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Comment by kuu | Hacker News Reader

The main difference is that with your bank, in case you get locked out, you can call them or even go to a physical office where they'll attend you, and you, maybe, are able to fix this false positive case, even if from detection point of view is a justified one.

For Google, good luck if you get in contact with a person.

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Maybe we work with different banks, but in my experience it’s more of a “1 strike you’re out” type of thing if they detect illegal activity and to me that feels like what happened here. I get what you’re saying though.

Fraud is hard. If you don’t crack down enough, you get in trouble with the government, many legitimate account users, and companies working with you. If you crack down too hard, you might mess up people’s lives who did nothing wrong. Even with an appeals process- its rare to get everything right. I think the reason we had about it with big tech so much is because their userbase is so large, so even with a low false positive rate, you’ll see high numbers of people getting flagged.

Unless your bank account balance is at least $50,000, I doubt the bank will do anything about it besides have a manager tell you "I'm sorry there's nothing we can do" which is little better than an automated email.

That may very well depend on how regulated the banking industry is in your country.

You're right. In less regulated countries, they may be more lenient. But in countries with strong anti-fraud and anti-moneylaundering regulations, banks often will take the most risk-adverse course, which is to terminate accounts for very little reason and at the slightest hint of bad behavior.

I'm not against government regulation of these sorts of decisions, but to pretend that the regulations we currently have are consumer-focused in every aspect is just completely burying your head in the sand. Read https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/moving-money-international..., and especially the "Tiniest bit of personal opinion" section for a clearer explanation of the problems with the way banking regulation currently works.

In more regulated countries, the state limits what banks can do to their customers. In the EU that means a legal right to a basic bank account, among other things, so "terminating accounts for very little reason" is not going to happen.

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