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

Scammers, like hackers are always looking for vulnerabilities and clever ways to bypass rules that would prevent them from stealing. To give an example, a few years ago several high-profile Twitter accounts simultaneously asked for their followers to send them Bitcoin, for which they will receive double the Bitcoin in return. (Use your brains, people!)

HOW did they compromise a dozen Twitter accounts with millions of followers and post the scam tweets?

Twitter employees have “super user” access, and they can open up a user’s profile and read messages, delete messages, and do all sorts of actions despite it not being their account. When a twitter employee would leave the company, they may still have access (or hackers would compromise their employee account) and they then “rent” these admin powers out to thieves for several thousands of dollars per hour.

Success at crime is a moving target and criminals are always innovating new and clever ways to compromise accounts, transfer money, and turn it into an asset that’s not traceable. So to an outsider like you and I, the methods are not going to be clear, or may not be understood by anyone except the thieves themselves.