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Comment by jimmaswell | Hacker News Reader

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jimmaswell

1. Buy a cheap used phone+burner sim for $20

2. Set up a fake Google account, nudes from Google image search, and scammer numbers as contacts

3. Take these loans and wipe the phone or let them "hack" the worthless phone

4. Profit as these people being out of reach of the police goes both ways?

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They don't approve the loans automatically. They go through your photos, social networks,calls, etc. to make sure it's a real account.

New use for generative AI?

Yet another argument for empowering the phone as a user agent. All data should be mocked unbeknownst to the application. Faker should be built in for all of these collection points.

This sounds like a sorta fun thing to try to pull off…

That can be easily faked. Seems susceptible to sybil attacks.

It's surprisingly difficult to fake years worth of conversations with family and friends...

The loanshark can say "show me the conversation with your boss. Show me the conversation with your mom.". They can cross reference things between the person's memory and the conversations. They can download all the conversations and put them in a database so the same conversation set can't be used to take out another loan.

They can also call your contacts to confirm details - ie. 'can you confirm Mary is your daughter? Does she have 2 cats and a dog?'

They can do that, but are they actually doing that?

They would do that if they needed because people were spoofing the system. Or they would do what the traditional banks are doing: avoid lending to people without a proven track multi-year record, physical location to monitor, and assets to hold as collateral for a downpayment.

However, I'm curious about one thing. Everyone who suggest spoofing the system for the sake of privacy, do you believe people who do that... will actually also repay the loan they were given? Or would they just use a fake name & commit fraud?

Easily is relative. Any defense can be beaten. The question is whether or not it's worth beating it. There's no point in spending a million to crack a safe with a thousand in it. Well, unless you just want to $%^& whoever owns the safe.

Very sure that you can spoof all of the above with 2-3 hours of effort.

I wonder how much effort it would be to automate the process of creating real-looking data (via AI or public-domain data) and then watch the money roll in (or at the very least DoS these scams enough that they can no longer tell real loan applications from all the noise).

You can already do this with the existing "loan" apps like Dave or Brigit in the US. They're not legally loans and there's no expectation or requirement to actually pay them back, and they can't pursue you for it or send it to debt collection. Just take out the "loan", call their customer service line and remove your bank account, and that's it. Free money.

Dave Terms of use section 9.3:

"However, Dave warrants that it has no legal or contractual claim against you based on a failure to repay an Advance, but Dave will not provide you further Advances while any amount remains unpaid under the Advance Service. With respect to a failure to repay an Advance, Dave warrants it will not engage in any debt collection activities, place the amount owed with or sell to a third party, or report you to a consumer reporting agency. "

Empower Terms of Service dated Dec. 8th 2021 Section "Empower Advance"

"We offer Empower Advances on a nonrecourse basis. This means you have no unconditional obligation to repay any Empower Advance. Consequently, we warrant to you that we have no contractual or legal claim against you for an Empower Advance, and we will not engage in debt collection activities, place the amount advanced with or sell to a third party, or make any reports to credit reporting agencies regarding your Empower Advance. However, we reserve the right to deny you access to Empower Advance if you (i) do not meet the qualification requirements, (ii) request an excessive number of Empower Advances in succession, or (iii) do not repay the full balance of an Empower Advance. "

MoneyLion Instacash Help Center - Instacash - " What happens if I can't make my Instacash repayment?"

" Remember that you have no obligation to repay any Instacash advance you receive but you won’t have access to additional Instacash advances until you have repaid all of your previous advances and related Tips and Turbo Fees. It's important to know that when you miss a payment, we will continue to attempt to repay your Instacash advance and any related Tips and Turbo Fees from your eligible accounts as long as your payment authorizations for those accounts remain active. You can withdraw the payment authorizations on your accounts or debit cards by following the prompts in the MoneyLion App to remove the payment method or by contacting customer service at customercare@moneylion.com, 1-801-252-4427, or at ML Plus LLC, Attn Customer Service, P.O. Box 1547, Sandy, UT 84091-1547. Please note: You must notify us at least three (3) business days (business days are Mondays through Fridays, excluding bank holidays) before your scheduled repayment date to give us and your financial institution sufficient time to process the revocation."

Have you tried it? Very curious to know what happens in practice if you try to do this

I haven't personally, but know several people that run in some of the same online circles as me that have with zero issues. Most of them even went about 6 months taking out and paying back advances on time just so the apps would start lending them even more, and only once they got it up to like $500 is when they'd take the money and "run".

3. Dave reports your advance settlements to Equifax on a monthly cycle. It may take up to 2 cycles for this activity to be reflected in your credit history with Equifax. Terms apply, see dave.com/extra-cash for more details.

The Extra Cash Account is a completely different offering from Dave's normal cash advances that I'm referring to, and is specifically designed to build people's credit scores, so of course it would be reported to credit bureaus.

Set up a bunch of emulators and you can do this at scale! Should earn you a quick few thousand dollars before these scanners catch up.

> nudes from Google image search

thesenudesdonotexist.com

If that doesn't already exist someone needs to make it.

It's redirecting me to a site that's down, but appears to be associated with https://twitter.com/haremtoken

I mean I said it as a joke, but I can't say I'm surprised it's a valid registered domain.

And doing all this work for a $100 loan?

A $100 take-and-keep is what I read. Each loan is worth a lot more to the sharks than what a bank would get back from anything similar, so the poster above would be taking potential a lot more in "opportunity cost" from the scammers unless they give in on collection very quickly.

It can be automated. And if it can't, there are armies of people in the third world who can "automate" it for you, like solving capchas.

Also It's not a $100 loan. The insinuation is that it'a $100 dollars that you take and run.

$100, but you're also doing a good deed.

Donating blood doesn't pay that well either, but people still do it.

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