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Comment by Google234 | Hacker News Reader

This company should be desolved and all assets given to the 28 million victims.

Or make “identity theft” a problem for the banks and institutions that want to use digitally entered 9 digits and birthdate as some sort of authentication.

If a bank or whoever gets defrauded by someone claiming they are someone else, that should be the bank’s problem. Everyone has a smartphone today with a video camera and data. Why is a video of you giving a thumbs up and announcing your authorization for entity X to borrrow or purchase with Y dollars not the standard?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E

Every once in a while I will call up my financial institutions and try to get them to do some arbitrary transaction I could have done online but just to see what minimum amount of info I have to provide them to get them to actually move my money around. It’s kind of horrifying. The social and the bank account number is usually all that is needed. That is the reason I refuse to use a small credit union over a large bank. Credit union staff tend to be more trusting and less informed on average regarding when to be suspicious than the call centers for A larger institution

You just gave me something to think about. I've been with the same small CU for 20 years. They're really small. Twice now I've needed to wire money, and when I called, I was told something like, "Maggie is on her lunch break right now, but she'll be back at her desk in 20 minutes. She'll call you to verify the details."

It's a running joke whenever I have to wire money: "Make sure Madge is working today!"

I liked that quaint feel, but I suppose Steally McThief would also appreciate it...

She calling you is good practice however.

> Why is a video of you giving a thumbs up and announcing your authorization for entity X to borrrow or purchase with Y dollars not the standard?

Video is not 100% safe, it can be faked.

Sure, but the difficulty of making a passable fake video versus entering some magic numbers is vastly different.

I sold a home/closed through notarize.com and was very impressed by their solution. This should be mandatory to open any type of credit account, witnessed and videoed thumbs up as a service could totally be a thing

> Everyone has a smartphone today with a video camera and data.

No they don't.

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