The other Sean Byrne doesn't exist

(conic.al)

46 points | by rdl 2 hours ago

4 comments

  • bryanrasmussen 35 minutes ago
    >The Robert Johnson they kept being confused with wasn’t a man named Robert Johnson. It was a known alias of someone convicted of plotting to bomb a Hindu temple and a cinema in Toronto

    Also, sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads, so you gotta be careful.

  • kazinator 1 hour ago
    You can't seriously match people on first and last name and claim "fully matched".

    Think of how manny John Smiths there are?

    How can this be the company started by Wozniak and Jobs ...

    • cbsmith 51 minutes ago
      As a guy named Chris Smith, I can tell you, people do absolutely "match people on first and last name", and it causes me no end of trouble.
      • nephihaha 31 minutes ago
        They do unfortunately. I know someone with a more unusual surname who was getting chased for the debt of someone with the same name. It happens.
  • areoform 1 hour ago
    Something like this happened to me and it has cost me $20k+ over time, https://areoform.wordpress.com/2021/08/06/on-apples-expanded...

    Mercury unblocked my accounts because their founder is a very kind man who bothered to verify what the document actually says rather than falling back to, "Computer says no." But everywhere else? De nada. Computer says no.

    And it's not even me. It's a fuzzy match with someone in their 50s. Doesn't matter. Computer says no.

    And I can't "get off the list" because it's not me who's on the list. The computer will always say no.

    In the long run, I'll be fine. I think. But I'll pay $100k+ by the time it's over. These systems are being steadily expanded, as the dumbest incarnations of themselves. We've gone from Thin Thread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinThread to crappy fuzzy matches on shoddy data executed on with 0 diligence. It's the stupidest possible timeline.

    I think many, many other people will be sharing our fate soon, which is partly why I've been writing about this slow rolling train wreck in motion in bits and pieces.

    • psd1 6 minutes ago
      "The evil, I can tolerate; but the stupidity..." -Hubert Farnsworth
  • zhivota 1 hour ago
    Honestly the best thing to do might be to change your name at this point. I'm glad my name is not common, this kind of issue is going to only get worse in the future.
    • mproud 17 minutes ago
      I get phone calls for a guy named Randy about his business. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to make the phone calls stop.

      The simplest solution is to change my phone number. But

      a) why should I have to? it’s my number, dammit!

      b) how many accounts have 2FA? if I changed my number, what if I miss updating one that’s important?

      c) it could happen again

      If I change my number, however, that is the simplest way to solve the problem. It’s just, do I want to?

    • grey-area 1 hour ago
      No, the best thing to do is get the press involved and make Apple and ideally the US gov fix their incompetent handling of this.
    • kmoser 1 hour ago
      That is trading one problem for another: when the name on your birth certificate doesn't match the name on your government issued ID, certain other government entities tend to deny you services.
      • gucci-on-fleek 56 minutes ago
        I would think that changing the last name only should be fine though, since up until somewhat recently, most women changed their last names when they got married, so most systems should be equipped to handle this.
        • nephihaha 27 minutes ago
          It used to be very common for migrants to change their surnames, although less so now. There used to be a person who wrote about Scottish Lithuanians called John Millar, who was born as Jonas Stepšys. Noam Chomsky had said that his family's surname was substantially altered after they went to the USA.