
True Link (YC S13) To Help The Elderly Avoid Scammers With Pre-Paid Visa Cards - clicks
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/01/yc-start-up-true-link-financial-is-out-to-help-the-elderly-avoid-scammers-with-pre-paid-visa-cards/
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soneca
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.

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OoTheNigerian
Brilliant stuff.

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.

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edw519
_In Stinchcombe’s words, True Link’s mission is quite simple: "Fuck these
scammers."_

Amazing how fast you can neutralize all that noble work with just 3 words.

(FriendAndCoworkerLanguage != BusinessAttractionLanguage)

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clicks
Meh, I'll let it pass.

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.

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edw519
1\. I've been an caregiver for 20 years and love this idea. But there's no way
I would engage any business that uses the f-word in their promotions. And
believe me, I'm not the only one who feels this way, especially in this
demographic.

2\. My feedback, like much that I've give here in the past 6 years, was
sincere. I hate to see a promising business shooting itself in the foot like
this.

3\. There's not much more "ignorant" that calling constructive feedback from a
potential customer "ignorant".

4\. If you're going to insult others here, the least you can do is identify
yourself in your profile. Comments from anonymous posters like yours send
contributors like me away and drive this site further into the toilet.

5\. Don't say "Meh".

~~~
clicks
To the best of my knowledge, the "Fuck these scammers" statement does not
appear officially anywhere on their website -- it was something that was said
casually in an interview.

Let me ask you this: do you use Facebook? Because Zuckerburg doesn't just call
"bad people" (scammers, thiefs) names, he calls the users of his own site
"dumb fucks". [1]

There are greater injustices happening elsewhere in the world right now, save
your indignation and outrage for them.

[1]:
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg)

~~~
jmduke
This is a tangential point, but that quote is idiotic. I've called most of my
best friends assholes (and much more vulgar expletives), never in a serious
manner. If anything, it comes off as self-deprecating:

> "That client thinks I can do X, Y, and Z and not completely fuck it up. What
> an _absolute idiot._ "

~~~
clicks
I don't think that quote is so un-serious, Zuckerburg is literally and rather
specifically offering his friend private information of the users of Facebook,
and ending with calling them "dumb fucks".

To the extent that I am learned about Zuckerburg in his earlier days of
Facebook by having read various biographical accounts, I can pretty
confidently say that the seriousness of his offer and the seriousness in his
calling Facebook users "dumb fucks" goes well with the rest of his persona and
doings.

But anyway, this is getting pretty off-topic so I'm stopping here.

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sjg007
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.

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ludicast
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.

~~~
rhizome
Prepaid cards have existed for quite a long time.

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aidscholar
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?

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zt
(Disclosure: I'm an investor in True Link).

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/](http://www.tampabay.com/americas-worst-charities/) [2]
[http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/us/worst-
charities](http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/us/worst-charities) [3]
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-
vic...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-victimizes-
one-in-five-u-s-elderly-nonprofit-survey-says.html) [4]
[http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-07-16/opinions/36887...](http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-07-16/opinions/36887605_1_financial-
abuse-elder-abuse-senior-population)

~~~
toomuchtodo
As someone who is signing up his mother today for this, #shutupandtakemymoney.

$20/year? Well. Worth. It. Don't even give me the first year free. I'll give
you guys the $20 today.

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kaistinchcombe
Haha, thanks for that. Well taken. The goal is to make sure we've provided the
value we promised before we bill you for it.

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rdl
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.

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rabidonrails
_...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?

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sarahkpeck
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?

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...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-15/financial-abuse-victimizes-
one-in-five-u-s-elderly-nonprofit-survey-says.html)

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.

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philip1209
How does this differ from Amex PASS?

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smoothierev
This is a great idea.

