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Comment by MichaelGG | Hacker News Reader

They won't go after an attacker if there's not a high amount of damage, like $250K or more. FBI guys are swamped with people calling, and there's just not enough agent time to go around. Same for bank fraud. Ever wonder how people get away with popping someone's bank account, transferring to another local account, and walking off with the cash? For a couple grand, no one's gonna spend the time and effort to track you down.

Liability for data breaches limited to companies over X size would be a good idea though.

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Maybe we should increase the number of agents investigating this stuff, then? Fraud affects many more people than terrorism, but nobody gives the "there's just not enough agents" excuse for that.

Also, only investigating fraud when there's lots of money involved means we're only helping rich people, who need the least help. Losing less money doesn't mean less impact on someone's life if that's all they have.

Because people are more terrified about a random bomb hitting a random place once in a while more than their accounts getting hacked and then finding themselves in a big trouble?

It takes a lot of work by the military-media-industrial complex to keep people that terrified about such a stupid ginned-up threat.

And yet then you see things like this [1], where the 4 year old case of a very minor eBay scammer is personally prosecuted by a state Attorney General. I guess it depends on who has time to kill. These two guys are looking at decades in prison for a scam that looks to have netted about $3K.

[1] http://ag.nv.gov/News/PR/2017/Attorney_General_Laxalt_Announ...

Why do you think he personally prosecuted it? His name's on the complaint, but it's on all the complaints referenced in their press releases. The press release says the case "was investigated and is being prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Fraud Unit".

Which is interesting because it should be the other way around. If you have $250k stolen, it is bad but you are probably wealthy enough you won't go in deep trouble stress.

If your whole account is $2k it might be a different world for you and you might relying on these to pay rent, medical expenses which is more serious than an investor not having access to his $250k.

Not meaning it is fine to steal $250k from wealthy people but that poor ones being affected (at $2k) is more urgent from a humanitarian perspective.

>> If you have $250k stolen, it is bad but you are probably wealthy enough you won't go in deep trouble stress.

Or it might be your entire life's savings and if you can't get it back you kill yourself from the stress of losing 40+ years of work. It's very dangerous to make assumptions about other people's money.

Do you usually have your life savings in a checking bank account and not in an IRA account? Shouldn't that has more red-flags for the bank.

I'm not saying that investigating the $250k is not important; but just not more urgent than the $2k theft.

Taking money out of an IRA into your checking bank account is usually two clicks with my bank, I'd get a warning about losing interest if I take the money out but I can do it anyway and the money is available instantly - for all intentions and purposes it might just as well be in a checking account, and it certainly won't make any different to an attacker who got into my account.

>>I'm not saying that investigating the $250k is not important; but just not more urgent than the $2k theft.

I'd argue that it's a lot more urgent. What if you were paying for a house tomorrow, and the money is gone, so you lose the house? Or you are a small company that has to pay its tax bill for the year, but the money is gone? Or you have to pay for an expensive operation that won't go forward otherwise?

2k is not as important in a way that if you are really short of 2k, then there is a plethora of options to come up with 2k on a short notice(some astonishingly bad like payday loans but there are options) - while if you are out of 250k and need 250k then most likely you are absolutely screwed.

Again, to repeat my final point - don't make assumptions about people's money.

I have all my life savings in a checking account. So in my case if I got hacked and my money from that account stolen I would be in big trouble and have suicidal thoughts very likely.

>>I'm not saying that investigating the $250k is not important; but just not more urgent than the $2k theft.

Absolutely not. Ignore the case when this 250k was your entire life savings (30-40 years of saving remainder of your salary every month and slowly building savings for retirement).

It could be mortgage money which you are about to buy a house with or it could be company money for payroll. Suddenly employees of a small business don't get paid. Those employees of course have to pay mortgage/rent/medical bills and suddenly paycheck they counted on doesn't come. This could affect many people in very negative ways.

I think $250k stolen should definitely get a priority to be investigated by agents over $2k stolen as it is more likely it will mess up lives of many people in a bad way.

Interesting. When two crimes both take similar effort to commit, and similar effort to investigate, I'm not sure if the higher dollar amount should be defacto prioritized.

I am going away from SMS based 2FA where I can. For services where it is used, anyone have opinions on using 2FA via a SMS to VOIP number with a provider who has better account security/authentication tools than most telcos (e.g. google, etc)?

The argument for giving more priority to higher amounts is that since criminals are stealing the money, they can commit more crime with more money(in simple terms - you can buy more drugs/guns with 250k than with 2k)

I was using google voice for this for a while but if you are worried that someone may have access to your computer / email, then they may effectively access to your google voice as well. voice.google.com

"I'm not sure if the higher dollar amount should be defacto prioritized."

Why not? Higher net worth equates to higher taxes paid - the 250k victim has been paying the investigators a more substantial sum, and should receive a more substantial response from them. "Size matters" sums it up to me.

That's not how modern Western societies work. Plutocracy has been tried, and found to be devastating for society, human dignity, and the human condition in general, not to talk about the rampant corruption it invites.

> "That's not how modern Western societies work."

Are you sure? Maybe you believe they shouldn't work that way, but do you believe they truly are blind to the net worth of the offended party?

No, they are not. But ideally the advantage the 'richer' party has in influencing the effort of the investigators/judiciary to put forth more effort on their behalf is not written policy, it is corruption/cronyism. Should we create policy that prioritizes investigating an auto theft of a $100,000 automobile with more resources and severity that the theft of a $20,000 one, simply because the value is larger, or weight the effort based on the tax contribution of the victim? I would say absolutely not.

I guess the theft of a more expensive car should be investigated with higher priority because selling it gives criminals more money to work with and leads to more severe crime. A group that can steal and sell a Lamborghini likely runs a much larger and more organized operation than a group which steals and sells old cheap cars.

This is all guessing though, I'd love to see more data on it.

This assumes a linear margin on units of stolen cars to value. Smaller ticket items are easier to fence specifically because they are common. It's hard to sell the Mona Lisa. It's easy to sell a mass-produced TV. Cops would spot a stolen Lamborghini as soon as the APB comes in. Not so much for a Toyota Camry.

I remember reading somewhere the top car make/model stolen was the Honda Civic.

No doubt. High resale + common item = higher portion of thefts, I would expect.

Yeah, and that's why I said that a group that can actually steal and sell a Lamborghini successfully should be investigated with more resources, since you are more likely to find a well organised criminal organisation behind it, if they can shift Lamborghinis the can probably shift drugs and guns too.

We disagree then, I think they absolutely should prioritize that because of the tax contribution of the victim. If I pay someone $1000 for a job, and you pay the same person $100 for an opposing job - you should lose. That's only my capitalist opinion, but I don't think it's an unpopular one.

Probably disagree on some aspects, and I may not have choosen the best example, or clarified my position enough. In a situation where two parties are voluntarily engaging in competition(for a job applicant), the party who offers more value usually does win, and I think that's appropriate. And I support allocating resources to fight crime based upon the effect of the crime's proceeds in supporting or leading to further crime. In mandatory participation systems like public civil services I am for at least a baseline allocation of resourses not directly correlated to financial input of the particular recipient.

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