Topic: Why KYC is extremely dangerous – and useless - page 12. (Read 5994 times)

It's lowered to 2k a few weeks ago.

But seriously, why should KYC help to prevent terrorism? Or even precious metals or cash? That "argument" is circulating since a very long time, precisely since 9/11. I can't see how KYC should stop someone from getting pilot to kill several thousand people. Where should KYC prevent this? 
Or Nice (France) 2016 where a truck driver killed many people? A strong KYC would have stopped the terrorist?

Someone who wants to do terrorism or crime will always find a solution.

Strict KYC with low limits just affects the nomal users negatively, it's doing far more harm than good right now.

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It's a difficult question and maybe also a socially one. When we have a look at Japan, the people are very respectful to each other. Doing harm to the community is extremely despised by the japanese citizens. That's a good attitude when people are living respectfully together and because of that the crime / terrorism problem is very low there - and the society is working without privacy invading measures.

I don't had time to do an analysis but my first impression how that could be achived is:
- wealth distributed equally to all citizens (little gap between poor and rich) => no financial problems to do tax evasion, rob others etc.
- disciplined education
- government acting for the people (not for their own power or the rich) => people would see the state as community, which it should be
- no extremism / racism => no terrorism

Even the ancient romans and greeks didn't have KYC and they survived with much lower knowledge than we have today.

I'm still sure the public blockchains can be an important part of a good solution but for now the "KYC-solution" has failed.
Nobody wants his identity used by scammers to commit crime. 

KYC really doesn't make sense, even though the motives behind KYC is good. What then can replace KYC while at the same time serving the intended purpose of KYC without posting harm on its user?

This can be devastating for an individual. Criminals can take out credit cards and loans in your name, and rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt which you are liable for. They can file claims under your insurance details (including medical insurance), and again, you are liable for the cost. Even if you manage to convince a court that these charges weren't made by you, which can be very difficult to do, you can be left with thousands of dollars in legal fees, huge amounts of debt, and unable to ever get a loan, credit, mortgage, insurance policy, and so on, ever again. Identity theft can literally ruin your life. It is absolutely mind boggling that people risk this daily so they can get paid a few made up tokens which they won't even be able to sell.

Too late I'm afraid: https://www.coindesk.com/binance-kyc-issue

Exchanges often have far more lax security regarding protecting customers' KYC data compared to protecting their money. Lots of exchanges employ very shady third party companies to handle their KYC processes, with entirely expected results. Some exchanges, even major ones like Coinbase, have been caught actively selling their customers' data.

Bisq and Komodo's Atomic DEX are your answers. They're working way slower than centralized exchanges, but your funds aren't at risk of being frozen. No more KYC, no more centralization.. we have to move there and stop using these scam exchanges.

I am not fan of KYC those related crypto-currency. But unfortunately almost platform are asking for KYC which is really annoying and crypto currency not designed for this kind of KYC processor. However, I forced to submit KYC on Bittrex for withdrawals when they were implemented KYC policy. As I remembered, I have submitted KYC on Binance & Bittrex only. Even I don't like to use any other exchange right now due to KYC drama. I know it's very dangerous for us if in case leak or owner turned into scammer. So always better avoid shady exchange if they ask for KYC. I don't how KYC will prevent so called money laundering on crypto-currency. It's just a worst idea even for crypto-currency community.

Couldn't agree more with you. If everyone would stand against KYC, it would MAYBE make a change.

I can buy gold worth $10k from The Netherlands and nobody would request my ID. Meanwhile, a $5 deposit on a KYC-enabled exchange could be frozen if the exchange considers it suspicious. How does that make sense?

I think money laundering and terrorism happens more with precious metals & fiat than with crypto, I mean it's common sense. Gold & precious metals have been around since before we all were born, Bitcoin is still growing up and nobody has been able to prove through facts that a certain percentage of BTC transactions are money laundering and terrorism funding. It's all bullshit. I haven't provided a single document of identification and I never will.

Yeah, KYC started well on paper.
Then it was badly implemented and was abused, it leads to people doing this only to harvest data and if we talk about the crypto enviroment...it's a disaster.

I have a 10+ account on PayPal, all they ever asked from me was that confirmation code from the first charge they put on my card.
And that's all they need to know in reality, via my bank they have all the details they need for KYC, a mugshot from an individual that could not even exist (hello faceapp) and a bill from the gas company that I receive in pdf format and I can edit how much I want it before printing is not really KYC.

But when it comes to crypto, it's hilarious.
KYC for what? For receiving some shitty tokens for some other shitty tokens in jurisdictions those are not even regulated?
And who is doing this KYC? The 99.9% scammy ICOs that will run with the money before any agencies can even hear of their business?

Anyhow, nothing will change.
A million people will come to this topic and say that KYC is dangerous and people shouldn't do it and one day later  999 999 of them will send their pictures, their IDs, their cat pedigree and a list of their's wife girlfriends with who they've cheated for 10 lollapalooza coins.

They are innocent to know the risk and mostly we can see those people on airdrop and bounty campaign where they easily bring up their ID with the scammers and it's super dangerous since the scammere could recycle and use their identities for another scam nor sell it to the other platforms for bad intentions.

There are a lot of people who do not know how dangerous KYC can be when carried out on the wrong platform or on sketchy or dubious establishment. Newbies would help themselves if they read this post, take it seriously, not just reading it, but doing what is required of them to evade KYC scammers.

Many users have given their KYC information when they were new, and though they have long stopped that, but who knows, for now it may not have had any repercussion, but it may later on since nobody knows where and in whose hands those documents are in now, so newbies should not make that same mistake.

