Hacker News Reader

Are routing and account numbers considered “secret”? Potentially any one of the handful of people I still write checks to could be unscrupulous and write checks, debit my account, etc., right?

View on HN

Correct; that's why Knuth started issuing fake checks instead of real checks for people that found mistakes in his works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check

So he started committing a felony? That doesn't seem like a great idea, interstate bank fraud gets you investigated really quickly.

More background: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news08.html

Current account 'balances' for people he no longer wrote personal checks to: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/boss.html

I must be missing something but making fake checks, with fake banking information is a felony. What am I missing? The links don't explain how this criminal.

Yes! That’s why I recently had to go through the annoyance of changing checking accounts when someone stole the mail of one of the few vendors I still send checks to. Actually, I would have taken the risk, but my bank would not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com