[Lonestar1440]

There are no other online choices. If my Bank login goes totally Kaput, though, I can take my ID down to the Branch to get it sorted. Same with my telecom provider.

I try to only depend on services which have this property. I don't succeed.

[foxglacier]

Tech people forget how the real world has solved these problems long ago. I got access to my bank account in another country by writing them a letter on paper and having it signed by a policeman in my country then sending it in the mail. A pain and expensive but if it's important, you do it. All these old fashioned techniques are backed by the criminal justice system which can actually work when the fraudsters have to go to the police station to commit their crime.

[ipaddr]

Sounds great until you have an aging parent with a problem who can't get there. Get a power of attorney you say.. great but they won't accept unless parent comes to the branch.

This comes back to haunt you in the future.

[ajsnigrutin]

On the other hand, the best anti-scam feature for older relatives is to tell them to "go there in person". Get a call from the bank, they simply tell them "ok, I'm coming to the bank tomorrow, in person", and they're done. Scam call? Legit call? Doesn't matter, they'll sort it out at the bank.

There's a whole wide age and knowledge/competence where older people can still fall for scams (or can't know if it's legit or a scam) but on the other hand are still capable to go to whatever office/bank they need to go.

[Terr_]

Probably not news to anyone here, but partial step in this direction is to put down vetted official contact details for the institutions.

Every time someone calls to say there's a problem with your account, you ask for their name and/or extension number, because recontacting through the institution is your only good way of verifying their identity.

[donalhunt]

That works when the system is setup to allow that.

I've encountered banks that don't have that setup — hilariously one bank felt the need to cold call me about my complaint about cold calling from unverifiable numbers. When I asked how I could call them on a verifiable number, they claimed I couldn't. :/

[Terr_]

Bank-be-crazy Anecdote: I used a paper check to send money to a relative. My bank balance went down, but a week later my relative still hadn't received anything. Eventually the relative's bank said that something went wrong, and I thought: "Well, OK, I'll transfer it some other way when it gets returned to me." Except a month later it was still in limbo.

The kicker is that Bank X's website was simply... mathematically wrong. There weren't any transactions or notes to explain it, my balance was just magically smaller as the funds had never existed, last month's statement could not be reconciled with the current statement, etc. This was several thousand dollars.

I was eventually able to fix it with support, and they explained that Bank X had been bought by Bank Y, and somehow my old checkbook was still valid-enough to pull money out of my account, but somehow not valid-enough to finish the job nor to fail "cleanly."

I expressed to the representative that--while I had immense professional sympathy for the problems of mergers and system integrations--it's probably bad PR and perhaps a regulatory issue for any bank to lose track of customers' money and present them with what is either a false set of transactions or a false balance...

[kijin]

Malware on your phone can reroute your calls to the attacker. So you think you're calling the official number at the correct institution, but you're actually talking to the attacker.

[Terr_]

Well, yeah, and knowing first-aid is worthless if someone's been decapitated. :p

If some malware is that deep on the phone, able to redirect calls, then you've got much bigger problems and the attacker might not even need to trick any cooperation at all.

[sciencejerk]

What kind of malware are we talking about here? On a non-rooted phone?

[kijin]

It was in the news a few times in my country. Not sure about the exact technical details, but it might have been a malicious Android app that advertises itself as an improvement over the stock Phone app, encouraging users to set it as the default dialer. You don't need root for that.

[Lonestar1440]

I've done this. I'm very surprised that, in your case, the POA was not sufficient to get your business done.

I'm not sure what alternative you are proposing. This only gets much, much worse when the aging person is trying to use a password...

[zimpenfish]

> until you have an aging parent with a problem who can't get there

Or you get elected to high office and consequently getting to the branch is a bit ... faffy[0]

[0] https://chicago.suntimes.com/pope-leo-xiv/2026/05/06/pope-le...

[komali2]

> McCarthy, an Augustinian friar from the South Side who has known Pope Leo for 43 years, told the story as a reminder to parishioners that the pope “is like us,” and “a very humble guy.”

So humble that he was able to change his information over the phone by threatening directly to the president of the bank that he'd use a different bank if they didn't let him, and the president bent over backwards to meet this demand. He's just like us!

[Gigachad]

This is still less problematic than an attacker getting in and draining the funds.

[RevEng]

That's a strange one. I had to use POA for my mother in law last summer and it was straight forward.

[alexfoo]

Some companies are purposely obtuse about it.

My wife is trying to sort something with a famous Irish airline who are well known for messing people around. She has LPA/POA for her mother but rather than the airline accepting the VCode (this is the UK) the airline are requesting to see the original POA certificate which is just ridiculous. They seem to be moving a little quicker now there is solicitor involved.

Given how much back and forth there has been it's probably cost the airline more than just refunding the amount at the first request. We'll keep going to prove a point.

[foxglacier]

Try another branch. I had that exact problem and just shopped around. I think some staff err on the side of caution when they don't know what to do.

[gamerDude]

Seems like a business opportunity. Face to face authentication in every major city that can authenticate people when needed.

[bandrami]

This is actually one of the more useful services those horrible check-cashing storefronts provide.

[dzhiurgis]

Take it to the branch? Like in the 90s? What?