Question Do EMIs really check phone numbers and IP addresses to understand your patterns of movement and which country you're living

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newNomad

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Dear team
hope all is going fine.
I was wondering if EMIs like TransferWise, Paysera..really track your IPs and maybe phone number(s) to determine target crs reporting jurisdictions i.e. is it just an urban legend or something to be concerned about?
What are the other possible sources, beyond CRS, authorities get indications of in case of shady transactions or evasion?

Thanks
 
newNomad said:
newNomad said:
Dear team
hope all is going fine.
I was wondering if EMIs like TransferWise, Paysera..really track your IPs and maybe phone number(s) to determine target crs reporting jurisdictions i.e. is it just an urban legend or something to be concerned about?
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Yes, they do, in addition to manual and/or automatic transaction monitoring used to build a baseline profile of you and typical customers.

Many also deploy more advanced anti-fraud solutions like device fingerprinting and VPN piercing.

newNomad said:
newNomad said:
What are the other possible sources, beyond CRS, authorities get indications of in case of shady transactions or evasion?
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Data leaks is one. Banks and EMIs suffer intrusions, and sometimes it's employees leaking information. That's not very common, though, but it can and does happen.

You also have STR (Suspicious Transaction Report) or SAR (Suspicious Activity Reports) which are reports financial institutions and many other businesses are required to file with their local financial intelligence unit (FIU), in case a customer does something suspicious. This is very broad and most reports go nowhere except into a large filing cabinet, from which they can be referenced again in the future. In a bad enough case, a report even to an offshore FIU could lead to that FIU contacting authorities elsewhere, including where you as the beneficiary or UBO live, for further investigation.

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This is the probably the answer to your question.
 
Thanks, I haven't seen much talk about those STR/SARs though I read that in some European countries all wire transfers above 5k euro are reported to the local FIU. What is the most interesting that the customer is not made aware about this; haven't all those GDPR and privacy laws in Europe been enacted precisely to have more cotrol over what private information is exchanged and with whom? 🙂
 
newNomad said:
newNomad said:
Thanks, I haven't seen much talk about those STR/SARs though I read that in some European countries all wire transfers above 5k euro are reported to the local FIU. What is the most interesting that the customer is not made aware about this; haven't all those GDPR and privacy laws in Europe been enacted precisely to have more cotrol over what private information is exchanged and with whom? 🙂
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That's ultimately for the courts to decide but AML laws tend to supersede GDPR. Even if you find something in a GDPR transposition that would make filing of STR/SAR against local data protection laws, I think you'll struggle to get the courts to agree with you. At most, they will require banks and financial institutions to be more transparent than just sticking a general reference to the "applicable laws" in the terms and conditions.

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This is the probably the answer to your question.
 
newNomad said:
newNomad said:
Thanks, I haven't seen much talk about those STR/SARs though I read that in some European countries all wire transfers above 5k euro are reported to the local FIU. What is the most interesting that the customer is not made aware about this; haven't all those GDPR and privacy laws in Europe been enacted precisely to have more cotrol over what private information is exchanged and with whom? 🙂
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the funny thing about that is that is that governments are exempted of GDPR and even AML rules
 
yes they do. Every time there is a login from another jurisdiction or using a VPN, a red flag is raised. then its depends on the compliance policies - some EMI will close their eyes on a couple of logins in different jurisdictions, but eventually the questions will be asked. The other option- you can always try to speak to the bank and blame covid- for example, due to the situation you are considering to move to another country for the time being. If the country is not under restrictions and EMI can serve the clients from this country, this should not be a problem.
 
Yes. Use a dedicated IP address and device agent for connections to this service.
 
discussionor said:
discussionor said:
Could you please explain what VPN piercing is?
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It kind of is what it sounds like. It's something that was easier a couple of years ago. What you'd do is somehow interact with the browser/client in a way that bypasses VPN.

I think DNS leak is the most commonly used, still available way to pierce VPNs.

It can be avoided but it's still worth attempting to pierce VPNs just to catch those people who don't. It has very little overhead.

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This is the probably the answer to your question.
 
I travel a lot and i am not sure about this with Wise as long as you have a business acount. I have logged in to my account while being in Germany, Slovakia, Czech republic, France, Spain, Netherlands. I never had problems.
I had a problem when they mistakenly received business revenue on my personal account. They froze a personal account and i was very lucky to keep it. Hopefully i had a freelancer status under my name.

Many people incorporated a company in a different country from where they reside.

Last edited: Feb 8, 2025
 
I have also heard they will look at where you spend your money too.

i.e. if you say you are in country A, but your personal account has 3+ months of transactions almost entirely in country B, this is flagged and can be investigated.
 
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