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Citibank Cancels Bank Account of Objectionable Blogger
Keith found this story about Citibank blocking a website's bank account after deciding that the site's blog contained questionable content. I guess it's up to a bank to decide whom to do business with, but this is pretty crazy.
The guy runs an online business without having any real world contact information available? It's pretty common for sites lacking this information to fail a bank's compliance check.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I guess it's up to a bank to decide who to do business with, but this is pretty crazy.
OK, I suppose they could not let somebody open an account or force their account closed. But no I don't think they legally get to lock the person's access to their own money.
Isn't CitiBank the bunch who decided they can freeze anybodies account for seven days, anytime they decide to?
Fine fellows to do business with.
You post one side of some obscure blog's events, and this is front page news?!! Of course there must be more details to this, but we wouldn't get it from this lame submission.
I can't even see how this issue is really relevant to nerds here. There's no tech connection, no connection to anything really.
We get it, you want to be the "light of insight" that shows us how corrupt these companies are.. but for christs sake, at this point its like running a story about how the nazi's weren't polite to jews. WE FUCKING KNOW
Bank does something inexplicable and/or dumb. Film at 11. They already unblocked the account and are doing a "review" of the site apparently. This will probably amount to nothing and they'll simply leave the account open. Wake me if something interesting happens.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
What's wrong with being a webcartoonist?
It could as well be a marketing ploy to get more eyeballs to the website. Did this really (I mean really???) happen. Can someone independent confirm this?
Not that it is a tech story anyways.
Who knows what this means? Taco, seriously, did you even go to the site? There's nothing to be seen except the main blog post, so I don't know where you're getting this "contained questionable content" idea from. That may or may not be true.
A 4 page blog that appears to be new gets free hits for a non-issue, news at Eleven!
Any more.
Interestingly. The UK courts many many years ago decided you were loaning the money to them and therefore was theirs to do with as they wished. What the bank does is create a book keeping entry and assigns that to you. I guess you could try to describe that as your money.
Deleted
Where's the 'democrat' keyword? Come on, guys. Even brain-dead morons of slashdot should realize...oh, wait...brain-dead...yeah...
Couldn't they just have modded them "-1 Troll"? :-)
From TFA: "I promise you that if we do not get a good response to this on Thursday we are moving our bank account to a bank that respects and appreciates our business."
Yeah good luck with that. If a bank dumps you for what they decide to be 'questionable conduct', they usually communicate that with other banks. I would doubt he could get an account with anything other than a small community bank now...not that that's a bad thing.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
If you do not want to do business with someone there are better ways of handling this than locking someone's account without telling them.
The conspiracy theory nut in me wonders if there was the company CEO's buddy in CitiBank who was willing to part with their job in exchange for doing this. I mean, this is a godsend to a yet another social network site doomed to failure - to create news outrage among its target audience weeks before launch - you bet every gay rights group will be talking about this. You can't pay enough for this sort of a publicity.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
I went to their blog, they just seem to sell t-shirts with the name of their site on them. Did anyone find any content that could be considered questionable? I was going to say "porn makers use banks too", but maybe they rape babies or something and I missed it.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
because "we" DON'T know, for values of "we" outside the slashdot club
this is wide-open website, not a club with established agreements. as a media mouthpiece, slashdot has influence beyond the gated community of committed readers. this story is now amplified and continues to spread. that's a good thing
so these kinds of stories will never, and should never stop, as long as human beings are reading here and as long as they feel outraged at injustice, no matter how slight
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is obviously a blatant attempt at advertising a small, obscure blog with no obvious purpose but to promote itself. Although it may be the first time I can ever recall a gay website being promoted this way here. Although a lot of us gays are geeks, the vast majority of geeks (like the general population) are straight. So a rather puzzling place to be marketing a gay website. Worst part is that I can't actually figure out why this Fabulis blog even exists. It seems to be selling branded merchandise and nothing else. And also show that gay guys can't speel, an emplacation I vary much resent.
there were at least 2 or 3 other banks out there who offer these things called "checking accounts" to all kinds of businesses.
I canceled my Citibank account for the same reason.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
when did Paypal buy Citibank?
I see you're not experienced with citibank.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Yeah, paypal sucks because they can freeze an account any time they want and they aren't a regulated bank!
Oh wait, this _is_ a regulated bank? Then it must be the blog's fault, not the bank!
