covering the week's top tech stories
with a slight linux bias a teenage
twitch viewer sent
19 870 usd to several streamers
using his mother's debit card over the
course of two weeks
the teen's mother found the charges
toward the card between june 14th to
june 30th
claiming years of savings were taken
from her account over the two-week
period
she says these donations went to popular
streamers on the platform
the mother who has decided to remain
anonymous to protect her family
says that nearly all the money she lost
has been credited back to her account
after struggling to contact anyone at
twitch to discuss the issue the woman
successfully received a refund from the
streaming sites paying service
zola using the company's online
chat feature she got adjusted credits on
nearly all
transactions but in exchange was told
the account is permanently blocked to
prevent future
unauthorized charges before contacting
sola however
she attempted to communicate with amazon
and even resorted to sending a
registered letter to twitch ceo
emmett shearer when all else failed she
tried contacting her bank but they could
only provide further assistance
if she was willing to press charges
against her son
she found out about sola by discovery by
discovering
other parents online who also had found
success in similar situations
although she was able to receive most of
her money
she said hitting a brick wall with
twitch was the most frustrating thing of
all
the fact that no one would respond and
there was no way to speak with anyone
was horrible she said
that was probably the worst the son is
remorseful according to the mother and
is going to
counseling he's also been limited to one
hour of monitored daily playtime
with a stipulation that he must do
positive activities throughout the day
get exercise and interact with the
family in a positive manner
you know as a father of young kids
that are very
engrossed in youtubers and
yeah yeah yeah all that kind of stuff
this story makes me go
whoo am i glad i'm not giving my kids my
debit card
when i first got an amazon fire tv stick
uh i made the mistake of not setting a
pen
oh no and of course you're logged in to
your
um your amazon account yeah so
um i was at work and suddenly my phone
started blowing up
i'm like what is going on so finally i
pulled out my phone because i'm getting
all these notifications one after
another after another
and i look at my phone and i'm seeing
amazon charges
one after another after another to the
tune of
450 dollars now nothing like
twenty thousand dollars but but this was
a case where
my son was playing a video game yeah and
he determined that if he put
zero zero zero zero as the pin
because that was the default yep that he
could buy
anything in the game not realizing
not realizing was actually my credit
card so did you get it refunded
i did amazon is fantastic that's
good so they reversed it and no problem
whatsoever but i can just
i can feel that stress that this woman
must have been going through to realize
twenty thousand dollars gone from my
debit card
and and that makes me think
like is this a failure in our
electronic system right now i mean i
think this about tap
and how three four years ago at the
toronto santa claus parade
somebody had a tap receiver
attached to their phone you know how you
can get these devices and they went
through the parade and they stole
20 at a time just by yes approaching
people's pockets
yes and so walked away with thousands
and thousands of dollars and bef
i don't even know i never heard if they
ever got caught oh i'm sure they would
have everything's tracing
yeah so it but it just makes me think
about debit cards how they have the visa
logo now yes and so like that has
happened to my wife
um she had a visa debit yeah and
remember when debit was the safeguard
right i remember that i want to say it
was maybe two years ago
yeah um she went to use the debit card
and she couldn't use it and she was like
what's going on i don't know went online
and found out that her account was
locked
for suspicious activity so she looked so
at least they're doing that
right yeah so she so she looked into it
and over the course of
three days there was hundreds of dollars
in
food purchases from all over california
using uh the visa debit function so
somehow
somebody had gotten her visa debit
information
yeah and was making food purchases and
so because it operates just like a visa
exactly yeah and so it was no big deal
to do like 20 bucks to this pizza joint
yeah 30 bucks to this restaurant and so
whoever was was doing it now thankfully
she got all of her money back it all got
you know returned but i mean in the case
of this story so i mean there's a couple
things here one is
how did the kid get the debit card or
was it just registered to the
just from mom's wallet and it's but
second you'd think the bank accounts
most debits have a daily limit of a
thousand dollars
true and so if he dropped 20 grand over
a two-week period
either she had a higher daily limit or
there was no limit on it
i'm thinking mama has 20 000 in the bank
she probably has a higher limit than i
do
well that's probably true i don't think
i've ever had twenty thousand dollars
not all at once maybe just before my
mortgage payment
came out just after that put the money
in that's right
yeah yeah but uh but the other thing is
the fact that you know
there are kids that are out there
they're going i want to donate to my
favorite
person and i mean right my kids are
always talking about their favorite
youtubers
and uh you know our son with his
chromebook like i you know i have an
email for him because he's at the age
you can have an email now
and so i have the you know master login
for his email
and every once in a while i'll just
check up on what he's doing and i'm
finding oh
he's commenting on different youtubers
and i'm going
okay i need to have a conversation with
him about internet awareness and whatnot
and so i'm now very aware of what is
linked up to that account
could he purchase this kind of stuff and
so you have to think very security
conscious as a parent
if you're going to start handing online
accounts to your kids that's a tough
tough situation now my my producer is is
giving us the look that we need to move
on
but i'm a blogger as a final thought on
this particular story as a content
creator on platforms like youtube
uh a twitch creator who you know
that's that's the biggest like fear and
burn and even i'll be honest with you
and some of you
may or may not know this but even having
had such a successful kickstarter
campaign
right up until the moment that the
money's in the bank you're you're on the
edge of your seat as a content creator
thinking what if they back down
right what if you know i've i've
basically budgeted these funds that have
been donated what if they
retroacted that that would be a real bad
situation for me as a content creator
so to these content creators who
received that twenty thousand dollars
from this child from this teenager
and then had it reversed where did that
leave them like that's such
a hard situation so we need to be there
need to be things put in place to
protect
those content creators the kids the
parents um there need to be
you know i hate to say regulations
that's not what i'm talking about but
but maybe twitch is irresponsible maybe
they're
partly to blame for this maybe there's
something that needs to be said
about that uh
all i'm doing is just opening that box
and just letting you dive in to comment
below
what are your thoughts sad sack 963
makes a really good
comment about the debit card issue and
hack and a child being able to use mum's
credit card
and says what if the debit card what if
these debit cards had 2fa
wouldn't that be superb so what if there
was 2fa
on your debit card that somehow you you
know whether you pull out a an
authenticator token or
or the authenticator app on your phone
whatever it is that you need to
use to be able to yeah i think that's
very very smart so thanks for submitting
that
you