Thank you so much, buddy, for the detailed clarification of KYC. You have mentioned as much as the details which were not known to some of us. Also, I tried some exchanges in the past where they had mandatory KYC no matter whether you are buying crypto or exchanging crypto. For 70$ crypto buying also they needed KYC.So now I avoid using this kind of service who needs KYC for a small number of dollars.

Probably because no lawsuits have been opened yet against the exchanges and wallets going for this scam.

If everyone who fell in their trap and got scammed by them took measures against them, they would either stop scamming themselves or the authorities would.

But let's not forget the fact that many of those falling to KYC traps prefer to lose their money rather than giving them identity documents.. So they keep thriving off that.

The reason why KYC scams are still prevalent is that most people do not value their personal documents/information and also do not know how it can be maliciously utilized against them. And since it has become very popular even among even the so-called 'trustworthy' websites and exchanges so it seems legitimate when newer sites ask for the same information.

I use Twitter regularly and frequently come across tweets asking users to post their account details or some other information, such as; mother's maiden name or favorite color. This information could be used to draw up a pattern to connect various information about the person.

No doubt KYC is extremely dangerous and useless especially as the risk associated with it isn't sending the right information towards an industy basing its selling point on decentralization but after considering the current developments of the industry, it'll be odd thinking the industry can succeed without implementing some centralized feature like KYC verification. The cryptocurrency industry is getting global and constantly attempting to get the government approval as a recognized currency therefore it'll have to sacrificed some of its decentralized feature to achieve this purpose like the KYC requirements to avoid money laundering.

The issue now is to enlighten the community to avoid falling victim to scammers who'll be leveraging on this development to scam newbies or gullible community users. Just as you have started, total avoidance in sending your private details to anyhow project like bounties, giveaways, newly launched exchange with no reputation of trustworthiness, airdrops etc is encourage since you can never be sure who are behind this projects.

KYC still can be useful though, but perhaps not in crypto space (AML) where the security of your data is not protected enough. For example, for uber-like service in my country, some companies require drivers to do a selfie every day (not only KYC) to guarantee the integrity of drivers' ID for safety reasons. I think users are happy with this rule.

KYC is everywhere, starting from education enrolment, banks, to medical records. You can't be anonymous for this thing, right? However, I agree if the problem is about KYC for AML purposes, plus incompetency concerning data security will bring more problems than benefits.

I was wondering yesterday on how this case would end:
https://www.coindesk.com/british-court-freezes-860000-in-bitcoin-linked-to-ransomware-payout
(detailed court order https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2019/3556.html).

In the above case, a UK court has ordered Bitfinex to freeze an equivalent of 860k$ in BTC on an account, after the aid of Chainanalysis led to tracing the funds paid in a ransomware case, performed upon an insurance Company (and paid out in BTC by the insurer of the insurance company).

Along side freezing the assets, Bitfinex is being asked to dox the account owner, and that is where the uncertainty is as to what KYC data the ransomware perpetrators used: their own personal data, or yours (generic third party)? The outcome may be considered good or bad in this case, depending on the wit of the perpetrators.

KYC is really useless for people who are using their services or platform. We don't know that the platform is legit or not and once we submitted our personal information it may be stolen and use our information to do illegal acts that will cause us problems. It may be useful for business to have KYC but it's 100% helpful. I agree with op and I prefer not using any platform that ask KYC before you able to use their platform.

This is quite a long read and I understand why it took you some time before you finally posted it here.

I used to not think too much about the importance of my privacy and that's why I've also submitted sensitive data to some bounty campaigns and low-tier exchanges. When I read articles about those data being sold in the black market, I started to worry but I can no longer do anything about the information I've given before. I can only hope that they were completely discarded.

To this day, I cringe every time I read some hunters and traders say that only people who avoid KYC are scammers/cheaters. What's even worse is that they're fine with how some companies treat KYC by hiding behind "compliance" and having them submit thru a google form!

Very detailed explanation about KYC.

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As a business owner perspective, KYC is essential to verify user and to protect there business from any illegal attempt of it's user and also I believe that this is a requirements of AMLC.
It's really risky to do KYC for an unknown services and many fraud services are copying all legit services doing.

I did some KYC before when I need to claim my bounty tokens for altcoins. But a bit later on, I stop it due to these risk impose by giving away important documents that we own. Maybe this is the thing I regret doing. Moreover, if your documents falls in the wrong hand then that's could turn into a bloody identity theft.

But I'm indeed do some KYC process on some huge exchange such as Binance. I just hoping this one wouldn't be compromise by hackers and steal some vital info of their users. But probably they will prefer cash over some info right? but they can have both!

KYC purposes for investors are helpful but please if only for campaign purposes. Maybe other's should think twice. I already regret this, and hope new guys, wouldn't easily attracted by free money or it is you would lose more in the end.

Thanks for this informative and clear thread about KYC.

Yeah, this Twitter / Facebook "issue" is causing a general lack of awareness how important it is to protect their own privacy. And another important difference between social media platforms such as Twitter / Facebook and enforced KYC for centralized services: if I don't want to use Facebook or Twitter I'm free to avoid it, so I may disagree if people post their whole life there, it's their problem, it's not affecting me. Nobody is forced to use Facebook or Twitter but people are forced to do KYC when they want to use an important service or even worse if deposited funds are frozen. More platforms implementing KYC means we won't have any other choice; we are excluded if we don't send KYC documents and don't want to risk our documents of being stolen, sold, hacked, collected or analyzed.

Exactly and nobody really cares that our funds are lost.  
Scammers paradise...