I don't even get the point of this list. It's going to do a credit check, if someone puts in William Cocksucker and he doesn't exist or have a credit history, he's not getting approved for the card
It's impressive how they managed to actually get the worst of both worlds here. There are infinite combinations of swear words that they can't catch from their puny static list. It's like they asked an intern to spend 10 minutes on this problem.
Names you can use: dickshit, bitchfuck, pisshole, gonorrhea
Names you can't use: this person's actual name. "gonorhea" [sic]. And "trust"!?
Even in some world where such a list made sense to check it's still nowhere remotely close to being correct anyways - e.g. "seamen" is blocked not "semen" and it's only got a few entries.
Addresses in Scotland use a slash to separate flat number from street number; e.g. 15/4 West Wallaby Way is equivalent to Building 15, Flat4, West Wallaby Way.
I've had multiple websites tell me that my address isn't valid, and some delivery companies remove the number after the slash so the delivery driver knows which building, but not which flat.
To me, this is very similar to the recent post about email address validation. Very often, companies feel the need to validate certain inputs themselves and do a terrible job, when there's a better solution.
When it comes to addresses, if they're in the U.S. there is an easy way to validate delivery addresses - the USPS. They offer free access to an API that includes address validation, and thankfully most shipping services now use it. Some services still screw things up, but its less of a problem than it used to be. I notice that the Royal Mail equivalent is paid. Perhaps that's part of the problem, or perhaps the Royal Mail validator fails addresses with slashes in it.
I also noticed that the Royal Mail is a publicly traded company. I'll uh, refrain from commenting on that.
> the USPS... offer free access to an API that includes address validation, and thankfully most shipping services now use it.
Unfortunately not all. My street "number", like 100,000 other houses near me, includes a letter in the middle. USPS will happily validate it correctly, but there are still websites I encounter from time to time that complain or refuse to work.
Where I am, 100 years ago, if your house wasn't inside a city, it simply didn't have an address. The fire departments got together and created a geographic encoding scheme that would allow them to find a house if they needed to. In the 1960s, the USPS adopted it as official. New homes continue to be issued addresses according to the scheme, even though it is not rural at all - it's inside one of the largest metro areas of the US.
If you don't mind, which metro area is this? I have an interest in street grids and address numbering systems; this just sounded like a peculiarity I'd like to read up on.
Based on your recent comments, it’s right in your own backyard! Formerly and currently unincorporated DuPage and Kane counties. It seems that you have to build a new street inside an established municipality for those houses to get “normal” addresses.
FYI, I went to college in the 90s with a kid that lived in a rural area in a very low population county in Indiana (one stop light in the entire county). His house still had the old rural route addressing (your address was the box where you received mail - potentially miles away - and not a street address as commonly understood https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_021.htm).
The addressing system in New Zealand is also some especial "I have seen things" and I never worked on it but my colleagues said that Tokyo was also "you should pull up a chair"
NZ is exceedingly plain so I don't get that comment. Most are of the form
1337 Great North Road
Pt. Chevalier
Auckland
1002
You could even omit Auckland as it's implied by the simple 1000-series postcode.
The property boom may have led to subdivisions making a 1337/2 necessary but the vast majority of buildings outside of metro areas are detached, single family properties.
My house number is 12-16. Even some government websites in Germany can't handle that and go with 12 ( which, to be fair, works for all purposes, but it's incorrect)
That seems like a way to get a discrimination lawsuit. On the other hand there was that guy who changed his name to "Spider Mann" who had all kinds of problems because of it... But in that case you could say it is his own damn fault whereas if you have an unusual family name because of your culture you really can say you're a victim.
> That seems like a way to get a discrimination lawsuit
I don't think names are a protected class, right? Regardless it is stupid, but I'm not sure if it on its own can be called anything else than lazy engineering.
I don't think the last name "Pot" is going to be clearly associated with any protected class. If they where banning all last names prefixed by "O'" or the name "Rousseau" that'd be a bit different.
Yeah, this is kind of the issue; I don't know if "Pot" is indicative of any clear nationality or heritage.
Kind of a lacuna in the law--I think almost everyone in the country would agree this person has a legit grievance here, but not sure what the exact legal theory would be...
The victim can sue due to damages, but it's still just a name.
I believe there's someone running around with a first or last name of literally "null" who has problems regularly. They should absolutely be able to sue, but there's no way in hell someone is deliberately did that as a result of even neglectful discrimination. It's just poor engineering.
Interestingly it appears this check happens clientside so a super-knowledgeable user could bypass the check by using the browser console to empty the “bad words” array.
It's common for the same checks to happen client-side (for user convenience and good error messages) and server-side (for the actual security/validation).
It's common to have bank accounts in the name of "The [name] Revocable Living Trust" for US estate planning purposes. Perhaps they're trying to catch those and require that credit cards be in the natural person's name only.