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I wonder why banks would rely on a crypto currency like Ripple, of which 60% is held by the company and a further 20% is held by the founders.

The value of [coin] is completely arbitrary and doesn't matter.

If SWIFT wants to grab a million Bitcoin and declare that only those million Bitcoins will be part of their network, then who cares what "the market" thinks Bitcoin is worth? "The market" will treat those coins as if they're dead. Meanwhile SWIFT says 1 Satoshi = 1 US Dollar, making a SWIFTBitcoin worth 100 million USD and they're off to the races.

Except for the small problem that Bitcoin's throughput sucks, which is why various alternatives like Ripple have popped up. Ripple 'only' divides into 1 million drops, but the end result is still a finely grained transaction ledger.

Once you take away all the arbitrage pump and dump stock market hodling bullshit, it's easy enough to see why you might rely on a company like Ripple. All that matters is for the platform to be fast, stable, and have at least four nines of uptime.

SWIFT would have processed that transaction to pay your employees by transfering the funds for a few cents a message. https://www.swift.com/

they have been around for decades as well.

I just couldn't pass by saying this one. Even networks were not compatible at one time. IMHO, this compatibility can be addressed by having an open standard for minimal communication interface, and allow some folks that know how and can do the secure communication ( I have seen and worked with the SWIFT network. It is very secure an could be used for data transmission or store and forward. It is used internationally for banking now. It is a private network set up by banks based in Beljum, and is very secure IMHO. see https://www.swift.com/ for information on their products. I am just a happy former user. It ain't cheap, it is good.)

1. Catch All addresses

2. By capturing all e-mails coming to the * (Catch All) address

3. There are enough tools on the web to find that one out; as you might know, privacy is not real on the public web

4. There are certain DNS registrars sending mail to billing contacts to pay up -to them- so they can transfer the domain and make you a customer. If those websites are still in the air, I can imagine there might be a customer believing the invoice was real.

5. They do .. and many keep nagging about it too..
5b. It's easy in many cases to find out which tools a business uses once you got in touch with it.
5c. Some of them send company/program updates, the second step is using the e-mail address to request a "lost password".

My question:

What I would not understand is, which customer would pay up to a russian bank account? Does the squatter own an american bank account to wire money?
In Europe, we use the IBAN system for international transfers.

That already makes it impossible for the squatter to continue such abuse on the financial platform once the victim files a complaint; as it is a closely watched and backlogged SWIFT system through entire Europe. I wonder how exactly this Russian masks himself to be having an American account, unless anyone without identity papers can get those?...

The matter is more specific than the article leads to believe. SWIFT is not actually 'moving' it's servers, rather it is adding new servers in Europe. Creating one TransAtlantic zone for messages allowed to reach the US and one Europe zone for messages not allowed to reach the US. The 'National Member Group Chairperson' of each country has specified in which of these zones their traffic should be traveling in, so with some exceptions each country has their own choice. Soon every country which has chosen to will keep their inter-Europe traffic within Europe. (exchanges with American banks obviously have to go to America.) For more information read: http://www.swift.com/solutions/industry_initiatives/distributed_architecture.page And: http://www.swift.com/solutions/industry_initiatives/image_doc/DA_Phase_1_white_paper_200907_1.4.pdf

The matter is more specific than the article leads to believe. SWIFT is not actually 'moving' it's servers, rather it is adding new servers in Europe. Creating one TransAtlantic zone for messages allowed to reach the US and one Europe zone for messages not allowed to reach the US. The 'National Member Group Chairperson' of each country has specified in which of these zones their traffic should be traveling in, so with some exceptions each country has their own choice. Soon every country which has chosen to will keep their inter-Europe traffic within Europe. (exchanges with American banks obviously have to go to America.) For more information read: http://www.swift.com/solutions/industry_initiatives/distributed_architecture.page And: http://www.swift.com/solutions/industry_initiatives/image_doc/DA_Phase_1_white_paper_200907_1.4.pdf

I don't mean public networks, I mean private ones, SWIFT for instance..

Has been a few years since I've worked in the finance arena, but I thought each BIC code was signed (or at least they were talking about it while I was involved in that area) and things like MQSeries channels between nodes that were used for transporting data have been SSL/TLS encrypted for ages? I remember doing it actually, MQ Version 5.2 (or 5.3?) included SSL-over-channel functionality.

Anyways, I'm sure it's being taken care of, maybe get in touch with your bank and ask them if you're concerned?

This is not really about the Swiss as much as it is about Privacy and Tax Evasion.

