It has nothing to do with Cash app. It could just as well be Zelle, or PayPal, or Venmo, or physical cash.

The link's whole thesis is that Cash App doesn't really care, which is why criminals prefer it. Being so radically frictionless for the underbanked also facilitates scams, including those that distinguish between theft and fraud.

I'm not familiar with this situation, but I'm assuming that whoever is doing this isn't there to "clean" your windshield, and that the entire "transaction" is imbued with the implicit threat of violence and intimidation. You're essentially being robbed through other means. If this isn't the case, then I'm happy to admit that I'm wrong, but that's how it reads to me.

not in the US - millions of people keep loaded guns in their vehicles

> During the Coronavirus pandemic, the number of concealed handgun permits has soared to over 21.52 million – a 48% increase since 2016.

Given that some states are "constitutional carry" (21 states) and do NOT require a permit if you legally own the gun, the actual number of people who HAVE a gun and can carry it would be higher than 21 million. They even do the math:

> To summarize, the total number of permits in the US is at least 21.52 million. Add in people who legally carry without a permit, and the number clearly becomes much larger. While 8.3% of the adult population has permits, the percentage of Americans who say that they carry most or all the time is about 5.4%.

5.4% of Americans is about 17 million people, the majority of which will carry when in their vehicle. (Note that legally and technically you are "conceal carrying" in many states if the gun is IN the vehicle, not locked, even if it is NOT on your person - so if you're married and YOU carry, you will want your spouse to get a CCW also even if he or she never carries, because if you're both in the car, the gun is in the center console, and you step out to get gas, your spouse is now concealing).

Someone tried to sell her a rock at a traffic light. When she wouldn't buy it, they used it to smash her rear driver's side window and grab whatever they could from inside the car.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own...

over two million background checks for firearms purchases are performed each month, and this number is rising, and the number of people who are being background checked for the first time is rapidly rising (fastest growing group - black women)

by 2030 there will likely be a half billion firearms in the US

there are more fully automatic rifles registered to individuals in Texas (40k) than are in possession of many NATO armies...for semi-auto pistols and rifles, Texas residents outgun most NATO armies by a substantial margin

these are stats that both gun advocacy and opposition groups will be happy to validate (each believe the numbers support their position)

anecdotally, it is very common here in Texas to read of traffic altercations in which both parties involved in road rage incidents were carrying in their vehicles...it is widespread

Also according to the Small Arms Survey, Texas has five times as many guns as the US military.

Though the US military ones are more likely to have select fire and fully automatic but those are only particularly useful in certain situations.

Not really. By the time a seat-belted person gets to their gun, whether in a holster, under the seat, in a purse, or in the glove box, the thief is long gone.

Real life is very different from the movies.

I remember a few years back there was some controversy about how police are trained to shoot first and one of the things that bubbled up then was a video (I think produced by someone teaching the police) of a seated driver drawing a gun and having it pointed out the window in a fraction of a second. The gun was in a holster down by the seat belt buckle. And the next instant it was pointing out the driver's window.

Joe Lunchbucket isn't likely to be so agile.

I want to live in a world where I can trust a random stranger, not suspect them of robbing me. Justifying some extra protections like a pin or a fingerprint check to finalize a transactions should not be this big of a deal.

They are all actually pretty intelligent individually, and they come up with some pretty clever things to get into. A bunch of them come from rough homes, and they are usually taking the cash home to support their family, even at 15. They are supposed to be in school, but they skip to go squeege because they don’t feel like the things in school are relating to their struggle. They have tried the regular 16 year old jobs, but that doesn’t pay enough to cover their struggling mom and siblings. Instead of losing out to low wages and income taxes, they find it much easier to pick up a squeege from a gas station, and start making some instant cash in tips.

These kids are super smart lol. Pressure breeds diamonds. They know how to hack the Lyme scooters and ride around and commit crimes. They know how to scam you out of your cashapp balance. And they really know how to download and build burner handgun kits from Defense Distributed :(

If somebody chooses you, you're not choosing at random.

Let's simplify. Say that 1 in a million people pull the stranger needing help scam, and will approach you given the opportunity. Everybody else will only approach you if they actually need help, which is rare, say 1 in a million.

So in that scenario 50% of the people approaching you are criminals, compared to 1 in a million who are actually criminals.

