Hacker News Reader

Comment by denton-scratch | Hacker News Reader

> It says it uses "ML applications, APIs and cloud products" to prevent online credit fraud.

I worked as a contractor for CapOne for 9 months, in Richmond VA, in 1996/7.

I was a tech, but I worked mostly on applications to help the fraud team. In those days, I think CapOne was ahead of the curve in automating banking. The fraud team were working to a checklist, with lots of computer assistance. They were always frazzled, because they were customer-facing. They kept themselves to themselves, and they had a high turnover.

In the canteen, I sometimes tried to eavesdrop on their conversations. They were always just grumbling. It must have been a shitty job.

View on HN

When you are working fraud cases, you talk to zero people that are happy. Either you are talking to an actual scammer, a victim, or a victim who is very unhappy that the fraud system has flagged something. And then even when things are cut and dry it can take several days for a refund to go through, so if the customer is paycheck-to-paycheck they will need to make sacrifices until it all clears.

One of my earlier gigs was insurance claims and then I also did a stint in fraud. I think the only worse job could be debt collection or those guys from the military that visit you if your spouse dies.

I do technology in the FI space and pretty much all of my clients have a fraud process of "the customer notices their card is declined and has to call the number to find out why". C1 on the other hand will just send me a text asking for a yes/no and it works. Still ahead of the game as far as I am concerned.

"FI"? "C1"? Sorry if I'm being dim.

[Edit] Can't delete! Well, Duh. C1 is what I called CapOne. I knew that. <slaps head>

FI: financial institution

c1: capital one

Your anecdote is from 1997, 26 years ago from today. Do you really think there is remotely any overlap from your experience in 1997 to how things are done today?

Well, I don't know. Corporate cultures are quite "sticky", in my experience. If a company is founded to exploit banking automation, I suppose it's likely to go on focusing on that expertise until it doesn't work any more.

So are you saying that CapOne is nowadays completely different from how it was in 1997? That would be an interesting comment. But you haven't actually said anything; you've only snarked.

In terms of turnover? Yeah.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com