Exactly! Even SWIFT announced that they will setup a data centre in Switzerland to make sure that European and Asian messages stay outside the control of USA.
http://www.swift.com/index.cfm?item_id=63570

SWIFT (not Swift) is the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWIFT, and while headquartered in Belgium, its network SWIFTnet is, I believe, run out of Culpeper, VA. U.S.A., and their technology center is in nearby Manassas, VA. http://www.swift.com/

Yeah, those US idiots can't do anything right.

As a result of this scandal, SWIFT plans to re-engineer their network to keep intra-European traffic within Europe. (Source: http://www.swift.com/index.cfm?item_id=62260)

Swift's location is not very secret. It's in Terhulpen, Belgium. Right near where IBM used to have an international education center.
Check it out on google maps.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=nl&geocode=&q=s wift+terhulpen+belgium&ie=UTF8&ll=50.735084,4.4831 3&spn=0.01081,0.031929&t=k&z=16&iwloc=A&om=1

swift offices:
http://www.swift.com/index.cfm?item_id=3209

Now it may be that their data center locations are more hidden. But I am quite sure that those are not as secret today as they may have used to be.

SWIFT has a history of cooperating in good faith with authorities such as central banks, treasury departments, law enforcement agencies and appropriate international organisations, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF*), in their efforts to combat abuse of the financial system for illegal activities.
http://www.swift.com/index.cfm?item_id=6149

Which bank does not allow you to make payments to other people? What is the point of online banking if you can only shuffle money between your own accounts.

Of the four banks with which I have bank accounts, all allow me to make payments to anyone else whose account details I know. I can also make SWIFT (i.e. international) transfers to any account worldwide, by providing branch SWIFT code and account number.

I don't quite buy the 100%. But very, very close to 100% is achievable. Even if you set up everything perfectly and you do have regular dumps and you do keep them off site and you adhere to each and every best practice for a system- or database admin, things can go wrong beyond your control. For example, blown hardware, corrupting both mirrors of a disk, really dumb application bugs, corrupting the database logically over time, whatever.

It's a matter of checks and balances and cost, of course. It is however very hard to achieve virtually guaranteed recoverability up to the last running transactions. For 20% of the cost however, you can achieve recoverability up to (say) a couple of hours worth of transactions. Depending on the type of data this might be quite perfect for your requirements.

For example: /. has quite different data recoverability requirements then the SWIFT (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) network. While a days loss of /. will disgruntle a couple hundred people, 20 minutes worth of lost SWIFT message can provoke an international financial crisis.

I wouldn't think that Micro$oft is obliged to secure the server park and data of a free service as rigourous as the Federal Reserve has to secure its competers.

You are completely correct however, that $$$s overall behavior, especially in context of other service failures, lost customer data, a weeks loss of service and an information policy, compared to which your average NSA spook is as talkative as a drinking buddy in a pub after half a bottle of Tequilla is utterly unacceptable.

No sir, I wouldn't trust such amateurs with my personal data, let alone with confidential, or even company critical data; TYWM

I'm as always impressed when I hear some (most) of you trans-atlantic people saying how long they work a day, and for how much. (like > is ...)

I'm currently doing a cross-flavor job between pure u*ix admin (HP-UX mainly) and COTS (customer of the shelves (for the most fortunate who don't know, as if HP-UX was not a COTS :-)), like oracle, entrust pkica and netscape LDAP directory) installation and custom configuration.

From a hours/day point of view it varies from -1h from the minimal I'm paid for ,7h30 a day=37h30 a week (apparently the week of 35h isn't far, see France lesiglation(is this an english word ?) to sometime 11 hours a day, when people are short on schedule. (not my team, of course, we're not just mere coders :) (flame me, oh yes ...)

I don't know if it pays like a similar job in the U.S. (or anywhere else...), but for me it's quite a bit of money.

To come to the point and from what I can read from my time-sheet , I've been working rougly 38h47.17min a week since September 2000.

I didn't claim compensation for supp. hours yet, which I'm lawfully should be able to claim. But as I'm starting my work day anywhere from 9am to 11h30am I don't plan to do it soon. (Note that in my contract I'm supposed to work from 8h30am-9h00am to 5h00pm-5h30pm.)

Off schedule hours should be paid 50% more between 6h30pm to 8h30am on weekdays and Saturday and 100% more on Sunday and public holydays.

Note also that I have 27 paid vacation days (100% salary) this year, to be taken between 1st Jan 2001 and 30 April 2002.

How does this compare to a similar job in other countries ?