A Twitch Tale: Modern Life, a Debit Card, and Cluelessness
July 21, 2020
DarkCyber spotted an item in one of our feeds because the word “fraud” appeared in the document. The content object was “Teenager Takes $20,000 of Parents’ Money, Gives It to Twitch Streamers.” The write up explains:
the minor spent years of savings in just 17 days using a debit card. The boy paid for subscriptions, which can go as high as $24.99 per month, bought Bits—virtual goods used to Cheer in chat messages—and made uncapped donations to various streamers. Speaker to Dot Esports, the mother said that $19,870.94 was charged to a debit card between June 14 and 30.
Banks view this type of activity as a type of chargeback fraud. A consumer makes a purchase and then requests a chargeback after receiving the product or service.
One question is, “What about those parents?” Another is, “Should Twitch have a more fine grained system in place to prevent those under a certain age from spending above a threshold?”
The Twitch question could be answered with an algorithm or a simple rule based system. The gain for the Twitchers who received some financial love from a follower is good news… for them. For the parents, bad news. Perhaps the alleged adults should look into the concept of a pre-paid debit card with a hard limit? For now, it is hasta la vista $20K. For the teen? Probably back online and absorbing video streams.
And Amazon Twitch? Just another day of “good enough” safeguards for users, their parents, and talent formerly known as Dr. Disrespect, whose name has a certain je ne sais quoi.
Stephen E Arnold, July 21, 2020
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