Learned some stuff
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@ShiroKuro said in Learned some stuff:
@Steve-Miller we all have Face ID activated on our phones, so that’s something at least.
Am I right in guessing that Sharon’s wallet and phone were taken from her purse? Where was her purse?
So, my son asks me if I really want the police, or whoever is holding me, to have access to my phone simply by holding it up to my face. I don't have facial recognition activated.
Crazy economist who likes to write about higher education.
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@Piano-Dad said in Learned some stuff:
my son asks me if I really want the police, or whoever is holding me, to have access to my phone simply by holding it up to my face.
This was actually something I remember talking about when the iPhone update removed the fingerprint reader as a way to unlock the phone. I remember thinking that face ID could be easier to abuse. But then I started using it and these days I never give it a second thought.
BTW @Piano-Dad Do you use a passcode?
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Sorry about her theft. I was pickpocketed on a
tram in Prague by “passengers” who “helped” lift my heavy suitcase aboard while relieving goods from my waist pack. Only some $20 was taken, but also my passport, which meant extra hotel days, change of return flight, and hassle of getting an emergency passport. -
@RealPlayer said in Learned some stuff:
but also my passport
Ugh, losing my passport is always my worst nightmare when traveling!
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Steve, I'm so sorry to hear you are going through this - that sucks. In Sharon's honor, I made sure to zip my purse shut at all the stores I went to yesterday - it's a crossbody and usually in front of me, but just in case.....
And pique, until a few weeks ago I would have said that I lived in an area like that - we have accidentally left our front door unlocked for weeks on more than one occasion and we have never ever locked our cars (parked outside in our driveway). But about a month ago, I realized that all 3 of our cars had been rifled through overnight - they took the cash we had stashed in the car for drive-thru runs but nothing else (thankfully our wallets weren't in the cars) so they probably made off with $35 total. To get to our cars, they would have had to walk up our VERY LONG driveway (500+ ft) and stand next to our side porch opening and closing car doors. I had heard that others in town had gotten stuff swiped from their cars a few weeks earlier but never imagined someone would have the stones to come all the way up our driveway - you can't even see our house from the road so it would be hard to even know we had cars there. Plus we live in an area where most homeowners are armed and just dying for a reason to test out the stand your ground law so I dunno - I figure the person had to be either very dumb or very desperate.
Anyway, we lock our cars now and double check the house doors every night. The world, it's a changin'.
Good luck Steve getting it all straightened out.
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People rifling through cars parked in driveways in my quiet suburban neighborhood has been a problem for decades. I remember back in the 1980s my neighbors said that change and cassette tapes (!) had been stolen from their cars, likely by kids out on a Friday night.
We've also seen kids that are dropped off by a van and who roam the neighborhood selling subscriptions or candy bars stopping next to cars parked in driveways and looking in the windows for anything obvious to swipe. Anyway, from that time on, if a car is parked in our driveway (ours or a guest's), it's locked.
We don't have an entrance from the garage to the house, but locking that door if you have one is a really good idea. If your car is stolen and the thieves can figure out your address (it's not very difficult), they can just drive right over, open the overhead door, pull in the garage, close the overhead door and walk right into your home.
Oh, and talk about chutzpah...landscapers have those trucks with the dropdown rear doors that become a ramp that they drive their riding mowers down. They also have the rest of their equipment in the truck. We've had cases where they've had equipment stolen while they were mowing the back yard of a client's house. Thieves drive up, hop in the back of the truck and steal whatever, and drive off. Takes seconds.
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I thought about this all day and I’m conflicted.
If I’m being held at gunpoint I guarantee I’ll give them my passcode. Face ID just makes things faster. I can’t think of a reason not to let police access my phone. I’ll keep Face ID.
But what I have done is hide my bank app. You can hide an app and still access it if you search. Even if it gets found my actual cost would be zero - my bank stepped up and covered everything.
Seems like a decent compromise.
I don’t know who is eating the fraudulent charges and the bank isn’t saying. Right now I think it’s the merchants - Apple Store and LuLuLemon. I know that a lot of the charges were declined. Maybe Doug knows.
I had a Home Depot card stolen years ago and the thief charged up $18K before he hit my debt limit. HD told me to just identify the fraudulent charges and they would reverse them. They did that - no problem.
What perplexed me is that their fraud department wasn’t one bit interested in who the thief was and where he lived. I knew his name and they didn’t want it. Probably costs more to prosecute than the value of the claim.
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Whenever I’ve had a shipment that didn’t arrive Amazon sends me another one. The first time they tell me it’s my problem will be the time I stop buying stuff from Amazon. They know this and I don’t see it happening - and I’m sure they make their vendors pay for it anyway.
On a cosmic level this is a problem and costs us all. Here in the heartland, however, it’s not my problem. I evaluate the price against the local price and make my decision based on that. Bezos seems to be doing OK so I’m not too worried about it. .
Meanwhile, Sharon spent two hours on the phone trying to get one of our creditors to deduct automatic payments from a new account with a different account number. Not naming names, but it rhymes with Buntington Hank. From all indications this is not possible to do. This astounds me! It’s like they’ve never had to deal with a stolen wallet before. We’re trailblazers!
So far the resolution is to let them bill the closed account and when the payment is declined they can decide what to do.
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@Steve-Miller said in Learned some stuff:
On a cosmic level this is a problem and costs us all. Here in the heartland, however, it’s not my problem. I evaluate the price against the local price and make my decision based on that. Bezos seems to be doing OK so I’m not too worried about it.
Indeed! Re who pays, I’m sure you’re right, we are all paying, we just don’t see it. It’s like shoplifting, the costs are there and probably baked into the ultimate prices.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown of all the different costs that compares the total cost (including costs to the environment) of a consumer buying in-store versus an online ship-to-home purchase. It would have to include the difference in warehouse costs vs store overhead, the trucking/distribution and shipping/delivery costs vs the consumer driving to the local store, all of that. I’m sure someone has done that kind of thing. Oh and then a comparison of incident purchase, IOW the idea that when you shop in-store, you buy things you didn’t intend to, versus the idea that online shopping and next-day or same-day delivery spurs more purchases. Oh and then the comparison would need to factor in the likelihood of returning something purchased in-store versus online< and include the environment costs of returns as well. Even with all that, I suspect that the current model of online shopping results in far more purchases and profits than in-person shopping. (Although the environmental costs are likely higher)
Anyway it’s sort of thread drift, but my point is, the cost of porch pirates is eaten in there somewhere, but Amazon is still making bank.
So far the resolution is to let them bill the closed account and when the payment is declined they can decide what to do.
And then there’s this, which is just so stupid.
