Wow! Great idea, great mission. Someone smart and well advised solving serious problems for real people who need help, that makes me happy.
My 2 cents: as you want to preserv their sense of autonomy, please use a card design that looks like an usual credit card. The "Visa" is already there, so just use some of these typical shiny, fancy, "3d" background designs of the credit cards we all get used to.
If your card is like the one at the picture on the landing page, it looks like a "toy card", something you give to children to pretend they have credit cards. Your customers will notice it and feel their son just substituted their real credit cards for make-believe ones.
THIS is something we need in my dear country Nigeria. Internet commerce has refused to take off because of the fear (sadly not misplaced). I am thinking if this service is not better positioned towards the Banks than the individuals themselves.
There would be default permitted websites and locations from where transactions are permitted. If a new website wants to be "registered" they apply to the bank to be put on a whitelist.
Presently, it is a blanket over securing that is taking place that makes it almost impossible to perform online transactions with Nigerian companies.
Two of my elderly neighbors were really badly fucked by these scammers. Actually, I know a lot of old people who were run dry by these scammers. Think for a moment how disgusting this is -- robbing and manipulating people who are at an age where their wits are leaving them... robbing them of money to live their last years on earth peacefully. I say fuck these scammers all the way, they know exactly what they're doing.
To say that those 3 words are 'neutralizing' the work they're doing is a rather ignorant thing to do.
Ya, I know Kai well and he definitely let his exuberance get the better of him there. His intentions are genuine and he and Claire are personally driven by this problem.
Kai here. Well put, absolutely right. My grandma has gotten scammed three times a day on average every day for ten years and obviously it's something that I'm passionate about. I think it's just really low to make a living by taking advantage of vulnerable elderly people.
Later I said to the reporter that I should have put that a different way, and the reporter said that she felt it was the perfect quote, that it really expressed how I felt about them. And yes, as a customer whose family needs this product, I'm frustrated and angry about how they've treated my grandma. But what I meant was: "We're going to go after those guys and try to stop them."
In summary: lesson learned. You're absolutely right.
I think the hard part is identifying/normalizing the merchant based on the 20 character billing name + phone. Each McDonalds and Starbucks have wildly different text. Large purchases are immediately flagged for sure, purchases outside the local area. There is a lot of low hanging fruit. Crowd sourcing helps too. Interesting idea.
Really like this idea. My grandmother has had alzheimers for about a decade. There was a time at the beginning when this would have helped her spirits.
Bit confused with the difference between this versus something like an Amex pre-paid card. Why would someone use True Link over one of the existing pre-paid card options? A web interface?
A key difference is that the True Link card has built in protections against specific cases of elder fraud, not just the general cases of fraud that something like Amex targets.
Just to give a concrete example: there are bunch of charities that sound like legitimate ones but aren't. An example is the Cancer Fund of America, which spends less than 1% of their income on charitable activities (see [1][2]). These charities specifically target the elderly, sometimes calling them over and over again to take advantage of cognitive decline (cf. [2][3]).
It mentions fairly extensive fraud protection, which other pre-paid solutions don't offer. I've used a few pre-paid cards while travelling and companies pretty much treat them as cash. If you lose it or get scammed, you've just plain lost it.
From what I can see, this acts as a bit of a buffer between scammers and your "real" account.
"All this goes through a pre-paid True Link Visa card, filled through the person’s checking account, which is free for the first year and costs $20 annually after that. True Link acts as the preauthorizer, giving it the power to see incoming charges and approve or deny them accordingly."
What does really interest me is this part...
"True Link is currently working on building its list of fraudulent and potentially fraudulent organizations..."
There are blacklist organizations for merchants like Bad Customers et al. which I'm very skeptical about since they charge you to be taken out of that list. Of course they don't claim to be "blacklists" since that's too negative, but they essentially are since any company using their services can deny your purchase. I hope these guys have a better vetting and arbitration process or this will end up being another Bad Customers except as a blacklist of merchants.
Since it's designed for the specific needs of vulnerable seniors, The True Link card has features that are currently not available on other prepaid cards, namely the ability to preset spending limits for individual purchases, to proactively block purchases at individual merchants and categories of merchants (e.g., sweepstakes, unscrupulous charities, gambling institutions),and to send instant alerts about any suspicious transaction to family members. And yes it's all managed through an easy-to-use web interface.
They aren't just stopping identity theft but allowing care givers to control spending habits. Or being taken advantage of by (legitimate) organizations taking advantage of the elderly.
This is awesome. I wonder if they will publish stats and ideally stories about "saves" they make. I guess they would need wide adoption to cause "herd immunity" for non user elderly though.