Was it ever our money? Isn't this the basis of banking as a business since it was conceived? Banks borrow money from us at a low rate and loan it out to others at a higher rate. In the USA, the FDIC exists to give consumers confidence that deposits are guaranteed, to a certain $ amount, if the bank ever failed. If someone expects to get the same exact notes or bills deposited back from the bank they should be using a safe deposit box.
The manifest absurdity of it is too obvious to require explanation
This guy is so full of shit. He's having an argument with the bank and he's outright lying about the reason. Cause he's queer.
Assuming that the problem is even real, or even related to content (I have my doubts, because this seems like a great marketing ploy)... Is it because it's a gay site or because it's a "hookup" site? As i read the front page, this is about meeting someone for a "hookup". From what I've heard, postings in such forums are often deceptive and/or fronts for other sorts of "opportunities". If that's the case, Citibank might legitimately wonder whether this is a good business for them to be involved with, if only because of the opportunity for chargebacks.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
...why anyone would want to bank with Citi in the first place is beyond sanity?
Do they love Robert Rubin and the dissolution of the American economy? Do they love the serf-creation machine of Goldman Sachs, JPMOrgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citi and BofA?
Do they love all that energy/oil speculation to raise everyone's prices at Citi's Phibro?
FTFS:
Not when they receive my federal income tax dollars to subsidize and insure their operations, it isn't.
These are my rules of a bank that I will not have business with:
These are all highly immoral and in my eyes illegal concepts.
Which is why I will found my own gold/silver-based currency and bank for my big game project, and legally allow using it outside of the game. (But will disallow any of the above behaviors.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
It is harder for you to have completely scame offline businesses. You need to demonstrate your identity to a bank, then to the party you pay your rent to (or buy the place from), then you need to actually be there present (or hire another person to be)... I'm not saying it can't happen or that it doesn't happen. I've heard about scam companies that sell insurances or similar stuff and then flee the country when they would actually need to cover something. It is just a lot harder to do it and investigation will be a lot easier (tracking down the victims as they are all likely in the same area, etc.) With websites, you can create a website a day and own 30 scam businesses after a month with very little resource expenditure, maintenance, etc... So it makes sense that there is stricter control with those.
Agreed. Journalism 101 teaches that no story exists unless their are two sources. Otherwise, it goes on the Opinion page.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Speaking from firsthand experience, Jason Goldberg has a history of bending the truth to get publicity or money from investors. The latest episode seems consistent with that pattern.
Why does anyone use Citibank?
What ever are you on about?! I generally respect your comments a lot, but you completely ignore your parent already mentioned banks are not in the habit of opening accounts for web logs.
It's people or companies who open accounts, and the bank always, always, always knows how to contact them.*
While you may be right about whether this story is fabricated to garner attention, you're going off on a tangent here, being off-topic to your very own first post.
* Offer may not be valid in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein or the Cayman Islands.
The UK courts many many years ago decided you were loaning the money to them and therefore was theirs to do with as they wished
It's a little bit more complicated than this. They can invest the money in any way that they like - even in companies that you disapprove of - but they are still legally required to repay it on demand or declare bankruptcy. This counts even in cases of a bank error in your favour: they can not remove money from your account (which, as you say, isn't really money, just a value tracking the amount that they owe you), but if they ask nicely and you say no then expect all future dealings with any bank to be very, very, difficult.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
About 10 years ago I moved my checking and savings to a local credit union. A couple of years later I moved my last credit card to them as well. I've watched them like a hawk and have never caught them in any shenanigans. I would highly recommend firing your... shitty... bank and moving your funds to someone a bit more local.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Okay. Here is my theory: This is a web site that sells things. The bank account in question is the corporate account. As part of the bank's standard checklist for new accounts of new online businesses, they require that the site have real world, brick and mortar contact information so that, if there are any problems with billing, the customers will find it easier to contact the business in person or by phone, rather than bugging the bank, canceling the charges on their cards, and so forth.
The site is about to go live, so the bank checked the site for compliance. They said, "You need contact info online, we're shutting down your payment processing until you get that done, as it states in the contract you signed with us." But that isn't good publicity. It's very easy to instead intentionally miss-hear that as, "We object to your content." Get it? The contact info is the content, and the bank objects to it not being there. It isn't even a lie. And it makes good publicity.
And you know what? It seems to have worked. And more power to them. The Internet is woefully short on gay hookup sites. None of my gay friends are putting the stank on the hangdown nearly as often as they'd like to, the poor things.
