> Now they'll need to pay off a local mailman to give them all of Google's letters with an address in an area they control so they can register a town's worth of addresses, big whoop. It'll cost them a bit more than the registration fee, but I doubt it'll be enough to solve the problem.
Yeah, this is a huge amount more work than, like, nothing.
Laundering millions is a huge amount of work already. You need to hide your criminal activity from banks investigating fraud. Presuming the banks are doing their jobs right, at least, but if they don't, then that'd be the place to start solving this problem.
People are already effectively faking addresses for something as stupid as Amazon reviews. Apparently it's that cheap to fake an address, because those crapware spam stores that rotate their name/products/listings aren't exactly the size of the mob.
What this will probably do is raise the bar for scams a little so that dumb "mom-and-pop" criminals can no longer get started with a guide and a software kit they buy on Telegram, clearing the field for "professionals" while at the same time making identity fraud, address fraud, and (money) mules more lucrative.
All of that to shift away the blame from banks, public institutions, education, and to some extent people's personal financial responsibilities.
> Laundering millions is a huge amount of work already. You need to hide your criminal activity from banks investigating fraud. Presuming the banks are doing their jobs right, at least, but if they don't, then that'd be the place to start solving this problem.
It's not really clear that this is money that needs to be laundered, it's often irreversible transfers that are legit.
> People are already effectively faking addresses for something as stupid as Amazon reviews. Apparently it's that cheap to fake an address, because those crapware spam stores that rotate their name/products/listings aren't exactly the size of the mob.
I already responded to this below. Those don't involve scammer controlled addresses. If I send you a piece of physical mail with an OTP code, you can't use a random faked address.
> clearing the field for "professionals" while at the same time making identity fraud, address fraud, and (money) mules more lucrative.
The majority of this kind of fraud is already organized. That's why raising the cost is impactful, see my comments below. It's a tool to raise the cost of revenues to an ideally unsustainable amount.
> Someone will manufacture and sell bulk identities
How? You've now moved the level of sophistication required from "someone runs some bots on the facebook website" to "someone is now committing complex fraud against a government".
If the only people who can run scams are state sponsored, that's still vastly better than the status quo.
jeroenhd|4 days ago
People are already effectively faking addresses for something as stupid as Amazon reviews. Apparently it's that cheap to fake an address, because those crapware spam stores that rotate their name/products/listings aren't exactly the size of the mob.
What this will probably do is raise the bar for scams a little so that dumb "mom-and-pop" criminals can no longer get started with a guide and a software kit they buy on Telegram, clearing the field for "professionals" while at the same time making identity fraud, address fraud, and (money) mules more lucrative.
All of that to shift away the blame from banks, public institutions, education, and to some extent people's personal financial responsibilities.
joshuamorton|3 days ago
It's not really clear that this is money that needs to be laundered, it's often irreversible transfers that are legit.
> People are already effectively faking addresses for something as stupid as Amazon reviews. Apparently it's that cheap to fake an address, because those crapware spam stores that rotate their name/products/listings aren't exactly the size of the mob.
I already responded to this below. Those don't involve scammer controlled addresses. If I send you a piece of physical mail with an OTP code, you can't use a random faked address.
> clearing the field for "professionals" while at the same time making identity fraud, address fraud, and (money) mules more lucrative.
The majority of this kind of fraud is already organized. That's why raising the cost is impactful, see my comments below. It's a tool to raise the cost of revenues to an ideally unsustainable amount.
iamnothere|5 days ago
joshuamorton|5 days ago
How? You've now moved the level of sophistication required from "someone runs some bots on the facebook website" to "someone is now committing complex fraud against a government".
If the only people who can run scams are state sponsored, that's still vastly better than the status quo.