Why can’t a Hacker add Digits to my Bank Account?

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As most of money in the world is digital anyways, Why can’t people fake transactions to a Bank account or just add one or two zeros to the balance? What makes online banking so safe that this doesnt work?

Most of even well guarded things have been hacked in the past, so i would imagine it’s at least possible?

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38 Answers

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Anything to do with money digitally has a transaction record e.g. “your account recevied $1 mil from Scientology Thetan Refund Society” (+ some other info like date/time etc). All the bank has to do is just look at the transaction records for your account.

If you somehow manage to edit your balance to add extra digits, the bank will easily find out because there was no transaction. 1AM you had $10, suddenly the next minute 1:01AM you have $100, and no transaction indicating where the money came from? They’d be like lol look at this noob.

Faking a transaction is a lot harder than you think. You’re not just trying to screw with the bank, you also have to screw with the sender. Because the bank sure as heck is gonna call that Scientology Thetan Refund Society “hey you guys really sent this dude $1 mi??” Basically you’re gonna have to hack the other side of the transaction as well. And that’s why you won’t be able to do it: even if the source of the transaction actually existed, their records would have to show money going out to your bank. There’d be a whole bunch of things that need to match e.g. date/time of transaction, and all sorts of system information stuff. You’re not holding a knife to some dude’s neck “tell them you sent the money or I’ll fucking cut you”.

Also, that’s just the transaction you SEE. There’s shit going on in the background as well. For example maybe there’s a fee for when certain types of transactions are made, that companies handle with the bank for you. Even if you somehow faked the transfer, you don’t know about the fees that were incurred and handled in the background. The bank would be like “huh, where is the X fee for transaction 123?” Or it could be something like a simple counter for some other purpose e.g. the state keeps track of transfers over a certain amount that cross state borders and the bank needs to report them. Those things are missing, they’ll eyeball the transaction closer and find out it was fake.

There’s a reason all the money scams you see out there are all about tricking people to send them money… they don’t fucking hack the bank, because they can’t. They need legitimate transactions, and the only way to get those is to persuade i.e. scam people to make them. They can’t just take a photo of your credit card and then fake transactions to drain money out of it; they literally have to convince you to spend money on shit like gift cards to send to them. The transactions are legitimate; the *purposes* aren’t. You think you’re paying a customs fee to get your jackpot money released, but the scammers aren’t sending you any jackpot money, they’re taking that “customs fee” from you.

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