Slashdot Mirror
Anonymous Threatens Robin Hood Attacks Against Banks
gManZboy writes "Just in time for the holidays, hacktivist collective Anonymous has announced that it has teamed up with like-minded group TeaMp0isoN to donate to charity. The catch: they're using stolen credit data from big banks to make donations, in a campaign they're calling Operation Robin Hood. Is the #OpRobinHood campaign for real, or like previous threats against Wall Street and Facebook, just another hoax? Aesthetically, at least, the OpRobinHood video ticks all of the traditional Anonymous aesthetic requirements: a mashed-up 'p0isoaNoN' logo (green on black), a liberal dose of swelling choral music (via that movie trailer staple 'Europa,' by Globus), together with selected clips of Kevin Costner as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves."
OK, so banks get screwed, but charities get screwed too. Unless they're "donating" to the RIAA charity fund, this seems pretty evil in itself.
People who frauded entire world by selling water vapor through deriving assets to 60x their value and then lending 10 times nonexistent cash over them are still sitting pretty and posting record bonuses and profits. Thats 599 times nonexistent cash lent as loans to governments, megacorps, factories, organizations, whereas there was only 1 unit of asset to back them. the correct amount of lending should have been 10x at maximum.
To simply put it in streetspeak - these people engaged in cash fraud. And they are drinking champagne in wall street. world suffers through their fraud. at this state noone can persuade me that what anonymous doing is wrong.
Read radical news here
They're going to steal money from the middle class to... theoretically... give it to the poor? And this is going to affect the people at the top, who probably don't even have a consumer credit card (and at the very least have people watching them, and charging back any unauthorized transactions), exactly how?
98% of the 99% are getting a little pissed at this bullshit.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I seriously doubt they're going to do much damage stealing from banks. They will attract a lot more attention from people who have no problem locking them up without trial however.
Lets screw up the system that the US dollar is based off of! It's not like the dollar is the global standard for currency in international trading or this would have deep impact on the global economy or anything like that. I'm personally kinda tired of crap like this. Yes, its fine to have a mission or a goal, but at least consider the ramifications of what you're attempting to do. Seriously.
Making threats doesn't really mean anything. If they do do it, good for them. However making useless threats just means potential attack vectors will close up.
I'm sure the big donation targets won't mind the hassle of dealing with angry people trying to get their money back... and likely police involvement. That's just what charities need.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
is bringing up that terrible Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves movie. That's unforgivable.
If you haven't been watching the market, all this stuff is pretty well practiced. With the super high highs and the low lows there is a lot of speculation going on and. By golly doesn't it seem as if its planned. I say let em. It's better than breaking into a bank and shooting people. Furthermore, no body gets to see inside the brothel until you either pay up, or burn the house down. I will say this, as someone who classifies himself as poor, I'm not really affected (yet) by all this grandstanding, so I'm not worried.
So, they want to steal peoples' credit card info and use that to donate those peoples' money to charities. Then the banks have to reimburse the people whose info was stolen. There are a lot of things wrong with this. First off, for those people whose info gets stolen, they are out money until the banks go through the process of reimbursing them. With the numbers of people that would be affected by this, that could take a while. So, people will be short of cash at a time when they need it most: the holidays. This is not going to endear people to their cause. Also, what is going to happen to this data? I really doubt it's going to be deleted. Remember, Anonymous can be anyone. This information will end up for sale on black market sites. You should not be breaking the law and endangering innocent people/invading their privacy just because you don't like the bank. They are really showing themselves to be no better than the banks themselves; they are taking other peoples' money and doing whatever they want with it that servers their purpose, regardless of the consequences.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
So, given the demographic that most often uses credit, they're going to steal from the poor to give to the poor? Except they're not even going to give to the poor, but rather they'll give the stolen funds to people who normally help the poor, thus causing trouble for them. So really, they're going to steal from the poor to harass the people who help the poor. This seems poorly thought out.
If they somehow manage to steal exclusively from millionaires, and if they don't keep a dime for themselves, and if they do it in such a way that it doesn't cause headaches for the charities involved, then fine. More power to them. But somehow I suspect that none of those three criteria will be met.
Someone needs a lesson in credit card merchant agreements.
Wait till the charities they give to start getting their transaction fees raised or processing frozen for astoundingly high chargeback and fraudulent transaction rates. I'm sure they'll really enjoy that.
