kevinmurphy
20 HN mentions · mentioned in 16 months, 2014–2025
1:55 · 305K views · Jul 8, 2007
A sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Sound in which a caller learns that identity theft is, in effect, a bank robbery in which the bank blames the customer. It runs about two minutes.
HN posts it as the obligatory joke link in threads about data breaches, credit bureaus and bank security failures.
20 comments from Hacker News
Did the world become a much worse place when the internet arrived, or did the positives end up outweighing the negatives? There were a few years where Nigerian scammers could convince grandma they were a prince who needed a bank transfer, but eventually grandma figured out the scam. I don't see why AI would be any different - sure, there may be an increase in new scams for a few years, but people will learn and adapt, like they always have. And meanwhile the positive aspects of AI will have a positive impact on society. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater because we can imagine all the ways to abuse new technology. Maybe instead of freaking out and trying to restrict innovation, we should be working on insurance products to mitigate the financial risk of scams, and educational content to reduce their effectiveness. The fact that many scams are even possible in the first place stems from the absurd idea that "identity theft" is your fault [0], so maybe we could start there. If my bank uses my voice as my password, or if my phone company is willing to present fraudulent caller ID telling me it really is my son calling to ask for money, then is the problem really the scammers, or is it the easily defraudable systems with no incentives to reduce abuse of their platforms? [0] this video
> Yes, and that point is most likely SAE level 5 Hard disagree. This is the same as identity theft, where it becomes your responsibility instead of a failure on the part of the bank to protect your account, and the burden gets shifted entirely onto the consumer. Relevant Michell and Webb: this video If Tesla sells a SAE Level 2 lane following / accident avoidance feature which should be able to stop and avoid rear end collisions, yet it causes rear end collisions, they must be liable for that failure. They can't just write words and shift all liability onto the consumer for the software failing to work properly. Nice try though. And I don't care if the consumer technically agreed to that. If someone smacks into me with Autopilot enabled, I never consented to that technology and didn't give up my rights to sue Tesla.
> “I don’t know of anyone who has come close to causing more material harm than Ngo did to the average American,” O’Neill said. > Throughout the court proceedings, Ngo sat through story after dreadful story of how his work had ruined the financial lives of people harmed by his services. He made it easier for people to steal money from banks and credit card companies. Its a pretty stupid system that forces the "average American" to be on the hook for that. We shouldn't even be calling it "Identify Theft", this is just bank fraud. this video
Or make “identity theft” a problem for the banks and institutions that want to use digitally entered 9 digits and birthdate as some sort of authentication. If a bank or whoever gets defrauded by someone claiming they are someone else, that should be the bank’s problem. Everyone has a smartphone today with a video camera and data. Why is a video of you giving a thumbs up and announcing your authorization for entity X to borrrow or purchase with Y dollars not the standard? this video
Credit scams and identity theft are a problem for us because right now the banks don't have to pay any cost of those mistakes. The most direct way to solve the problem of credit scams and identity theft is to put the onus on the bank who opened up the account incorrectly to assume responsibility for the debt, not on the person whose account details were spoofed to create the account. This is quite humorously illustrated by a "That Mitchell and Webb Sound" skit: this video