Published on October 16th, 2019 📆 | 4278 Views ⚑
0Clever Good Samaritan Returns Lost Wallet To Owner By Hacking His Bank Account
How can that be? This was not a typical hack in any sense of the word. The good Samaritan who found the wallet made a series of unauthorized £0.01 deposits into Cameron's account, each with a message attached. Deposits at Cameron's bank can contain up to 18 characters, and the person who found the wallet utilized the feature to positive effect.
I just lost my wallet on the way home from work. I didn't have much identifying info in there so a good Samaritan got in touch with my via my... bank account 🤯
4x transfers of £0.01 each with a reference up to 18 chars pic.twitter.com/RVK8I1ZctQ
— Tim Cameron (@Timcammm) October 14, 2019
"HI. I FOUND YOUR WALLET IN THE ROAD. TEXT OR CALL! [number redacted]," the messages in the reference fields collectively read.
The ingenious hack worked, and within minutes Cameron was reunited with his missing wallet. Cameron never refunded the £0.04 in deposits to Simon Byford, the 30-year-old software engineer who found the wallet, but he did him one better—he gifted Byford a bottle of red wine. Score!
Had the bank account trick not worked, Cameron said Byford planned to hand the wallet over to police, and would also attempt to track him down through Facebook. But it did work, and just as importantly, there's one less crack in our faith in humanity.
Gloss