Big win.
If they send the money to honest charities like Oxfam, Unicef or Médecins Sans Frontières, they will probably just re-credit the transferred money back to the bank. And if they use some less scrupulous charity, well, that charity shouldn't be getting money in the first place. In any case, there's no real win here.
What would be really cool, though, is if Visa (to demonstrate their unbreachable security) set out a Hack-for-Oxfam challenge, in which any money that hackers manage to route to Oxfam would be stay with them and be considered a charitable donation from Visa. It would be great free publicity if the hackers failed, and a very good deed would be done if the hackers succeeded - plus, they could patch the exploited security holes.
Robin stole from the rich and gave to the poor.
Who, exactly, are they proposing to give anything to?
Bear in mind that knowingly receiving stolen goods is a crime.
And the fact that they've announced their intent preempts almost any excuse that a person who accepts something from them in the future didn't know it was stolen.... even at best, recipients who get funds electronically without knowing where it came from might just believe it to be a bank error, which account holders are fully responsible for anyways (that is, if a bank makes an error in your favor you cannot freely utilize any extra funds you might appear to have).
This isn't stealing from the rich to give to the poor. It is ensnaring poor people who don't know any better into doing something that is just going to land them in deeper financial trouble than they are in right now.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I think there's ample evidence to conclude that this could very well be an attempt by the DHS or the FBI to create more paper terrorists. You can expect some arrests around the holidays. They're almost stalinist in their punctuality of the trials, whether public or secret.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
All of the charities will end up paying out big bucks in chargeback fees. It is the merchants that are on the hook for credit card fraud. They'll be forced to return the money and pay a chargeback fee ($30 or more). They will end up doing more damage than any potential (and misguided) good.
It was called Sneakers.
But in the end, this sort of activism proves pointless as some govts guarantee the initial investment of bank customers.
All it would do in the end is destabilise the government and send some countries broke.
Unless that is the eventual goal.
Send the home addresses of stay-at-home wives of bankers to sexual predators getting out of jail. Since obviously 2 wrongs make a right, might as well go all out.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The point is to help the people at the bottom. You know, the ones who are homeless, living on scraps they fish out of the trash of idiots like you who don't give a damn about anybody but yourself.
What the fuck are you on about? I pay my taxes and I donate to charity when I feel like it. I assure you I'm far from the 1% the Occupy people are always talking about (otherwise I wouldn't have a one and a half hour commute, both ways, every day).
This operation is talking about taking money from stolen credit cards and donating it to charity. Let's disect that a bit.
First, you're stealing people's livelihoods. Credit cards are often attached to bank accounts. You could be bankrupting people, or putting them in a state where they can't pay their bills. I have a problem with that from the get-go. But it gets worse.
When the fraudulent transaction goes through, the banks will take an interchange fee averaging about 2% of the transaction value straight from the top before the charity even gets it. So the banks are already laughing their asses off at this plan, since what Occupy thinks is going to hurt them is going to GIVE THEM MONEY.
So when the unfortunate person owning the credit card sees that they've had their money stolen, they're going to try a chargeback. Their bank may refuse this, but especially if it's a credit card, they'll likely get their money back. In the middle of this, the bank will likely take a chargeback fee from the charity since they'd have a hard time taking it from the person who's had their money stolen.
Now, in this circumstance there are likely to be a large number of chargebacks against the charity, which may further increase their liability:
Currently both Visa and Mastercard require all merchants to maintain no more than 1% of dollar volume processed to be chargebacks. If the percentage goes above, there are fines starting at $5000 – $25,000 to the merchant's processing bank and ultimately passed on to the merchant.
All of that money goes to the banks and the credit card companies.
So what's the final score here?
Victim: Either has their money back after losing it for potentially several days, or if they're unfortunate, has simply lost their money entirely.
Charity: Probably doesn't have much extra money after most people chargeback their fraudulent transactions.
Banks: Got around 2% of every single transaction involved here, more in the cases of chargebacks. Stole money from both the target and the charity without being culpable for any of it.
I'd say I was shocked that nobody thought of this, but it completely matches with everything else Occupy has done: sitting on their asses, breaking the law when convenient to them, proposing no actual solutions, and splitting their focus in a million different directions without putting any real effort into a single one.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
is that pretty much anyone can pretend to represent you...
Let's see Anonymous try that one. Only politicians are legally permitted to do that.
