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Comment by MichaelGG | Hacker News Reader

The name is optional, and you can supply it to make the experience nicer. If you don't plan on using Coinbase this way, don't supply a name.

Making things easy to use is the answer to your question. Rate limiting might help a tiny bit, but you can just register multiple accounts to get around it. (And no doubt someone would do that and make a fuss about it.)

Many people will take the feature of presenting the name, so you have another layer of comfort while making the transaction (knowing it went to the right place, that you didn't introduce a typo) to be a feature. And those that don't want it don't have to provide their names.

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> The name is optional, and you can supply it to make the experience nicer. If you don't plan on using Coinbase this way, don't supply a name.

Amazon won't tell you my name. Netflix won't tell you my name. Maybe to registered third parties, but not to random unauthenticated API callers.

> Rate limiting might help a tiny bit, but you can just register multiple accounts to get around it. (And no doubt someone would do that and make a fuss about it.)

But that adds a barrier, and would give them time to notice. Your argument is the equivalent of "why have locks, all doors can be forced open". Just because security isn't perfect doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.

> Amazon won't tell you my name. Netflix won't tell you my name

If you want to sell something on Amazon, Amazon will tell other people your name. I sold some apps there to experiment with the whole process, and they attached my real name to it.

There is never a need for anyone to know your name from Netflix. However, with Coinbase, there is a need for other people to be able to recognize who they are doing a transaction with.

Amazon won't tell you my name until I make a transaction with you. If I add your item to my cart and never check out, they won't tell you anything about me.

That doesn't seem to be the case with Coinbase, they seem to give you the information when you propose a transaction.

Yes, with these newly moved goalposts, I agree, and I mentioned it earlier today: Coinbase is giving your ID not just to people you've interacted with (which makes sense) but to people who have expressed the vaguest desire to interact with you (might might not make sense).

But in the comment I was replying to was pointing out that Netflix never gives your ID to anybody, which is not a fair comparison because Netflix is in an entirely different business. Netflix customers never interact with each other. Coinbase users do interact, and identity is usually essential for interaction.

That's not moving goalposts. Amazon does not give out my information to unregistered 3rd parties who I haven't made a transaction with. Seems Coinbase does.

I chose Netflix simply because they were a large internet company. I think the idea that Coinbase is involved in transactions is a red herring here since they're giving the information out before the transactions are agreed upon by both parties.

If I proposed a Coinbase transaction with someone, I would fully expect that the other party would be told my name and possibly even my email.

> However, with Coinbase, there is a need for other people to be able to recognize who they are doing a transaction with

Why is this? They are not receiving money , they are sending money. The recipient needs to know the sender but why does the sender need to know that the recipient is a registered coinbase user or what their firstname and lastname is. Why does the response json of the request_money api need to return the user's name and couldn't the email and the transaction history page be the same when you send money to a registered or non-registered email until the recipient is in some sort of address book of the sender (perhaps after a valid transaction has happened between them). I have used chase and paypal and in both cases either I have to add the recipient to the address book and fill out the email address and first and last names or just use the email address.

Fortunately or unfortunately when you play in the financial services, you are held to a higher security standard. I really like coinbase, I hope they fix this simple problem and move on instead of denying its a problem.

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