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Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Can Amazon see my bank account's mailing address? I'd like to change it to the same address as another bank account associated with a different amazon store. The bank will not allow me to use mailboxes as addresses.

Given Amazon's stricter verification measures, should I be concerned they might try to find my address from my bank, or ask me for bank statements showing the address?

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Banks do not share anything with Amazon so nothing wo worry about :)

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

They may request a bank statement which is common now, that needs to show your name and address that is on the stealth account. But they have no way of checking your address with the bank account number you give them

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Thank you. Are you aware of U.S. banks that allow for postal mailboxes to be used as mailing addresses for business accounts?

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

I'm pretty sure just about every bank in the USA allow for Post Mailboxes to be used as a mailing address.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Sorry, you're right. I meant using mailboxes as the primary account address (not mailing address) for a business bank account.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

I have a PO Box that allows a 'street address' format for my principal place of business. Used for bank accounts, etc. no problem.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Sorry but this is patently false information.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

What's false about it?

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

That they have "no way of checking" the info matches what you provide.

Amazon can and at times during a manual review, will contact the bank and give the bank the information you provide and ask if it matches their records. I had it happen on a suspended account several months ago.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

That would be illegal in the USA

Right to Financial Privacy Act prohibits financial institutions from disclosing bank records or account information about individual customers without:

1) the customer’s consent
2) a court order
3) subpoena
4) search warrant
5) other formal demand, with limited exceptions.

http://www.accessreports.com/statutes/RFPA.htm

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Are you intentionally misleading the forum with your irrelevant law or did you just not even bother to read it?

It literally applies ONLY to GOVERNMENT and LAW ENFORCEMENT. It says NOTHING about PRIVATE COMPANIES.

This is from the VERY TOP!

The Right to Financial Privacy Act was Congress' response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that found bank customers had no legal right of privacy for their financial information held by financial institutions. The law is largely procedural and requires government agencies to provide notice and an opportunity to object before a bank or other institution can disclose personal financial information to a government agency, usually for law enforcement purposes. The law was amended in the latter 1980s to allow postponement of notice in investigations dealing with drug trafficking and espionage.



Come on now.....at least read the document before you make a fool of yourself.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Do some VERY BASIC research.

United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435 (1976)


The gist is that the US Supreme Court ruled that customers of banks have no right to financial privacy. The law you mentioned was created specifically to allow customers the right to privacy from the GOVERNMENT.

In short, YES, if they want to, they CAN verify info. Will they always? NO. But they CAN if they choose to, and they HAVE before.


https://epic.org/privacy/rfpa/

When you spurt off nonsense like this it really makes one question your expertise. I mean it took me 5 mins of Googling to figure this stuff out with no prior knowledge of the law.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

GoA please calm down. Elmo isn't wrong in this case. Did you even read what you're quoting?

Private companies (aka Amazon) cannot get your information from the bank. The only way private companies can obtain such information is by having a court order.

The paragraphs and sections you're talking about about deals with government agencies wanting information. Government agencies are not private companies.

Also, when Amazon/Paypal tries to verify the information you've provided with your bank, the most the bank will ever answer is a "Yes" or a "No". They don't disclose WHAT doesn't match, or what the actual information you have file is.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Again, you're not reading or doing any research.

There is NO LAW preventing a bank from disclosing whether or not your name or address matches the last 4 digits of your account with them.

Read up from the FDIC:

https://www.fdic.gov/consumers/privacy/yourrights/

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

If someone wishes to dispute any of my claims, please, PROVIDE THE LAW AND SPECIFIC TEXT PREVENTING BANKS FROM DISCLOSING THIS INFO TO A PRIVATE COMPANY (i.e. Amazon.com)

I'm not talking out of my ass based on some theory. I've EXPERIENCED it first-hand on an Amazon account.....

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

And once again, you're quoting out of context paragraphs that SOUNDS LIKE supporting your claim, without actually reading the context.

If you're actually interested in what banks wants to do with your information, read from 15 U.S. Code Subchapter I .

Section § 6802 is an interesting read and seems like the most relevant to the discussion. It discusses a lot of about what banks can and cannot share, and the exceptions to opt-out. For simplicity, I will only be mentioning sections that you brought up. I recommend anyone else reading this post to read that entire page as well.

As a very start, read section (a):

Amazon is most definitely not an affiliated with your financial institutes, and thus your financial institute cannot freely share your non-public information with them.