Maybe. If they ever did it. How many Anonymous operations have they announced that simply never happened over the last year? Look, I hate to be the one to say it, but Anonymous has nothing to do with hacking. It has everything to do with PR.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
unlike the former games they have been playing where they take down services which take potential money, they are taking real quantifiable money. when you take real money and assets are lost, law enforcement gets very serious. this is going to be a zillion counts of credit card fraud and damn some people are getting a shitton of years in jail.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
They're stealing from everyone, which is unacceptable. Anon has finally gone batshit insane.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
It should be difficult enough for anybody in a Big Bank to separate out whatever pennies Anonymous diverts to someplace they weren't supposed to go from the real money the Big Banks are routinely found to be diverting - but if Anonymous is still concerned about being caught, just tell 'em to put "U.S. Congress" in the transaction comment block.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
What else can I say that hasn't already been said, Anon's self delusion has gone completely nuts (nu7z?) the banks will not get screwed they get the money back, charities get teased and the Internet squeeze gets tighter, politicians get more fuel to fuck us with.
At least have the brains to wait until there is some sort of useful Internet Freedom legislation in place otherwise people like Senator Lieberman or MPAA/RIAA can go on and on about how hackers are the danger and we need more controls and laws and judges that pass laws without really knowing what they are doing (and admitting it).
Christ it's wrong on so many levels...rip off the banks and hire a decent publicist FFS, you may be great hackers but you suck at strategy.
This Has Been Another Pinot Noir Blather.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
They aren't stealing from me.
I'm smart enough to not have credit (minus pre-secured credit,) and resourceful enough to be cash-only otherwise.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
They'll be not getting the money and dealing with banks and payment processors. In some cases they may deal with angry individuals who don't watch what happens. However more than likely these things will get noticed fairly fast, since it is easy to see what your CC is doing online, and the banks will be informed, and they'll stop payment. So the charity will think they are getting money, then not get it.
Then of course because of the level of fraudulent transactions, flags will go up on them as a merchant, so it'll get to the point where if someone makes a donation of any sizable amount, it'll generate a call immediately from the bank to verify. If that keeps up, the payment processors may get angry and shut down the account.
This kind of shit will work not at all. Having had my CC information stolen a couple times I can say that while it is a little inconvenient, it is nothing more. Call the bank, they stop the charges, fill out a little form on things and that it that. A new card shows up in the mail in about 3 days.
It's also not like you could give the charities all that much from a single source. Never mind CC limits, even if you find a really high limit CC, do too high a transaction to a place that doesn't usually get it and that'll have it stopped right there and then.
This plan has so much fail written all over it.
First, there is the question of whether or not this is even real and not a "TERRISTS COMIN' TA STEAL YER FREEDOMS" event.
Second, there are much better funded and staffed operations that steal credit card information en masse. Even if this group (assuming it actually exists) snags a couple, it will be a drop in the bucket compared to what organized crime pulls off every day. People who work in fraud prevention won't even feel a speed bump.
a) In the USA credit card issuers (issuing bank, not the interchange network) are liable for fraudulent transactions, losing 100% of the amount (as the customer will not pay, usually) is a loss to the bank even if they win 2-3% interchange.
b) They will chargeback to charities many of the fraudulent transactions which occur card-not-present (i.e. internet payments), so the charities won't get much or any of it. I don't know if there are any additional fees which may actually hurt the charity.
c) if a particular merchant, like a charity, seems to attract a significant amount of fraud, the issuing banks may start to notice it and block payments from all cardholders, hurting the charity's normal fundraising.
d) if a particular merchant, like a charity, seems to attract a significant amount of fraud, then that charity's bank (acquirer) is likely to drop its credit-card processing agreement, disrupting the charity's normal fundraising. There may even be some penalties if they do not have a sufficiently up-to-date website and on-line fraud detection software/procedures.
I work professionally in some aspect of credit card software (at a tech company and not a bank).
In sum, this proposed action is likely to create some extra work for bank employees, though it will probably not cause financially significant losses as many online transactions (not processing with "Secured by Visa" or MC's similar procedure) can be charged back. Charities are unlikely to benefit. They may be harmed.
