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Comment by adrr | Hacker News Reader

Biggest industry affected is the banks. They’ll ping your phone location if you make out of area purchases as a part of fraud detection. If your bank doesn’t require travel notices, they are probably pulling mobile location. Some don’t, I know chase uses mobile app to determine location.

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The saddest thing about this is that my bank no longer requires notification for international travel, but still does for travel within the US. I've had my card shut off for fraud a few times while traveling in the US. Once when I had almost no gas and was outside of cell service, thanks for that.

This is presumably due to all transactions outside of the US requiring chip, but those in the US only requiring swipe.

Switch banks? I have never once had American Express decline a charge domestic or international. Highly recommend!

carry cash? no one is going to not accept that

Gas pumps will sometimes work after hours even if a clerk isn’t on duty. Same with other self service situations where a card might be your only payment option. Carrying cash is a last resort; you risk losing it or not having enough.

How often do you lose your wallet? If I lose mine, I won’t be stressing about the $200 inside.

But true enough on the unmanned gas stations.

actually this isn't true - i was in Seattle and there's at least one cashless Starbucks and one restaurant (Kati Vegan Thai); when i asked at both places they patiently explained that they couldn't accept cash at either one.

Some places don't accept cash to reduce the risk of theft--we don't carry cash, you can't steal from the cash register.

Opposite position here - American Express was the one card I could not use anywhere in my first European trips 20 years ago (don't know it that's changed) - ditched it forever then. MC and Visa works for me. Never looked back.

20 years is a long time! I suggest you give them another shot. I have their Platinum card and the service has been top notch (although paying for their charge card is not required if you pick a product with no annual fee).

Wait, the US is still on magstripe? Isn't that literally just a bar code? No challenge-response, or encryption? Fraud detection seems like the wrong thing to be focusing on if that's the case...

In my area, almost everything has been chip for the last couple years, except gas stations. My local gas station just installed chip readers a few months ago.

Yeah, it's even worse than that. I was recently in the bay area and I went to pay for a burger with my Canadian chip&pin card and when I the card in the transaction was automatically approved with no need to enter the pin.

This was quite alarming.

Yeah, we do chip, and maybe signature if we feel like it

"feel like it" is practically never. I haven't had anyone ask to see my physical card to compare signatures in over five years.

Isn't this really in service of the customer to not waste their time? The store is the one shouldering the risk because if it turns out to be a thief using the card the store loses money/goods. The more they try to verify you are who you say you are the less risk they are incurring. That's a benefit of credit, it's less risky for the consumer in the end.

Absolutely. Just providing information posters like the one above who don't live in the US and might be surprised that no authentication happens here.

Germany here, there is a lower limit, below which we do not have to enter a pin. Maybe the same for you?

Make a point of carrying a spare card from a different bank and maybe a different payment network. In my experience, you’re always going to hit random declines from time to time.

Also some emergency cash up to $100 hidden in the car where only you would know where to look is worth the peace of mind knowing technology is not infallible.

Yes, I was assuming some cash as well. Appropriate currency, dollars in particular most places, is always useful when traveling. But if you’re at a supermarket checkout and your card is randomly declined (has happened to me) it’s nice to be able to pull out another card.

This isn’t a carrier selling the data issue. In the mobile app case you install the app and authorize location tracking.

They can just ping their banking app on your phone and estimate your geolocation via ip address. No network provider level snooping needed.

I think you're confused. Banks aren't buying location information from carriers.

This has nothing to do with them being able to get your location from their app.

Some banks get it off the app like Chase. Some don’t and pull E911 location on out of the area auth for a card present transaction.

They'll ping your phone? Are you kidding me? You mean they'll look up records right, not a realtime query of device location? How is that legal?

E911 location is real-time.

Yeah...but I assumed banks are not part of E911

Carriers were selling the data E911 location. That’s what this article is about. If you want to research further look up the companies that offer mobile location like Jumio, LocationSmart or Zumigo.

Thanks

Do banks actually buy location data from carriers?

I think they can just tell the zip code where you use the card.

Right, they know where the transaction is taking place. The point is that they can have much higher confidence that the card hasn't been stolen (or cloned, in the case of mag stripes) if your phone is also in the same zip code.

Or, you know, hedge funds.

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