You see, that kind of casual dishonesty is fucking par for the course for corporations, it's so common it's hard to even really see it as objectionable. Corporations are going to trick you, always, it's a fact of life. I'm just over here going "Aaahh! Aaah! Good one, good one, you almost got me!" Sheesh.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I may be a nut, but I think this deserves a lot of attention. It could be a small test by Citibank to see what they can get away with.
Get every shirtless gay man in tight pants & cross dresser to stand outside of Citibanks nation wide dancing with bumper stickers on their crotch saying "Questionable Content."
Citibank is one of the govt's biggets benfefactors...
http://seekingalpha.com/article/107514-citibank-bailout-300-billion-doesn-t-sound-like-a-lot-anymore
They still aren't lending... Why The Fuck are they still in business?
Assuming that the problem is even real, or even related to content (I have my doubts, because this seems like a great marketing ploy)...
Citi's Mea Culpa
Stripping back the address to "www." instead of "blog." renders....
And so I have to ask....is CmdrTaco, or a friend, an investor? Because this is obviously a ploy for attention to a brand new web business.
I mean, what's more current than dissing banks? And Citi's a zombie, so definitely a target....this is an obvious media ploy.
i demand a xkcd of this.
People and businesses can refuse to do business with you. Next.
Visa/Mastercard/Discover picks who owes what. Winning and losing a dispute is based on their rules. Loser eats it, unless the loser vanishes, then the bank eats it. If the dispute is ancient and the customer is beyond their rights period for the time needed to dispute the transaction, the customer eats it.
here: http://blog.fabulis.com/post/411819786/reaching-the-citi-limits
Jason Goldberg of fabulis here again.
I sincerely hope that we are reaching the Citi limits at fabulis. We want fabulis to be remembered for our product, not for our bank account. We want to put this behind us.
I have just received the following apology from Citi. I believe it to be a good and sincere apology. It appropriately addresses the issues of the past 24 hours.
The part I like is this paragraph in the apology:
I recognize that, to this point, this dialogue has been carried out on the internet via postings. You may choose to post this apology, however, please do not doubt the sincerity of my message and the responsibility I have for ensuring our customers do not encounter a similar experience.
There are company wide sponsored schemes to make sure homophobia is treated with the contempt it deserves.
It is simply impossible that a Citi employee would not be aware about these policies (you have to go through training, and the company pesters you until you complete it, if you don't then your manager will have a word with you).
If this was an actual news site I would hope that somebody would pick up the phone, call Citi and ask what they have to say about this.
I think Slashdot needs to grow up and begin to verify information about what is posted here...
Employees in big banks are obliged to "know their clients", so if they think they should act in a certain way because certain alerts are raised on their dealings with somebody, then this is a matter of "compliance".
This can be many things, but normally is something unusual (lets say a guy wants to open a bank account and proceeds to show you a suitcase full of banknotes, or an unusual business, or even immoral one, and although I know morality is subjective, bank employees will have to use their judgement, and some times they may fail and even be prejudiced, in spite of all the training of the world they may have received).
When a compliance issue is started there are internal procedures to be followed. I read in a comment below that the matter has been resolved, most likely a Senior manager had a luck at the situation and decided the eagerness of the person closing the account was unwarranted.
In commercial banking (not investment "casino" banking, but regular banking for normal people) bank's employees are requested to be rather safe than sorry.
IIRC, Citi's also the bank that was caught quietly pocketing the extra money when people mistakenly paid their credit card bills twice. "Oh, look, here's another check for $2345.67, just like the one we got three days ago. Our customer apparently forgot he paid this already. Let's not post a credit to his account; he'd see the two payments on his statement and feel embarrassed. Instead, let's just put it in our 'people must just love us' account."
A Citibank spokesman tells The Reg that the situation has "nothing to do" with the content of the Fabulis site. "Any suggestions that this was the case were incorrect," he says. But he also says that company reserves the right to not open an account or close it if there's illegal or discriminatory content on its website. "We're required by law to do our due diligence to understand the nature of a business that wants an account."
From the Register story here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/26/citibank_and_fabulis/
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'm not trying to convince anyone, I don't think we have enough information to decide for sure what's going on, I'm just advocating skepticism. If you read that story, you will see that Citibank has been accused of this sort of thing before, so at this point it's a he said/she said kind of deal.
It wouldn't surprise me to find Citibank has homophobes working for them. It also wouldn't surprise me to find the CEO of a new website stretched the truth for the sake of publicity.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton