Holy Saturday Strip

Is a Banking Reset Incoming?

For the last several weeks I have had problems with services largely tied to banking which I have used and depended on reliably for years. It started when my Internet mysteriously went out around March 1. One of the suggestions by DTAC (My satellite Internet service provider) was to delete all cookies/stored cache files. This did nothing to restore my Internet service. But it did of course sign me out of my two US banks.

Signing back in to Chime Bank proved near impossible as the AI had detected some suspiscious activity so they needed me to take a picture of my driver’s license and then a selfie. The picture of my driver’s license was always rejected as unacceptably blurry. I figured customer service could help but all they have been empowered to do is walk me through the same exact steps I had already taken dozens of times. You’d think that those humans would be empowered to use some discretion regarding this, as even I could read the main details on my driver’s license in many of these AI detected blurry pictures. In the end I was told to get a new phone.

It was fascinating to me that I was locked out of an account where I was using A: The same device I’d logged into with before B: Had the same username, password, email address, phone number, home address, debit card number, driver’s license et cetera. I’d think suspicious activity would involve changing at least a few of those things. I was also puzzled that the customer service reps had been rendered completely useless to help me with this: after stating my name, my birthday, my home address, the last four digits of my SS number and whatnot, the best they could tell me to do was buy a phone with an AI camera, so that the almighty AI could “read” my driver’s license and my selfie afterwards. That single choke point seems ripe for fraud.

Meanwhile Skype is going away, which means my Las Vegas based Skype number I’ve had for a decade or so is going away with it. I’ve been told I can port everything over to Microsoft Teams, but it is not clear at all that I can bring my number with it. Crucially, I use this Las Vegas based number to verify my identity across a lot of financial services (including Stripe, the payment processor for Substack). I started porting my Skype number (Which officially expires on April 25) to a third party service, but they have some weird rules about registering US based numbers if I am not physically in America and Thailand is among a list of countries that make this process difficult and confusing. So I probably have to set up a VPN again, which is a little tricky with my extremely slow Internet.

Meanwhile I am in charge of my Mother’s online banking services, as my mother does not know how to use the Internet. She has no smart phone and never will and she has a home phone that does not even accept text messages. So I’ve come to be in charge of any number of myriad services that she otherwise cannot access from booking online only appointments to booking flights. Because we split some bills on the Las Vegas house, I sometimes transfer money from her Bank of America account to my Bank of America account. This has always been an easy free process with money showing up instantly.

Except a few days ago they changed the system. Now I need her debit card and PIN number and must have a text message only sent to some US based number. My mother’s home phone number does not even accept text messages. I was able to make the transfer a few days ago by using my still active until April 25th Skype number. They now call it a scheduled transfer and the money did not show up in my account until hours later. If the Skype number goes away, as I explained to Mum, this might get tricky and stupid. It also now costs a lot to call my Mother or daughters as the 2 baht per minute rate from my Thailand phone number is a lot less convenient than the $3.99 per month unlimited calls to America plan which I was on before.

I get the ominous feeling that this tightening noose is being coordinated to replace living breathing humans with a digital ledger. Speaking of which are you planning to get the RealID or do you already have it? I travel with my passport. I don’t consider any of these moves benign.

Perhaps it’s darkest the day before the Resurrection…Happy Easter!

I love this. “Hey kids here’s a teaching moment!”

I suppose they want us sick, tired, broke, distracted and lurching from one crisis to the next precisely so that we don’t work towards solutions.

I guess if the AI steals my identity I can always rename myself Conspiracy Barbie. I’m not sure she’s going to have banking access but maybe with the right spoofing technology I can make it happen…

Buy me a ko-fi