Obama and Romney Campaigns Adopt Square for Funding | Hacker News Reader

Obama and Romney Campaigns Adopt Square for Funding

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

70 pointsnikhilpandit12 comments

"If the Square rollout is successful, and others follow, campaigns could send out armies of volunteers brandishing the Square credit card reader and collecting millions of dollars in micro-payments from political supporters."

Seems like a no-brainer for someone with ill intent to go around doing this having the Square connected to their own bank account instead of Obama's.

That is not a very good scam, as you would have disclose your bank account and personal information for it to work. Criminals that leave a paper trail aren't criminals for long.

You would be much better off faking one of those salvation army buckets.

Hack a Square to just take the credit card info for use outside of Square? Half of the battle with scams is building trust, so if people are told to be on the lookout for guys with Obama pins and a credit card reader...

Imagine if a romney supporter did this ... then no one would trust the obama volunteers ...

That would undermine Romney's campaign efforts too.

That shouldn't be hard since old square dongles are unencrypted [1]. Just create an app that interfaces with the dongle and looks like the obama app. You're good to go [2].

1. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/per_visas_orders_square...

2. Note to the NSA or any other government agency reading my public social network comments: It's a shame I have to post this disclaimer, but I have no intention of defrauding supporters of any political campaign (simply discussing a known security flaw). Also, Hacker News is not a news site for crackers.

You have to say that?

Sadly, yes.

See http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/twitter-jo...

From the comments, it appears there is some debate about whether those incidents (twitter deportation) actually occurred.

Indeed, I'm pretty reluctant to hand over my credit card to someone I meet on the street, regardless of the cause that they claim to represent. I imagine this app will be more successful for collecting donations during official campaign events.

> you would have disclose your bank account and personal information for it to work

You would have to disclose someone's bank account and personal information. If even nigerian-style scammers have no problem finding mules, I'd guess home-grown con artists could do that with ease.

What kind of verification is Square employing?

Of course they can use other peoples' bank accounts. They're princes!

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