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Oct 14, 2003, 12:44 AM
Post #10 of 11
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Re: [Carron] Social Security Deposits in Mexico
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Carron writes:
When we moved to Chiapas almost 6 years ago, we had already been doing our banking on-line for some time through our local Houston bank. Thought we had everything arranged before we moved. As soon as we were on-line again in Mexico, our US bank cut us loose and said their computers recognized that we were handling our business from outside the US, because of the phone number, and because of some international law at the time we could no longer access any of our accounts or information about them.
In this and other forums I've seen claims of financial institutions blocking of out-of country access (typically by IP address screening) but never substantiation either in the form of an actual clause in an access agreement (the pages of stuff that's thrown up on the screen that you have to agree to before getting access) or investigation by a knowledgeable third party. As the problem occurred approximately six years ago my immediate thought is that it was an issue of web-browsers.
Until the Clinton administration, over the objections of the FBI and then Attorney General, relaxed export controls on software in September of 1999, the mainstream browsers such as Netscape Navigator/Communicator and Internet Explorer came in two versions, a US-only version and an export version. The difference between the two was the level of encryption used when establishing secured ("https") connections, such as you would with a financial institution like a bank. Export versions of browsers were limited by US Commerce Department arms control rules (encryption technology was and to some extent remains classified as a "munition") to weak 40-bit encryption, while US versions of browsers standardized on stronger 128-bit encryption (strength here is relative as true encryption systems routinely use 1024-4096 bit keys). For security purposes, many banks limit web access of accounts to browsers using 128-bit encryption. If you were trying to access your bank from Mexico via an internet cafe, using a computer set up locally, or with a web-browser loaded from a freebie CD distributed in the US (the assumption being that it was too easy to take such disks out of the country and so the export version of software was provided) there's a strong possibility that your attempt to access was rejected simply because the export software version was being used. This should no longer be the case, unless whatever computer(s) you are using are equipped with rather elderly software.
....But while they were quick to cancel our old ones,which we depended on for withdrawals at least once a week, they said it was against international law for them to send us the new cards..... I am unaware of any "international laws" specifically restricting out-of-country shipment of US ATM cards (for starters, who would issue such laws?). There are Mexican customs requirements for shipment of financial instruments which could be stretched to include ATM cards, but these largely require that such shipments be declared in a specific fashion. More logical causes for refusing out-of-country shipment of ATM cards are:
1. bank specific implementations of anti-money laundering laws and regulations,
2. bank making it more difficult for the account and ATM card to be used as an unofficial international remittance account, and/or
3. banks trying to simplify and control costs of the issuance of ATM cards.
There are also concerns from the Mexican side of the border about controlling conduits for narco-dollars to be brought into Mexico.
With regards to (1), as US financial institutions including banks establish controls to comply with the increased anti-money laundering requirements of the so-called USA Patriot Act of 2001, routine bank-related activities have become more complicated, a trend which I suspect will only become worse (start watching for the so-called "Patriot Act II"). With regards to (2), foreign remittance accounts (accounts used to send money from the US to somebody in another country) have been identified to be a lucrative market for banks to pursue both because of the fees they can collect ($5-20/transaction, plus 2-5% of the amount transferred) and the possibility of attracting new account holders. Sending ATM cards to unknown recipients in another country potentially bypasses the specialty remittance accounts.
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