I have the feeling if this actually goes off the FDICI is going to be on the hook for most of it.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Unless you're independently wealthy, good luck buying anything over $10,000.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Isn't it Anonymous that came up with this ludicrous scheme? Anonymous does not control, own, rule, drive, steer, or otherwise control Occupy. The only thing they have in common is the use of the Guy Fawkes masks.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
they have the money to buy shit dumb fucks.
If you're using a credit card as a way to get a loan ... you're doing it wrong. That's what the banks would love for you to do but you can also think for yourself and not play their game the way they would like you to (by being impulsive, undisciplined, not having a plan, and yielding easily to temptations of instant gratification).
As a form of payment credit cards are great -- that means you buy only what you know you can pay off that same month, and unlike cash you enjoy a paper trail and all sorts of fraud protections and the ability to audit and budget and conveniently purchase online. As a loan, credit cards are horrible -- they are designed to give you just enough rope to hang yourself with. That's why when you show responsibility and make all your payments on time, the banks respond by giving you more credit. They are hoping you will finally get in over your head. That's the way they play this game.
That's why so many of the agreements give the bank the ability to increase your interest when you are late on making a payment, because people struggling to make their payments really need more debt right? It's designed to be a hole that becomes increasingly hard to dig yourself out of. The bank makes more profit that way. If you are so poor that you can barely make ends meet, using credit cards for a loan is only going to make your situation worse.
Sure, emergencies (rare, unforeseeable events) do happen, but aside from that you need to live within your means. Nothing else is sustainable. The banks really love when you try to live beyond your means. Remember that debt is the only form of slavery that's still legal.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
They're stealing from everyone, which is unacceptable. Anon has finally gone batshit insane.
How is this different from the current capitalist system? Bankers stealing from those who are in fear of losing their houses, their jobs, even their lives. The real culprits here are the bankers and rich capitalist stock manipulators who keep on making money off the skin of those who have no backbone to stand up against them.
GeoKone.NET
I have to agree with the commenter who said this sounds more like a DHS propaganda effort than anything. If Anonymous really wants to hurt banks, why not just use simple acts of vandalism. I would think that vandalizing branch locations across the country would have a bit more of a financial impact against the banks. How much money would a bank lose if its branch offices were closed up for a day or three? If ATM machine screens were smashed so they are unusable. What if it happened to five branch locations across the city?
That's easy to do. Save your money and buy it with cash. I've been doing it for years. I refuse to pay the interest rates on credit cards.
Hack ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX and air 24 hours of people reading REAL NEWS. That would be far better.
Ever heard of the civil rights movement? They cause change without ousting politicians or using force. It's called civil disobedience, and it's proved effective time and time again.
You have it exactly backwards. The civil rights movement succeeded when *voters* decided it would be an electoral issue. The viet nam war ended when *voters* decided it would be an electoral issue, and that decision was made when their lives were affected (increased casualties hitting the middle class) not because of radical anti-war protesters. The true currency of politics are votes not money, money is only useful when the voters are indifferent.
By making ourselves heard (me included) Occupy is waking people up from their fantasy land where government and corporations aren't screwing us.
All Occupy is on a path to do is create a perception of civil unrest and scare the swing voters into going republican, just like the radical anti-war protesters did during the viet nam war resulting in getting nixon elected. Occupy needs to realize that "camping" is going to backfire. Show up, protest, yell and shout, day or night, but when you tire go home or get a room ... repeat as necessary. The more the focus is on "camping" the more the middle will feel that Occupy does not represent them. Polls are showing that this is already happening. In the minds of many Occupy is looking more and more like the "professional protesters" that show up at G20, World Bank, and other meetings. Continue on this path if you wish to waste a great opportunity.
I've stood behind many of the things Anonymous has done in the past but this just seems stupid.
The only thing this will do is cost charities millions in audits, time, etc and make many lose services they use to collect donations. You know what will happen if a charity receives illicit funds through paypal? Their bank account gets frozen and paypal will in most cases never allow them to use their service again.
If they want to be dicks they should use these attacks through online services that the music/movie industries run / make money from, or big evil online retails like walmart and bestbuy or make payments to other banks customers mortgages / dept.
TruePunk | Games
The owners of the card won't be liable for the charges dumbass.
While the owner of the card may not be liable, the charity may still have to pay the fee for payment processing on the fraudulent charges. At a minimum the charity will be put on a higher fee schedule due to an elevated number of fraudulent credit card charges, so they will lose on all legitimate donations in the future.
