraudulent one triggered a phone call to me alerting me that the bank had detected suspicious behavior on my account. I'm still amazed they could tell the difference.