The definition of non-public information is defined as following in §6809:

Therefore, trying to match a bank account number with your personal information registered with the bank DO count as disclosing non-public information. You don't find a list of bank account numbers with their corresponding owner's addresses anywhere in the public record.

The subsequent sections in §6802 deals with various exceptions to the case, most of them are irrelevant to the discussion here. Section (E)(3) mentioned the exception you quoted.
Here's the thing though, this section is written in respect to the financial institute's point of view. Your financial institute can only give out this information VOLUNTARILY, if they have evidence beyond reasonable doubt in their system that you are committing fraud, or required by legal proceedings (mentioned in a later section). If Amazon calls up your bank and say they don't like your business practice on their platform, that's not enough to justify them giving out your information. Banks disclosing information wrongfully will end up with a lot of legal consequences afterwards.

For anyone else reading this, I would like to point out that neither me or GhostOfAmazon are lawyers and both of our interpretations could be incorrect. You should not be taking any part of the discussion towards legal decisions.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Binary is correct with the quoted information

If you don't believe the written laws, give any financial institution a call and say you're name is John Apple, supervisor and account specialist at Amazon, and you're calling to confirm some account information. Make sure to have a heavy Indian accent as well since most Amazon call centers are outsourced to outside the USA.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Yeah, Binary, again, I think it's clear banks ARE allowed to disclose the information in question to a PRIVATE COMPANY (i.e. Amazon) since the information (name, address, phone #, etc) IS public information and IS important in determining FRAUD.

If someone is using FALSE information to make a purchase, whether an incorrect billing address, different name, whatever, it is considered FRAUD. Ergo, the bank is ALLOWED to reveal this information to Amazon, to protect the business, the bank and the consumer.

They don't even need to "match" The last 4 with your information. All they need to do is call bank, list the charge or attempted charge, and ask if the information provided (i.e. stealth name, address, phone #) matches what the bank has on file. AGAIN: This is considered "public" information and thus, under law is free to be disclosed.

In short, Amazon asking the bank if your PUBLIC INFORMATION matches what the bank has on file in relation to a TRANSACTION TAKING PLACE WITH AMAZON, Amazon has every legal right to confirm said information is accurate.

This really isn't complicated. The law literally describes what constitutes "public information" and this information is EXACTLY what is not accurate.

Therefore, for our purposes, the bank can give Amazon all the info they need to detect this.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

And AGAIN: I'm not arguing over a THEORY. This ACTUALLY HAPPENED on a real life Amazon account I had a few months back.

Just because it has not yet happened to YOU (that you are aware of) doesn't mean it DOESN'T, CAN'T, or WON'T happen. It just means you are unaware of it's occurrence.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

You aren't privy to the info I posted about this on another part of the forum, but suffice it to say the department that deals with contacting the financial institution at Amazon is not an Indian nobody, it's not even Seller Performance. It's the department ABOVE Seller Performance. (No, not Jeffs team). They have a fraud team that focuses SOLELY on fraudulent use of the platform, even for the buyer section.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Anyone who doesn't believe me can PM me and I'll tell you how to test whether they can see your info or not yourself on a new account.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Just to chip in here for clarification...

GOA which of these 2 situations are you saying happens?

Situation 1

Amazon employee Gonzo phones up the card card company

'Hey y'all what's happening. How are you man? (insert small talk yada yada)

'I am just hitting you up bruh from Amazon Super Dooper Cool Team to see if this this card number matches this address. Can y'all run it through your system and give me a yes or no bruh?'

Gonzo then tells the patient credit card employee the card number and the full address

The patient credit card employee then answers
'yes that card matches that address'
or
'no that card does not match that address'


Situation 2

Amazon employee Charles phones the card company

'Good morning my fine fellow I am phoning from the Amazon Flim Flam Team. I have a card here (tells the card company employee the card number). Can you tell me what address is registered to this card please my fine man?'

Card company then tells them the full address.

End of situation 2

(I may have taken liberties with the way in which the Amazon employees speak...)

I am unclear as to which of these 2 situations are saying you think is possible?

Situation 2 I do not see being possible. Situation 1 I think is feasible because its basically just an AVS check. I am not saying either of these do or do not happen, but if one were to happen I would expect it to be situation 1 and not 2

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

It's not gonna happen buddy, I've worked in financial sectors / banks for 5+ years

At the lower level you're going to reach tellers/branch managers. The tellers would get fired for releasing such information, and the branch managers are well aware of the privacy laws and wouldn't confirm or release this information.