They should have used Errol Flynn, or even Russell Crowe. Hell, Cary Elwes was a better Robin Hood than Costner.
Prince of Thieves has to be the only Robin Hood story where you're kind of rooting for the sheriff of Notingham.
... also, I can kill you with my brain.
If you can buy it on credit now, why can't you save up for it and buy it later?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Marriner S. Eccles, Chairman and Governor of the Federal Reserve Board
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriner_Stoddard_Eccles
http://minneapolisfed.org/pubs/region/99-06/martin.cfm
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
They've been batshit insane since the very start, it only looked like they weren't because they coincidentally attacked evil companies at first.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Don't forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Arguably the worst war crime in history. And nobody was held accountable.
So you'd rather keep paying rent for a decade or so until you have enough cash to afford a house, especially if payments on that house in total would be less than all that decade of rent money plus the cost of the house?
I've never understood people paying 30% interest on their credit cards.
Never let your credit card debt be more than your monthly wage. Pay it off in full monthly and get charged 0% interest. It's that easy.
1. You are always one month ahead. You basically have a free month's wages until the day you die.
2. Many cards, like mine, offer 1-2% "cash back". I actually get supermarket points on mine which can be doubled or quadrupled at certain times of the year. It's like getting paid to use the card. Up to 7% sometimes.
3. Profit.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
There's lots of arguing going on about whether this is good or bad. All very interesting, I'm sure.
Here's the thing though; whether we think it is good or bad is irrelevant. Completely irrelevant. This is inevitable.
We are approaching a state of effective global government, through synchronicity of corrupting forces. All the major governments are toppling to corruption in roughly the same way; fear of dissidents, desire to quash "harmful" speech, global lobbying entities, fear of the Internet, using fear of child porn to manipulate public opinion, megacorps abusing fear of economic instability, etc. They are all falling over the same way, and they're all reading each others play books and imitating each others steps, incapable of recognizing the downward treadmill they are all running on.
As with every sudden spurt in the growth of top-down authority, there is a concomitant concentration of power (wealth, influence, information, etc). Those who are winning at the concentration game are those who are most willing to sacrifice everything for a little more power. Their fundamental nature is that they will continue to sacrifice everything for a little more. And they will continue to gain more. It is becoming self catalyzing. Once that iterative selection mechanism gets rolling, it does not stop quietly.
Look back through world history and ask yourself this question: What happens when power concentration becomes self-catalyzing? What happens every single time that happens? What happened in Rome? The United States? France? Russia? China? Egypt? Yemen? Tunisia? Libya? Those are just off the top of my head. What has happened every single time power concentration has become self-catalyzing?
This particular incident may be real, or not. It may be part of what brings about change, or not. In the long run it may be net positive, or not. What is not in question is this: This sort of thing is going to happen. It cannot be avoided, unless we find a way to stop the cycle without the upheaval.
And do you think that is going to happen? Do you think the machines in power can be smoothly depowered, or will choose to relinquish their self-fueling avarice? Do you have any doubt that they are rapidly becoming self-fueling organisms? Have you ever tried to talk to a cancerous polyp, and explain that it should not consume everything it can?
The question is not whether bands of renegades will commit acts of poorly aimed hostility against poorly selected targets. The question is how we can best navigate our society through this period where we are incubating that sort of dangerous antigen to combat these cancerous concentration machines. How we can get back to a place where the cancer of anti-social avarice is no longer doing more harm than the chemotherapy of civil unrest.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Well, doing the same things that the "bad guys" isn't exactly a good way to legitimate yourself...
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world
I agree with you for the most part but at least for most people it is not practical to save up the money to buy a house for cash.
Even if you can do so it doesn't mean that it makes the best financial sense to do so:
1) The money that you're paying in rent is enriching the landlord and not going towards your own capital investment
2) You're losing the capital gains of buying your own property (temporary financial crisis excepted real property goes up in value over time)
3) The money that you're keeping in the bank or under the mattress doing nothing is losing value over time due to inflation
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Three letter agancies grabbed all the capable folks 6 months ago. What is left is script kiddies. Remember how they vowed to destroy Facebook? Someone should remind them the 5th of November was weeks ago.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
As a form of payment credit cards are great -- that means you buy only what you know you can pay off that same month, and unlike cash you enjoy a paper trail and all sorts of fraud protections and the ability to audit and budget and conveniently purchase online.
