The Wax Conspiracy

The Overdraft Fee and the Underscore

Ready at the teller, the bank salivates at the thought of a stolen cache of debit card data. There one day, gone the next, funds from your bank account. Maybe $50. Maybe $100. But enough to draw you closer to the zero balance. And they wait.

They wait for as long as they need to to show that they’re surprised at the data breach. That someone is wardriving or otherwise sniffing out packets of debit card data to swipe off.

They wait and then they tell you that the missing chunk of money is because some miscreant hacked into the system and made off with some test purchases. Soft landing hits against your bank card to see how much they could withdraw before that card was burnt.

They wait to tell you this. Then they wait to restore that missing money that was rightfully yours lent to them to never really see again. Ten, twelve, business days later they’ll tell you you’ll be restored. That the money that vanished in the night will return.

And all the while you’re checking and triple-checking the balance to make sure you’re still above the minimum. At least five dollars for a safety net. Or the minimum required to hold the account without triggering the account keeping fee from kicking in.

They’re on the other side, drooling at the prospect that that stolen money is enough to catch you out. They want that overdraft fee to sneak up in the middle of a night on the town with a kebab in one hand and chunder in the other.

The enemy of data integrity is the friend of the bank ready to roll on you to collect on overdraft fees like a nailgun given to a day care centre.

They may not outwardly like when the data breach happens, even putting on a concerned face that money has been siphoned out. But when that pushes more accounts to dip close to zero, that’s basically money waiting to stuff their maws.

Ethan Switch

Written on Wednesday, 5 April 2017

The Wax Conspiracy

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