At the higher level you're going to reach even more sophisticated employees that would never compromise their jobs and break the law to confirm some random information from some random caller.

Think about it from a common sense point of view. Any high up branch executive is not going to be able to verify the caller is an employee at Amazon. And even if they were able to somehow verify the caller, its still against the law for them to confirm or give any information out without some type of written court order. Now look at it this way... Identity theft is HUGE. If institutions were confirming any information over the phone, they could be potentially helping a scammer confirm someones personal information (identity theft). It's simply not going to happen the way you say it will.

Every financial institution has a fraud department and they're not going to release any information about an account holder without written court orders. And even then, they don't release that information to a private company like Amazon, they release it to law enforcement / government agencies. They have no obligation to speak to Amazon, eBay/Paypal etc.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

James:

Situtation 1 which MAY OR MAY NOT include the card #. The card number, as mentioned above, is NOT "public information" therefore I presume Amazon merely asks the bank if the details you provide (name address and phone #) MATCH the records of a customer at the bank.

If the bank DOES NOT have a "John Doe" living at "123 Stealth Ave" with the phone # 123-456-7890 they can simply say "No Amazon, we do not have a customer with those specific details at this time."


THIS IS IMPORTANT: THE INFORMATION LISTED ABOVE CAN BE FOUND IN A PHONE BOOK AND IS THEREFORE PUBLIC INFORMATION. There is absolutely ZERO debate about this, it's actually used as in example in the above quoted laws, thus there is NOTHING to debate about the above fact.


Thus Amazon can confirm the statement provided by you is FALSE, thus they know you're stealth. They may not know EXACTLY what doesn't match (possibly it's only 1 digit of the phone #, or maybe everything is fictional) but they do know it is NOT accurate. For Amazons purposes, that's all they need to know.

I know Amazon does this because it has HAPPENED to me on an account I personally own and ran. I was told BY THE TEAM THAT DOES THE INVESTIGATION that the bank denied Mr John Doe being their customer (since the person who Amazon is doing business with does not have a bank account there, being as he does not exist)

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

I LITERALLY talked about this in the first post I've made in this thread. This entire discussion wouldn't have been needed if you weren't being so arrogant about it.


The first situation where the payment processor asks your bank to verify if the information is correct with a "yes" and "no" is very possible; this is how your credit cards are verified.

Situation 2 is not possible without some sort of court order.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Exactly what I had thought. I am trying to work out which of the 2 situations GOA was saying happened in his case.

@GOA < So I think your saying situation 1? Or some variation of. I am still not totally clear on that... Sometimes when answering something sometimes less is more GOA.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Once again you're blowing smoke with no evidence to back up your claims. You may or may not have worked at a bank. It's irrelevant. We're discussing LAW which is BLACK and WHITE.

PUBLIC INFORMATION (the law uses the example of info that can be found in the phonebook) CAN BE DISCLOSED WITHOUT LIMITATION IF RELATING TO POTENTIAL FRAUD. Since providing false information is FRAUD, verifying the public information relates to FRAUD. Thus the bank is free to disclose this info.

Also, your example is absurd. Of course Indian rep Konda is not calling random bank teller Shelby and asking for this information. This is Amazon fraud department calling Financial Institution fraud department. Amazon is one of THE largest retailers in the world. Thus they have a relationship with EVERY bank, at least as a retailer. It's not as if "Joe Blow" is calling Amazon. This is a very high ranking FRAUD DEPARTMENT calling another companies high ranking FRAUD DEPARTMENT. I guarantee Amazon has access to these departments directly since they do literally millions of transactions every single day.

Your idea that Amazon could never verify PUBLIC INFORMATION with a bank is beyond ridiculous.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

You LITERALLY just admitted I'm correct...

Amazon IS a "payments processor". They are called "AMAZON PAYMENTS". Thus, there is NO middle man between Amazon and the bank. They are, in a word, the judge, jury, and executioner.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

The issues here GOA is that its not very clear what your saying happens.

It seemed like you were saying Amazon could phone the bank and ask for all the persons details and the bank would just hand them over. I don't think that is what you were trying to say though. Its just not very clear though.

I think your saying that Amazon can phone the bank account the bank can say yes or no to certain information matching information they have on file?