Debit cards can do the same.
Anonymous has always taken victims wherever they find them. This is nothing new.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
You must be new here.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Well thats why you don't actually charge money you don't have(but are expecting you will), you can treat the credit card like a free 1 month loan, keep the cash you would have been spending otherwise in the bank and let it accrue interest(though right now you would be lucky to get 1%)
Monstar L
People arn't going to close down their accounts because of a bunch of deluded self righteous script kiddies on a power trip.
This, precisely, is why a home loan is the only kind of debt (excluding a credit card paid off in full every month to build a credit rating) I ever intend to take out.
The problem to be avoided is not so much debt per se, but the interest that inevitably comes with it. And not even just interest, but more what interest is a special case of: rent. Interest is rent on money. So if your options are to pay rent on a home for a period of time while you save up to buy a home, or to pay rent on money with which to buy a home now and then pay back the money over that same period of time, the question is simply which has the higher rent, the home or the money. And even in this lousy market, interest on a home loan is lower than the insane raw profits extracted by landlords renting out property.
Rent is where you pay someone a permanent fee for the temporary use of something and so, when the transaction is over, they have what they rented you back again and you are out that money. This is how wealth accumulates in the hands of the already-wealthy! They have what we need (homes, cash, whatever), and they can hang on to it and "let" us use it for a fee, which then gives them further assets to rent out and further their illegitimate income. If they did not have this option, if rental contracts were not upheld by the law, then those assets beyond which they could personally use would become worthless to them except as things to sell; and they'll only be able to sell them if they offered terms which other people, people who don't already have such things and are in the market for them, could afford.
Simply invalidating rent (having the government refrain from doing something) would "force", by free market forces alone, a voluntary redistribution of excess (unused) wealth from the 'haves' to the 'have-nots' on reasonable terms, by making such sales the option which is most in the 'haves' self-interest (either that or let their useless assets rot), after eliminating the illegitimate option of charging for something and then getting to keep it afterwards. This is the kind of solution people need to be looking for, addressing the systematic problems which cause wealth disparities to grow, not looking to patch the system and simply cover up the symptoms of it!
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
actually, the way the lending institutions do it is that. you lend nonexistent cash,showing your assets as collateral. in america you can lend up to 10 times the value of your assets. for every 1 unit of asset you can lend 10units of cash. it is nonexistent cash. its not an asset in cash. it is cash lent over asset as collateral. now imagine what happens when someone inflates that 1 units of asset to 60 times its value through hedge fund trickery and then lends 10 times the cash. now the safe lending ratio (10 was still too much in fact) has been circumvented to the rate of lending SIX HUNDRED times cash for 1 unit of REAL asset.
Read radical news here
As a form of payment credit cards are great -- that means you buy only what you know you can pay off that same month, and unlike cash you enjoy a paper trail and all sorts of fraud protections and the ability to audit and budget and conveniently purchase online.
Debit cards can do the same.
Sure, though in the case of fraud it's _your_ money on the line and not the bank's, and there's no ability to quickly get extra money in an emergency when you really need it now, and the fact that it's charged against your checking account (money you actually have right now) means you have a computer system to implement your fiscal discipline for you...
There's a reason the banks promoted debit cards like crazy. When the bank heavily promotes something, it's not because it serves your interests at their disadvantage. Responsibly used credit is better than debit. Debit is better only if you just can't control yourself and refuse to learn because it limits the damage you can do. It's a simpler game with fewer rules and that appeals to impulsive people who don't like to make budgets and plan ahead; but consequently, there are fewer ways you can take advantage of various rewards and bonuses without financially hanging yourself the way they want you to.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Anon is just a bunch of sheep being led around by their noses by either nation-states or organized crime. They are going to take it to the next step and turn all their 'followers' into Oliver Twist-like characters. Wake up children, you're being had.
Anonymous, I am poor. My bank routing number is ...
They're not talking about mortgages, they're talking about credit cards. I doubt anyone's buying a house on their VISA.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
How hard would it be for Anonymous to filter the identity theft data and use only credit cards that belong to the 1%? Or to select corporations? I do not think that would be so hard. I doubt that the 99% have any reason to fear that Anonymous in that respect.