...it’s hard to put an exact number on the scope of scams out there. But he estimates that there are 10 million people in the U.S. above a certain age who are living alone and susceptible to fraud.
I'm not sure what the point of the latter sentence is - I had to read it twice to make sure that I wasn't missing something...am I?
In answer to this question; the phrasing could be more specific. I believe he's referencing the number of seniors who are targets for scams like these and would benefit from a card like this. In this case, the question is: how many seniors are there in America, who are living alone, with some cognitive decline, and highly susceptible to fraud and scams?
The scary part is that it's likely much, much higher (the number of people being taken advantage of) -- because so much of it goes undetected, or worse, unreported.
[+] [-] soneca|12 years ago|reply
My 2 cents: as you want to preserv their sense of autonomy, please use a card design that looks like an usual credit card. The "Visa" is already there, so just use some of these typical shiny, fancy, "3d" background designs of the credit cards we all get used to. If your card is like the one at the picture on the landing page, it looks like a "toy card", something you give to children to pretend they have credit cards. Your customers will notice it and feel their son just substituted their real credit cards for make-believe ones.
[+] [-] OoTheNigerian|12 years ago|reply
THIS is something we need in my dear country Nigeria. Internet commerce has refused to take off because of the fear (sadly not misplaced). I am thinking if this service is not better positioned towards the Banks than the individuals themselves.
There would be default permitted websites and locations from where transactions are permitted. If a new website wants to be "registered" they apply to the bank to be put on a whitelist.
Presently, it is a blanket over securing that is taking place that makes it almost impossible to perform online transactions with Nigerian companies.
Great job.
[+] [-] edw519|12 years ago|reply
Amazing how fast you can neutralize all that noble work with just 3 words.
(FriendAndCoworkerLanguage != BusinessAttractionLanguage)
[+] [-] clicks|12 years ago|reply
Two of my elderly neighbors were really badly fucked by these scammers. Actually, I know a lot of old people who were run dry by these scammers. Think for a moment how disgusting this is -- robbing and manipulating people who are at an age where their wits are leaving them... robbing them of money to live their last years on earth peacefully. I say fuck these scammers all the way, they know exactly what they're doing.
To say that those 3 words are 'neutralizing' the work they're doing is a rather ignorant thing to do.
[+] [-] zt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaistinchcombe|12 years ago|reply
Later I said to the reporter that I should have put that a different way, and the reporter said that she felt it was the perfect quote, that it really expressed how I felt about them. And yes, as a customer whose family needs this product, I'm frustrated and angry about how they've treated my grandma. But what I meant was: "We're going to go after those guys and try to stop them."
In summary: lesson learned. You're absolutely right.
[+] [-] sjg007|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ludicast|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aidscholar|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zt|12 years ago|reply
A key difference is that the True Link card has built in protections against specific cases of elder fraud, not just the general cases of fraud that something like Amex targets.
Just to give a concrete example: there are bunch of charities that sound like legitimate ones but aren't. An example is the Cancer Fund of America, which spends less than 1% of their income on charitable activities (see [1][2]). These charities specifically target the elderly, sometimes calling them over and over again to take advantage of cognitive decline (cf. [2][3]).
[1] http://www.tampabay.com/americas-worst-charities/ [2] http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/us/worst-charities [3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-vic... [4] http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-07-16/opinions/36887...
[+] [-] eksith|12 years ago|reply
From what I can see, this acts as a bit of a buffer between scammers and your "real" account.
"All this goes through a pre-paid True Link Visa card, filled through the person’s checking account, which is free for the first year and costs $20 annually after that. True Link acts as the preauthorizer, giving it the power to see incoming charges and approve or deny them accordingly."
What does really interest me is this part...
"True Link is currently working on building its list of fraudulent and potentially fraudulent organizations..."
There are blacklist organizations for merchants like Bad Customers et al. which I'm very skeptical about since they charge you to be taken out of that list. Of course they don't claim to be "blacklists" since that's too negative, but they essentially are since any company using their services can deny your purchase. I hope these guys have a better vetting and arbitration process or this will end up being another Bad Customers except as a blacklist of merchants.
[+] [-] clairethere|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] outericky|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rabidonrails|12 years ago|reply
I'm not sure what the point of the latter sentence is - I had to read it twice to make sure that I wasn't missing something...am I?
[+] [-] sarahkpeck|12 years ago|reply
See this Bloomberg piece -- 2010 estimates that financial abuse victimizes 1 in 5 elderly; about 7.3 million senior citizens have reported being taken advantage of. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-vic...
The scary part is that it's likely much, much higher (the number of people being taken advantage of) -- because so much of it goes undetected, or worse, unreported.
[+] [-] philip1209|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smoothierev|12 years ago|reply