Same with social security numbers. You don't get it unless I expect you to send me a tax-related form at tax time.
That said, I fully agree with you. I see little reason that buying, for example, a video game online needs my billing information more than walking into a store and buying it there, possibly with the same card.
This just reminded me of a quote: "If cash were invented today, it would be illegal." I forget who (first) said it, but it rings true.
In your latter example, a nexus clearly exists between the business selling you a video game and the state, so sales tax collection is patently obvious.
When you buy online, they have to ask - it’s the only way to figure out the proper jurisdiction.
This is insurance against fraud where the card number is stolen and goods are ordered to a location other than the cardholder address. Which the merchant doesn't want to be liable for. So most places will only ship high value goods (sometimes any goods) to the cardholder address.
The real security is now "enhanced verification", i.e. some sort of second factor and/or password in addition to the card. But this is much more annoying to use.
pjc is correct, this does provide real security; i.e. I cannot steal your card details and use them to order valuable goods sent to my address.
Like it really isn't that rare to have issues where people tell you "nothing can be done, it's from outside of our country" or similar. And then you travel and realize, it's a "your country" issue and many or even most other countries have fixed it or at least massively reduced it and the whole "criminals are in another country" thing didn't prevent them from fixing it...
This e.g. is the case for US spam/scam/robo calls (which isn't "fully fixed" anywhere but starkly reduced by in many places including e.g. the EU).
Which companies are making money off frauds like pig butchering scams? I think you're overestimating how competent the state is and underestimating how hard it is to solve problems like these. For instance, we can barely dissuade other countries from buying Iranian and Russian oil, and there's pretty much bipartisan consensus on that.
Companies that own dating apps.
> I think you're overestimating how competent the state is
I fully agree. The U.S. state is quite incompetent.
> and underestimating how hard it is to solve problems like these
"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
Have you thought of blocking countries that permit malicious activity to cross international borders? Have you thought of blocking their IP addresses?
Or is that international money just too good to let a "little bit" of malicious activity befall upon your fellow citizens?
And they're lobbying against which regulations that would stop them?
>Have you thought of blocking countries that permit malicious activity to cross international borders? Have you thought of blocking their IP addresses?
The financial system is far more centralized than the internet and at least theoretically has KYC, but US sanctions against enemy states, terrorist groups, and drug gangs are as airtight as a sieve. What makes you so sure that IP blocking countries will have any effect, when anyone can buy a no-log VPN for $5/month?
> I think that is mostly because the perpetrators are often in a different country than victims.
So, your comment here is moving the goalpost:
> What makes you so sure that IP blocking countries will have any effect, when anyone can buy a no-log VPN for $5/month?
If it's malicious activity behind VPNs in foreign countries, then see previous comment about blocking foreign countries. Block foreign countries at the interconnect until they enact and enforce laws which address the malicious activity.
If it's malicious activity behind VPNs in your own country then you need only convince your law enforcement to enforce existing computer crime laws. Renting a server for $5/mo requires payment and payment provides a name & address to prosecute. All you need is to demonstrate that the malicious activity originated from the rented IP address and during the rental period.
There's no point in implementing measures that would be trivially bypassed but cause great economic and societal harm in the process (ie. creating some sort of KYC regime for the internet, or causing millions to be cut off from the internet). China, arguably one of the most draconian states out there, and the home of pig butchering scams can barely keep a lid on it. Countries like the US that emphasize civil liberties and free trade don't stand a chance.
>If it's malicious activity behind VPNs in your own country then you need only convince your law enforcement to enforce existing computer crime laws. Renting a server for $5/mo requires payment and payment provides a name & address to prosecute.
You can pay for no-log VPNs using crypto or anonymous gift cards. Apple, Google, and others even have 2-hop VPNs that theoretically make it impossible for the provider to log connections even if they wanted to. Not to mention, there are many countries, including the US where you can get prepaid SIMs without presenting any sort of ID and pay with cash. Even if you were some how able to enforce an airtight KYC regime for the internet (doubtful, given how well that works for the financial system), you still have to contend with compromised routers/IOT devices and shady apps that act as proxies for bad guys.
because it did work in the EU as one example
(that is, if complemented with other things I would have to look up. E.g. a lot of phone fraud is illegal in the country it comes from too, which opens up many possibilities for cross country cooperations (or pressure) to shut them down you)
Mainly you have to
- not thinking in absolutes, rarely can a problem be perfectly 100% be removed, but that doesn't matter making something much better is already a huge step forward.
- identifying likely path to improve things, and then trying it
- if it fails, give it a proper fact based analysis so that future tries can learn from it instead of just saying "see can't be solved"
But what I see a lot is:
- solutions having shown to cause improvements aren't tried "because they aren't airtight/perfect"
- no proper analysis is done, instead of looking what works people look what "feels like it could work"
- a single solutions is very half assed/incompletely tried and after it predictably fails people argue "see nothing can be done so let's not even try" instead of actually analyzing why it failed
yes, but it's surprisingly cheap (if you now where to ask for it and your operation is large enough)
could have changed a bit after FTC started pushing a bit more against robocalls and for caller verification idk. a year ago??
In most other cases i just type some random numbers or use a number generator. SSN is a weird concept that thankfully doesn’t exist in my country.
But yea unless this is a very important service you get 0 of my real data.
I am pretty sure you have something similar in your country.
Not that it matters on the context of giving away information
I would say a SSN getting leaked is as bad as a passport number getting leaked.
Yes, some legitimate user can't sign up. Depends on what business you are in, and how much budget you put into spam/abuse prevention, this may or may not make sense.
Not like there's any chance of that happening in the DOGE era, of course.
What happened in these 10 years?
You don't need a credit card to register a Google account.
As for the phone number, IIRC you do need to provide one during the registration but that number isn't automatically associated with your account, it's there more to prevent spamming I think. Also you can re-use the same number (to certain degree, at least; I have 4 accounts registered with the same number).
Please note that I'm not saying this is ideal, but compared to some other "major" services, Google is actually on the easier side for registering an account.
How seriously is this enforced varies, Twitch insta bans you for saying things to the effect of "I'm twelve years old"