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Tell HN: My bank just sent me brownies (and it's pretty f'd up)

38 points by bank-browies ↗ HN
A brief rant about privacy (lack of thereof).

A box of brownies showed up at my door today.

The card says:

  Dearest <MY NAME> and <HER NAME>,
  congratulations on your upcoming wedding on <DATE> 
  from your friends at <NAME OF BANK>
We do not have a personal relationship with this bank (probably never walked into one of their location in fact). Neither of us posts on social media.

We do have a shared checking account at this bank, and over the last month we sent some wires to pay for wedding expenses.

Example:

  Amount: $1000
  Note: Security deposit for <LOCATION> on <DATE>
So my bank is mining the memos of my transactions. No surprise there! Of course they are.

What is surprising is that they revealed themselves to me with this grand creepy gesture!

My theory: someone has a shiny new LLM and it's eager to use it.

> Your Marketers Were So Preoccupied With Whether Or Not They Could, They Didn’t Stop To Think If They Should

27 comments

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h2odragon
you're obligated to start putting wild stuff in your memo lines now, where you can.

"gerbil restructuring"

"rhinoceros elevation and inversion"

tornadofart
Be careful though... received an angry letter after using "military-grade plutonium"
mickelsen
In Germany a college classmate once put "thank you for the weapons" for a wire to his brother in the verwendungszweck field (intended purpose) Hours later the bank called for an explanation, and even after brushing it off as a joke, polizei still knocked the door at his house next day. This was ~10 years ago.
joshxyz
borderline stupid and hilarious. some criminals get caught on similar dumb mistakes too.
sp332
How did you get a checking account without showing up to verify ID?
bank-browies
Alright so maybe I did visit one branch one time.

What I meant is that we haven't spoken to any person at this bank in a long time.

accrual
Not sure about OP, but there are some online-only checking accounts available. Mine was verified with two sub-dollar deposits.
deanmoriarty
I have dozens of checking accounts (yes, dozens, I used to play the signup bonus game) and never "showed up" to verify anything, the process is entirely carried online. Where are you living?
3minus1
Something about this is very funny. Such a well-meaning act completely oblivious to how it's creepiness.
fargle
Crossing the creepy line for sure. But were they good brownies?
fouc
That's what I want to know. Were they brownies that were gooey in the middle and crispy on the outsides, or were they crappy "chocolate cake" brownies?
NoZebra120vClip
More to the point, did they contain any "active ingredients" that resulted in a lasting good time after finishing them off?
kylehotchkiss
Wires require more manual processing than ACH transactions, it’s possible your online wire request got printed or faxed where a person manually entered the transaction into the fedwire system.
soared
> uses service that verifies their id > puts info they want kept private into the service > service provides no expectation of privacy

What did you think was happening with your transactions at your bank? Every transaction you make is being sold to data miners. And they’re not mining your memos - they’re looking at the companies your sending money to.

evanwolf
Nearly all business bank accounts are connected to standard industry codes and other descriptions.
genjii931
Tell us more about these brownies.
Frannyies
At least in Germany I can imagine this information might be shared due to tax reason.

I would ask them

leipert
Nah. In Germany you need to tell your bank yourself.

Know that because one of my banks actually wants to see a copy of the certificate and haven’t been bothering.

Borrible
Wait until they inform you of your divorce. If you are unlucky, they will inform you about the motherhood of the future ex-wife beforehand.
jasaldivara
I wish my bank was fucked up enough to send me brownies on my birthday
KomoD
I wish my bank sent me brownies, damn...
ch1234
Can you make it happen multiple times at least?
throw9away6
Wires are all manually processed at smaller banks. It’s likely your banker saw that and at current interest rates your are paying then 1000s annually for banking with then so they sent you 20$ in brownies