As to potential recipients of Robin Hood booty, these fall into two categories. One consists of "charities" like the RIAA, Church of Scientology, and white supremacist groups who are deserving of a multitude of $5 dollar donations that are sure to trigger "recipient pays expenses of reversal" rules. The other group contains charities like Doctors Without Borders, the EFF, child welfare support, and so on who would benefit from large contributions that fit the normal financial patterns of the "contributors" selected by Anonymous.
Com'on slashdotters, use yer noggins fer somepin more than hat racks. Anonymous has demonstrated that it has the skills to sort sheep from goats and to tailor their activities appropriately. More than likely, they have not made this public announcement without having first spent a few months in real world testing.
Will
I think that people are just using the "bad laws" excuse as an attempt to present an altruistic motive to their otherwise disgusting desire to steal and cause general mischief and mayhem.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Yes, I am a genius. Pre-secured credit cards don't affect your credit rating and you don't have to worry about losing any more mone that you put on the card itself.
You also don't have interest to pay on pre-secured credit cards.
Are *YOU* using a pre-secured credit card? If not, you are being unwise.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved more lives than any other event in the history of war.
Only by ignorant people.
Educated people consider Dresden and Tokyo to be much worse than Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Especially given that the firebombings of Tokyo killed more people than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
Then there's the whole Concentration Camps thing, that killed about 20 times as many people as Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
The Great Leap Forward, similar death toll to the Camps.
The Ukraine Famine that Stalin engineered, similar death toll to the Camps.
Face it, considering the atom-bombings to be the worst war crimes in history merely shows your lack of knowledge of history....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Well, in reality, yes. But in reality, at least around me, house prices are still falling, and are still going to fall for another couple of years at least. Plus rents are cheap because of all the vacant houses, much cheaper than the houses are currently selling for.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
If anyone honestly thinks this is going to hurt the rich in any shape, form or fashion, they've got more than a few screws loose.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Don't donate stolen funds directly to the charity, use the credit cards to buy from someone you also despise (Walmart?) and have the product shipped to the charity? I'm not sure if this would work, but I think if Anon put a little thought into the matter they might find ways that eliminate at least some of the problems posted in here. I mean, none of this is ever going to happen, but if it did, it could be done better.
That just drives the cost of goods up, since they charge merchants the 1-2%. On large dollar items, sometimes you can negotiate a cash discount.
Evil bankers won't buy me a house. Boo hoo.
Worse than the Germans bombing Britain? I think not. And it ended the war, saving far more people than died in those two cities. Worse than mustard gas in WWI? Hardly.
Free Martian Whores!
If you have to put money into the "pre-secured credit card's" account to use that card, doesn't that really make it a debit card and not a credit card? Credit is when you spend money that you don't have (or don't have in that account at least), and pay it back later. Debit is when you spend money that you already have.
Debit is linked to a bank.
Credit is not.
Not a hard distinction to make.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
While delving into the details of how it will play out is interesting... I dont think any of that really matters to them. I dont want to call what they are doing misdirection or overt lieing but the intent here is to throw fuel on an ever growing fire, how the flames lash out really doesnt matter (to them) all that much.
No, you're looking at the wrong definitions of "credit" and "debit".
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_(finance):
"Credit is the trust which allows one party to provide resources to another party where that second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but instead arranges either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date."
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debits_and_credits:
"In a non-accounting sense, according to knol,[7] a "debit" is:
a written note on bank account or a other financial record of a sum of money owed or spent, or
a sum of money taken from a bank account."
Just because some companies want to redefine words that have been in the English language for centuries doesn't mean they can.
So for this so-called "pre-secured credit card", it's obviously incorrectly named. If you have to put money into an account (which then makes them a bank, even if they choose not to call themselves a bank), before you're allowed to spend that money with the card, then it quite simply is NOT a credit card, because there's no credit involved. You can't call it "credit" if you have to pay for it beforehand; that's a "debit". "Credit" is when someone loans you money with the expectation that you'll pay it back later.
this could be true but, stolen credit cards are always charged to charity first to check to see if the card is working. if the card works, then they can buy whatever. This is not Anonymous. This practice has been done for a long time.
Please work on your reading comprehension. Native Americans? It is 2011 not 1620 which is when the first Europeans got to the US and immediately started fighting and scamming the natives. The real fighting targeting the natives was committed by Europeans such as England, Spain, and France. The Spanish wiped out entire cultures in South America during their colonization period. I am not saying the US did not kill any natives but trying to use those attacks in today's world is ridiculous. If you want to start hop scotching back thru time there is not a single country or tribe who does not have blood on their hands. Every country or territory border on the planet was drawn and re-drawn in blood.
