[Cryptography] The Best 419 Message I've Seen

[arxlight]

This sort of thing has always made me wonder why more institutions
don't separate account functions.  The 419 scam has been around for
decades and yet basically nothing has been done to limit the damage
that occurs when you give someone your ABA routing number and account
number.  An account number for incoming funds only (drop box?) would
solve a number of these problems.

Unfortunately, the brain dead payment geniuses in (for instance) the
United States manage to design a payment system that permits third
parties to order drafts (e-checks) against arbitrary account numbers
in order to (for instance) enable e-payments to be pulled from
checking accounts at the prompting of the payee.

These sorts of things are SUPPOSED to be authorized via a blanket
"e-payment" authorization bearing the clients signature to start the
relationship off, but I can't remember the last time a big bank in the
United States checked my signature against the signature they
purportedly have "on file."

Quite obviously, the authentication work then becomes a spam filter
like problem the banks have imposed on themselves to catch the unusual
transactions.  Shocking, I know, but they do this relatively poorly.
It is a hard problem on the one hand.  On the other, they magnify
their own costs by causing expensive customer interaction, actually,
all customer interaction is expensive, for every false positive and
for every correct positive for that matter.

I remember having a lot of hope that payment systems could be reformed
into something rational (Jon will maybe remember this highly naive
period in my development), but in reality you have to move to a
country where the system is already a bit more rational because those
institutions and platforms have the inertia of a few solar masses.

On 27/4/14 10:07 PM, Jon Callas wrote:
> I would love to send this along, but it would get eaten by spam
> filters. I just got a 419 spam alleging to be from the FBI. You
> see, in their worldwide surveillance, they discovered where I
> overpaid some bill, and if I just fill out these details, they'll
> return my money.
> 
> I laughed so hard. It's really brightened up my day.
> 
> Jon
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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