[ale] OT Ouch. Stay away from proprietary technology.

[Lightner, Jeff]

Bank of America also tells you you’re not liable due to their policies

However, I think using debit cards is fairly stupid anyway.   Why give random strangers (sales clerks/wait staff/online merchants) direct access to your bank account?   Even if the bank gives you back your money you may still have the hassle of having checks bounce and/or cleaning up fees for overdrafts.

I much prefer to use credit cards and pay them off every month.   If you have the discipline to do that you incur no interest charges.   You have the benefit of seeing all the charges BEFORE you pay from your bank account and can dispute any that aren’t right.  So long as an item is in dispute there is no interest on it and assuming the dispute is successful there never will be.

One of the things I really like about BofA is they have a way to generate random credit card numbers that I can use doing online purchases (or if someone says they need a  card to confirm a reservation or the like).   Even better is the BofA (ShopSafe) cards:

a)      Allow you to set a dollar limit

b)      Allow you to set the expiration

c)       Are only good at the first vendor that uses the card.  (i.e. even if that vendor gets hacked the hacker can’t use the number anywhere else).

I’ve often wondered if other Visa provider (banks) offer this service.   For a while Discover Card offered a similar service for generating random numbers but it didn’t have the third protection in above.   For some reason Discover discontinued their service though.


From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim Kinney
Sent: Monday, February 08, 2016 10:40 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: Re: [ale] OT Ouch. Stay away from proprietary technology.


Suntrust will refund disputed funds immediately on reporting a fraud charge on a debit card. Their usage security is similar to credit card - logical impossible charges based on physical distance are blocked but a quick call to security opens a legitimate charge. My cost for bogus charges is $0.
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