In the past I have only seen PayPal spontaneously demand at arbitrary/unexpected moments that I jump their their hoops – to login and give them more info about me. I reluctantly did what they wanted, and they kept my account frozen and kept my money anyway.

So I’ve been boycotting PayPal ever since. Not worth it for to work hard to find out why they kept my account frozen and to work hard to twist their arm to give them my business.

Now an actual financial institution is trying something similar. They are not as hostile as PayPal was (they did not pre-emptively freeze my account until I dance for them), but they sent an email demanding that I login and update my employment information (even though it has not changed).

I just wonder how many FIs are pulling this shit. And what are people doing about it? Normally I would walk… pull my money out and go elsewhere. But the FI that is pushing KYC harassment has a lot of power because they offer some features I need that I cannot get elsewhere, and I have some stocks through them, which makes it costly/non-trivial to bounce.

I feel like we should be keeping a public database on FIs who pull this shit, so new customers can be made aware of who to avoid.

  •  tardigrada   ( @tardigrada@beehaw.org ) 
    1•4 months ago

    From what you write (and I understand), this is most likely a scam. A bank won’t call, email, or text otherwise to update, confirm, or change sensitive data.

    One thing you may do is to contact your bank, but please do so via a telephone number or email from an alternative source (don’t use cobtact information they may have sent to you in the email). Go to the bank’s website and find the number there, or go to the branch if possible and talk to a real person.

  •  soloActivist   ( @soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org ) OP
    1•2 months ago

    @tardigrada@beehaw.org

    Not sure you will see this. I only just now saw your response, incidentally because I was logged out. For some reason I cannot see your post when logged into links.hackliberty.org. So I cannot reply directly.

    Anyway, this is not a scam scenario. There are no links in the email. A scam of this kind would be phishing, which would require an attacker to provide a malicious link to follow.