When people get scammed and money is transferred out of their bank, why isn’t there a trail to easily find the scammer? If the money is transferred into some foreign country that won’t allow tracing, why dont you get a notification of sus activity before the transaction goes trough?

Question

i find it amazing that the scammers have such and easy and forgiving path to potentially taking all of your life savings if on the card with all of your credit card info, or even without the cvv number. and it can not be traced and they wont face any penalty for stealing or trying to steal. and why cant you set up your card that it requires a app approval or a pin for all online purchases that would literally make the card info by itself useless? any app protection you use in online store to confirm on your phone is by already trusted stores making sure scammers dont use stolen info there so basically only the businesses are protecting themselves

and if you say the scammers take the cash out somewhere, how can this be done without having a physical card put in the machine with pin or showed at the bank counter with connected id? why does it feel like its all set up for scammers to scam and get away with it and you have to think of loopholes to protect yourself but that even wont work if the employee at the bank leaks your cc info even to never used card anywhere.

ideas?

In: Economics

Answer 1

Have you ever tried to wire someone money via Western Union, Moneygram, or through your bank?

They give you a huge form to fill out and then absolutely interrogate you! “Have you ever seen this person in real life? Are you absolutely sure you want to send money to them? Do you know for certain that this is not a scam?” etc. etc. It’s a 5 or 10 minute interview just to send money. They really don’t want to allow you to do it.

Even when you’re just trying to help out an old friend whose car broke down a few states away, you have to go through the whole interrogation that makes it feel like you’re the one doing something suspicious.

And as for credit and debit cards, they have weirdly prescient fraud detection, which is generally very good when someone in Dubai tries to buy something with your credit card, or you get mystery charges of $1, $100, $200, $500 in quick succession, or whatever.

Sometimes it’s annoying when you fly back home for a funeral and your card doesn’t work, or you buy something online at the same time your wife is checking out at the grocery store with the same card number so they flag that.

So there’s tons of protection in place. The rest is kind of up to you. If you’re posting pictures of your credit card on social media or something, meh, that’s on you. If you’re sending money or gift cards to random strangers despite all the warnings, that’s on you.

It’s just very hard to prevent people from getting scammed when they’re actively trying to get scammed, and say yes to everything despite the warnings.