"civilians slaughtered by the US armed forces during the Vietnam conflict" My post was about the military killing it's OWN civilians to maintain control. And sure the US has killed civilians during combat but that tends to happen when you are fighting people who launch their attacks hiding behind their woman and children. It happens when they use schools, hospitals, and religious locations to store their munitions and artillery launch sites. And why is it that intelligent people such as yourself never complain about anyone except the US when civilians are killed in combat? Turkey makes weekly air raids into northern Iraq to pound the PKK and Kurds and the breakdown of military versus civilian casualties is never mentioned. Does Turkey have a civilian avoiding smart bomb? People blame millions of deaths in IRAQ on the US but never mention that it was Saddam Hussein who confiscated the international aid after the first Iraq war which caused their citizens to suffer? Why do you never hear anyone decrying the brutality of the Taliban and the other self declared terrorists organizations that do not even make the slightest pretense of targeting only military targets? Why do people never acknowledge that in Iraq and Afghanistan that their own militarises and "freedom fighters" have killed more civilians than the US by a wide margin? Well none of this matters since my post was about domestic conflicts not international conflicts.
Also everyone fixates on Germany's atrocities and death camps but they were pikers compared to the USSR. The USSR didn't even try to target any specific ethnic or religious group. They were equal opportunity killers. Stalin ended up having to scour his gulags to free all the scientists he put there before they started fighting the Germans. One of the most well known prisoners was the architect of Russia's main line battle tank. The USSR took about 2.5 million German POWs and only around 10% of them ever returned after the war and it took many years after the war ended for even these people to return. No wonder the surrendering Germans couldn't run fast enough towards the western allies to surrender.
This one is dumb. A number of banks are already threatened in Europe and are posting losses. Banks have ordinary people's money in there.
Please go back to targeting evil Facebook - now that is doing a real social service.
Your pumpkin is showing.
No it is not incorrectly named. Secured credit is backed by assets and collateral. Unsecured credit is what you have to pay back, it's like a loan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_of_credit
"Lines of credit can be secured by collateral or unsecured."
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
To add:
http://consumerwiki.dca.ca.gov/wiki/index.php/Credit_Cards_(Secured)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
No, I don't think so. Secured credit, being backed by collateral, is still a loan. That's like a house mortgage, or also a HELOC: you have to pay back the loan, with interest, but there's collateral in case you default on the loan. The collateral isn't there to repay the loan, it's just something the creditor can take in case you default, so that their loss is less (the collateral may or may not cover the entire loss; lately in the housing market, it usually doesn't).
What you're talking about is something where you never repay the loan, because you already paid for it before you even exercised your line of "credit". That's not credit at all, that's just a glorified marketing renaming of a debit card. They probably get to use credit card rules and merchant fees rather than regular bank debit card merchant fees, thanks to their clever renaming, but it's still not "credit" no matter how much they may call it that, just like a Geo Metro pulling a 4x4 Harbor Freight utility trailer is not a "tractor trailer" no matter how much someone may insist it is. Credit is when you have a loan that you're supposed to pay back; a prepaid card is not a loan, because it's prepaid.
It's like virtual particles. Particle (cash) and anti particle (debt) pairs can spontaneously pop into existence. So all we need is a black hole to swallow the debt and cash is the equivalent of Hawking radiation apparently emitted by a black hole. I surmise that the worlds current financial problems are due to the black hole(s) finally evaporating.
Yes worse than Germans bombing Britain. Ignoring for a moment the immediate death toll of both, the long term result of nuclear bombing is far more grim and cruel than normal HE. Nobody suffered radiation sickness, cancer etc. from bombing Britain. Instead of just death toll, consider the actual suffering of all those affected.
As far as the mustard gas, OK that was also highly cruel, but it was in the trenches, soldiers on soldiers. Not nuking the fuck out of unsuspecting civilians.
Fair enough, but what you list are atrocities committed under regimes that no longer exist, so even if the right people were not prosecuted for their crimes, at least they are not still in power, parading around, unlike the US of A, which is exempt of any crime at all.
I'm not sure whether the same distinction applies in Europe. I see no reason why debit should be exempt from fraud protection. In my country (Hungary) barely anyone uses credit cards.