[PeterisP]

I wonder why you don't see news articles stating 'bank robbers steal $ 123000 from users of [random-bank-branch]' ... could it be because if someone hacks or robs a bank or a legitimate payment service provider such as westernunion or paypal, they are required to eat the loss, not pass it on to users?

[ceejayoz]

Bank robbers typically walk away with a few grand if they're lucky, and it'll almost certainly have a dye pack and a tracker in it. Bank robbery is a fool's business.

39k BTC is what, $39 million worth? You're right, news articles cover that differently than a $123,000 loss that's covered by insurance.

[patrickk]

> Bank robbers typically walk away with a few grand if they're lucky, and it'll almost certainly have a dye pack and a tracker in it. Bank robbery is a fool's business.

Exactly. It's all fraud now - much higher rewards with much lower risk of getting caught. Why try to break into a bank vault waving a gun in the air when you can skim relatively small amounts from millions of credit cards or commit identity theft and take out loans in someone else's name, all from a different country to your victim.

[judk]

Relevant illustration of bank theft: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E&desktop_uri=%2Fwatc...

[AJ007]

My understanding, in the US, is if you have a personal account the bank eats the loss. If you have a business account its gone.

This actually is very common. All it requires is enough mule bank accounts to wire amounts below suspicion and spyware on the user's machine (snatches RSA authentication key at entry if two factor verification is used.) The banks don't want the event to be publicized and the company/small business doesn't want it publicized either.

[tedunangst]

To clarify, it depends on who was robbed. If bank robbers steal green paper from the vault, the bank doesn't know which business account that money came from. If it's wire transferred out because your password was 'banana', it may be gone for good.

[makomk]

The more usual issue is businesses getting their machines used for banking hacked and the hacker sniffing all their credentials and emptying their accounts. Many banks don't support two-factor authentication for business accounts because they don't have to - it's not their money on the line.

[tedunangst]

Totally true. That's just not what most people have in mind when you say "the bank was robbed".

[corresation]

Outside of the asymmetrical reporting angle (which I would say doesn't exist, unless your question is why normal thefts aren't on the front page of HN?), large value thefts are very uncommon in traditional commerce. There was one recent one where an international ring with many participants stole from ATMs using skimmed cards, yielding $45 million, but that has been international news repeatedly for quite some time.