For whatever reason, I seem to have ended up with a position high on the list of people who, somebody thinks, are desperate to borrow money for their company from random people who show up offering it. It's generally at least a half-dozen phone calls and texts per day, plus all of the emails.

I'm guessing the scam is something like "we'll wire you the money right away, just give us your account number", or "the financing is all lined up, we just need you to pay an administrative fee first". I am not curious enough to find out.

It sure would be nice if all those bozos would go away.

@corbet I wonder how difficult it is to set up an empty account. "Yes, I know there's no money in it, that's why I wanted you to wire me some!"

@cceckman @corbet does the US bank system still operate in the way that account number is sensitive information because knowing it means you can request a transfer from it?

@vbabka @corbet in my experience: yep, account and routing number. (I don't know if there are other checks /auditing on the backend.)

@vbabka @cceckman Indeed it does; it's an amazingly insecure system saved only by the fact that things can be undone, for a period at least.

(I was once informed by the bank handling LWN's account that unauthorized withdrawals can be reliably reversed, but only within 24 hours of the event. That has a lot to do with why I compulsively check the account every day, rather than, say, the eternal hope that somehow a vast fortune will have materialized there overnight. But one can still hope.)

@vbabka @cceckman @corbet at least when I was there >10 years getting the account balance negative also directly triggered overdraft fees

@corbet @vbabka @cceckman ouch… you can also request money from European bank accounts if you know the IBAN through SEPA direct debit but those can be reversed (assuming they are fraudulent) with no questions asked for *months*

@sven @corbet @cceckman huh really? Why would they copy such a legacy mechanism for the whole EU? In Czechia, you have to allowlist accounts that can direct debit you (i.e. utility or cell providers) with a limit.

@vbabka @corbet @cceckman it at least works like that in .de and I thought with the whole SEPA rollout that it’s same across all of the EU. it’s a weird system but the reversal process works easier than a credit card chargeback because in the first 2 months you don’t even have to give a reason for triggering it.

@sven @corbet @cceckman looks like Czech banks require a "SEPA Direct Debit Mandate", phew.

@vbabka @corbet @cceckman no one checks that if you have an account from which you can trigger those direct debits in .de. you just promise your bank that you only trigger those if you have a mandate afaik