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Fraud Threat Halts Knuth's Hexadecimal-Dollar Checks

Posted by timothy on from the sobering-thought-about-checks-in-general dept.

Barence writes "You may be aware of Donald Knuth, the creator of TeX and author of The Art of Computer Programming, who used to post checks to anyone who spotted an error in one of his books — one hexadecimal dollar, or $2.56. No one cashed them though. This blogger has two of them proudly on his wall, but the sad news is that modern day bank fraud has put a stop to Knuth's much-loved way of keeping his books free of errors." (Here's Knuth's own post about the sad change.)

8 of 323 comments (clear)

  1. This is getting old. by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Checks and credit cards are absurdly easy to fake in the modern world. Banks need to get off their asses and roll out a new system...With the billion dollar bonuses that they keep giving themselves, I'm not too sympathetic of the cost.

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
    1. Re:This is getting old. by rcw-home · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Regarding checks, with their watermarks, UV-readable text,and what not, I don't think they would fall under the category of 'absurdly easy to fake'.

      Considering that you don't need to pass off a watermarked check to someone in real life to drain money from someone's account (you only need the account number and routing number off the check), yes, they absolutely are absurdly easy to fake.

      Also, there's no guarantee that when someone writes you a check that they have the funds to cover it, because it isn't processed right then and there. These two factors put together have led the vast majority of merchants to simply refuse checks today.

      There's absolutely no excuse for banks to not have rolled out a checking system that uses much larger one-time-use account numbers and allows merchants to verify that the check won't bounce. They've been twiddling their thumbs.

    2. Re:This is getting old. by Tmack · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's absolutely no excuse for banks to not have rolled out a checking system that uses much larger one-time-use account numbers and allows merchants to verify that the check won't bounce. They've been twiddling their thumbs.

      ... and raking in the $$. They wont change their ways because each bounced check is an opportunity for them to collect lots of fees. At least $20 from the person trying to pass off the bad check, and another $20-30 from the account that got overdrawn. To top it off, once that account is overdrawn, they get those fees on Every withdrawal until they stop coming in. For fake checks, they will still charge your account for trying to pass off the bad check. To them, its not broken, its a source of revenue.

      tm

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    3. Re:This is getting old. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You know... I can't even recall seeing checks outside America since the 80ths. The rest of the world uses cash, bank transfers and credit/debit cards. And we survive, without the costs and problems associated with a ridiculously broken check system.

      The question is not the cost of implementing chip-and-pin or smartcards worldwide, the question is the cost of getting America to upgrade from a payment system that was modern around 1800.

  2. Re:New Bill by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 5, Insightful

    didn't you know the USPS recomends you not send cash through the mail

    If Knuth is right, it's safer to send cash than a check. Intercept cash, you only get that amount; intercept a check, and you can drain my whole checking account.

    --
    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
    You cannot wash away blood with blood
  3. Re:paranoia much by marcosdumay · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "It is odd that he's had multiple attacks while I've had zero..."

    No, it's not odd at all. I guess that if people did go around showing your checks to everybody they meet or maybe even posting them to the web, you'd have plenty of atacks too. Instead, people probably choose to cash your checks, so you don't have this problem.

    --
    Rethinking email
  4. Re:Forgive me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!
    It's a joke dollar and Knuth gets to designate what a hexidecimal dollar is since HE's writing the checks!!!

    Leave it alone already!!!

  5. The retardation of the financial sector by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We should make every suit at every financial institution in this country write a thousand times on a blackboard:

    An identifier is not a shared secret key.

    This applies to account numbers, credit card numbers, social security numbers, drivers license numbers, everything.

    The symbol that represents you is not the thing that proves who you are. Otherwise, your name itself would be all you need to verify your identity, and we all know how absurd that is.

    Of course, the real problem is that they aren't held adequately liable for the fraud that occurs. They blame it on the customer and wash their hands of it. If we made them always eat that cost, I guarantee we'd see real progress against identity theft.