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FTC Kills Dirty Online Check Processing Outfit
coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today got a US District Court to stop permanently what it called the illegal operations of an Internet-based check creation and delivery service, and to require the group to give up over half a million dollars in ill-gotten gains. According to the FTC, Qchex.com created and sent checks drawn on any bank account that a Qchex user identified, but did not verify whether the user had authority to draw checks on that account. As a result, fraudsters worldwide used the Qchex service to draw thousands of checks on bank accounts that belonged to unwitting third parties. 'The evidence shows that the launch of Qchex.com was a "dinner bell" for fraudsters and resulted in a high number of accounts frozen for fraud...' said District Court Judge Janis Sammartino."
I just found this 2005 MSNBC article that talks about Qchex.com (the company mentioned in the above), and check security.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
The instant debit you are speaking about comes from merchants use of automated clearing houses. essentially turning your check into a direct deposit into their account from yours. when you or I deposit a check into our account, we don't have a fancy ACH machine to run the check through, so the check needs to clear in the usual way.
For some time I have wanted my bank to just return any documents, checks, credit card charges, *anything* that does not include my original signature personally signed by me in ink.
They don't have the ability to set my account to do that.
Walmart, Sears, Kragen, all have signature capture hardware on their cash registers. But why would I want my signature stored in any computer? I wouldn't. I could easily put any signature on any document with a computer. *Lots* of people can today. A printed, pasted, captured signature on a document proves *nothing*.
I just make an "X" on those systems.
If we ever get to court about one of those transactions I will be expecting them to produce an originally signed ink signature, personally signed by me, proving I was here today and signed that document.
Without that, well, clearly I wasn't here.
Which is the only purpose of signing *anything*. To prove I was there that day and that *is* my signature.
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