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

James, I wrote it VERY clearly in great detail with examples. I do not know how I could be any clearer.

Your name, address and phone # are public information.
The law gives the bank full authority to release public information to party they choose under certain circumstances, including FRAUD (i.e. pretending to be someone you are not)
Amazon uses it's own payments processor called "Amazon Payments". They do not go through a middleman. They process transactions directly with the bank.
Since Amazon is the payment processor, they have the right and ability to verify PUBLIC INFORMATION with the bank. The bank can and will confirm "yes" or "no" to Amazon when provided public information.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

I think sometimes your point gets lots as you make your posts so long with some many different little bits to them that its hard to grasp what your actually trying to say (at least for me!).

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

I have said banks lets payment processor verifies provided information with a "yes" or "no" since the very beginning. You then started off rambling about irrelevant **** about how banks can give out your personal information at ease, which is neither correct or relevant to the discussion.

I'm not going to participate this discussion any further, since it's is not getting anywhere useful at this point. It seems like you value your ego significantly more than actually contributing in a proper discussion or listening to what others have to say.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

^

Thanks for bowing out and admitting you have no facts to back up your arguement. I rest my case.

The laws I mentioned are very relevant to the discussion, I explained how and why, and you came to the same conclusion I did: Public information (name, address, phone #) can be given out legally. That is what Amazon verifies thus the answer to the question is yes, if the decide to, they can verify the information on your card.

They do not do this automatically. They do it manually. Thus something has to TRIGGER a review of this sort, which is why most of you are naive to it (I was too until it happened to me).

Binary, since you're able to read it, I suggest you check out my post in the appropriate place on the subject for more detail.

Or just admit you're wrong and leave the thread. Either way is fine to me.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Amazon has no need to know WHAT is inaccurate. All they care about is that the info IS inaccurate (i.e. stealth). This is ALL They need or WANT to know. Its the only excuse they need to can your account forever. This is common sense on the forum, I cannot understand why you're arguing against it.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

You mean the several sections of excerpts I pulled from the actual legislation papers which you ignored, because I proved you wrong and made your anecdote irrelevant?

damn, you sure got me there! :pound::pound::pound::pound::pound:
backpedal some more buddy :)

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Which I disputed....and you later backed up and agreed that:

Amazon IS a "payments processor" (Google "Amazon Payments"). Thus, AMAZON (as a "payments processor") can ask the BANK to "verify with a yes and no".

Ergo, Amazon can ask the bank if what you give matches what the bank has.

So, can Amazon read specifically what the exact info on your card is? NO. NO THEY CANNOT.

Can they tell the information you provided is bogus? YES, THEY CAN.

Maybe we were arguing over this petty technicality. If so, I do apologize. If not, please provide evidence that the above is incorrect.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

This is the third time I've said this, I never disagreed with this statement in the first place.

This statement

is 100% equivalent to this statement:

There is no difference and I never changed meanings. I'm not even sure what you're trying to argue about at this point.

In conclusion, payment processors/amazon/paypal/whatever CAN ask your financial institute if the information you've provided matches with a "yes" or a "no". They CANNOT find out the actual information you have registered with the bank without some sort of court order.

This discussion has been running in loops for the past while. Please say no more.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

I apologize Binary. We were arguing over something we both agree upon. I do apologize for misunderstanding your point.

Here's the bottom line. Amazon CANNOT tell that "John Doe" is actually "Andrew Smith". They CANNOT tell that "123 Stealth Ave" is actually "567 Main St" What they CAN do is VERIFY the information you provide is either TRUE or FALSE. They might not know WHAT is false, but they WILL know it IS false. And for our purposes, that's ALL they NEED to know. Once they find out it's FALSE, the account is done, period. They don't NEED your real name. They don't NEED your real address. They only need to know you gave them false information. Then your account is shut-down.

For all intents and purposes, it does not matter if they can see your name is Joe Blow or Steve Martin, they know you aren't who you say you are, so they shut you down anyways.

And for the record, once again: This does NOT occur automatically, only during CERTAIN manual reviews. It's time intensive for Amazon so it isn't common practice for every review.

Re: Can Amazon see or ask me to provide my bank account's mailing address?
 

Exactly why I asked which situation you were saying happened.

It just wasn't very clear what you were saying.

Sometimes your posts are so long as go off in so many different directly that their meaning is totally lost to a lot of people.