This is and always has been utterly delusional.

If you get aggressive, they will spit on your window, break your wipers off, and hit your car.

Things can get really ugly if you get out of your car and try to confront them: https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/criminal-justic...

A bunch of their transaction volume is scam money that is hard to reverse, and it’s not Blocks fault as you say.

It’s a negligent move for sure, but a crime is still a crime.

Having someone steal your money without your consent is still theft and they are still the perpetrator of the crime.

The victim-blaming mentality on the internet is wild. Being negligent or naive doesn’t shift 100% of the blame to the victim when a crime occurs.

Two things can be true at once: the perpetrator of a crime is the one responsible, AND the victim might have avoided victimhood had they acted more prudently.

Humans communicate in stories. The “cautionary tale” or example of folly that led to woe is a pattern as old as our species could talk.

It is NOT true that cautioning people not to act imprudently, and providing an example, is “victim blaming”. I don’t hear anyone saying that we should not pursue and prosecute the perpetrator.

So just can it with the hair trigger “victim blaming” accusation.

> caution others to behave wisely to help avoid being victimized in the same way

In this case though this is not a caution to others, it's literally a statement of victim shaming/blaming.

Nobody is claiming the criminals are blameless or that a crime is not a crime.

It's astoundingly dumb to hand a piece of electronics worth several hundred dollars to someone in such an interaction, even if they cannot use it to electronically steal your money.

The criminal is a criminal, and the person who hands their phone to someone under these circumstances is mind bogglingly naive. The former fact is tautological so it's natural to focus on the latter part, the one that boggles the mind. How could anybody possibly fall for this? Were they very young? Were they old? Were they distracted or drunk or lulled by the perpetrator? Were they out of towners? Were they intimidated? One wonders.

I think this might be an actual generational difference; I feel weird letting someone else use my phone or using someone else's phone now. I can remember a time when phones were much more communal - the family shared a phone, and public phones existed, and I wonder if older folks are a bit more locked into that way of thinking. Obviously a phone is much more than a phone now however.

On the other hand, my phone causes ringing on my phone, my IPad and my work laptop: for the love of G-d don’t just watch it or tell me it is ringing, answer the damn phone. U less it says likely scam of course.

A guy did exactly what you said, and they snapped his wipers off his truck. He parked highly upset, and stepped out with a bat to confront the kids. One of them pulled out a handgun and shot the dude down right in rush hour traffic.

She lost her job, and the city started enforcing a no squeege ban.

https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/brazil/nubank-wil...

Your mentality is typical of people from low-trust societies - "lol those naive Westerners" (lokhi[0] in Russian). But while individuals in high-trust societies can indeed be lokhi, everyone in a low-trust society is, collectively. They are giving up on the social development and institutions that only work well when trust in people you don't know is a societal value. They are defective at best, and nonexistent at worst, in a society where everyone treats each other with scepticism, disdain and distrust by default, until proven otherwise.

[0] https://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/lokh/index.html (sorry for RT)

Thing is, it's not the case. The world outside of a narrow circle of rich, white, Protestant countries has never been like this, and those countries too, are losing it because of changing racial composition, and immigration from low-trust cultures. And in a global world, high-trust groups are simply being taken advantage of.

Honestly the fact that some govt employee in india got so much right that all the sv startups could not is truly baffling.

Right now, muggers can't take $1000 out of my wallet because I don't have $1000 in my wallet. They cannot force me to use an ATM to empty my bank account because my ATM daily limits are set to $500/day.

But, in theory, they could empty it if I was on Cashapp.

Cashapp, like so many tech startups rushing to replace incumbent taxi and hotel and other services with phone apps, has missed Chesterton's fence on this state of affairs in its hurry to become the key part of "providing everyone with access to important financial services so they can fully participate in the economy."

When I moved to california my debit card got skimmed at a Lucky grocery store. Ever since then I've made sure that my debit card, venmo, paypal, and all my other money accounts are linked to a checking account that only has $500 in it. If I need to transfer someone more than that I'll transfer money into that account from my real checking account.

So, just avoid CashApp and Zelle.

And another euphemism.

This is the 12th reply to your post and first one to point this out. I think this report is trying to ride well-off people's lack of awareness of CashApp. Kinda what they're accusing Block of doing, which is funny.