Power company recently outsourced their payment system and now have to pay a fuckin’ fee to pay my goddamned bill. The only way to avoid that is autopay.

Further infuriating is I have to re-add my bank info to yet another third party system.

Fuck the modern world, man.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgOP
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    3 hours ago

    It’s not like they are a secret.

    They’re also not public info, either. Typically they’re combined with name, address, etc for fraud protection, but those details are even easier to acquire than account numbers. The routing numbers are public information, though. In the result of a data breach, a bad actor has everything they need.

    What are any potential hackers going to to with my bank account numbers?

    Just about anything they want since they’ll likely have your personal details too. When adding a bank account to any of my utility payment accounts, there is no verification whatsoever; enter details, authorize payment.

    I don’t use CashApp and the like, but in the past, PayPal would deposit a few cents into the account, and you had to verify ownership of the account by entering those random amounts into the signup form to complete the process. That’s also trivially defeated if enough of your data was breached and in the hands of an attacker (e.g. call the bank, pretend to be you, and ask for the info).

    Not to mention, why would attackers in phishing/scam emails ask for bank details if they’re not secret or are useless?

    • BorgDrone
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      3 hours ago

      Maybe that’s true if you live in a country with an archaic banking system. Here in Europe, you can do nothing with just my IBAN (International Bank Account Number) other than send me money. Anything else requires multi-step verification.