They could have raised awareness to the problem and provided detailed instructions on how anyone can go about resolving it, in a manner that's consistent with best practices of protecting yourself.
It's a false dichotomy to say its either this web site or Chase wins.
Promoting risky and insecure behavior is just wrong. period. That's independent of whatever Chase or any other company is putting in their agreements.
I think you'd be helping people far more by pointing out all the problems with this kind of website, so they can be aware of the risks and hopefully avoid scams, rather than getting them out of binding arbitration clauses.
> It's a false dichotomy to say its either this web site or Chase wins.
But it's not! No one is going to mail in a form. Chase specifically chose that go that route because they know nobody nobody is going to mail in a form. The only way to get around this is to make the process easier. How else do you do that?
It strikes me as a very shortsighted to say "this behavior is wrong in all circumstances, period," while ignoring the benefits. Everything in life is some kind of risk trade-off.
Edit: I suppose your larger point is, the potential harm of this project greatly outweighs any potential good. I can respect that, but I'd really encourage you to research how messed up binding arbitration agreements are, particularly with regards to institutions like a bank.
fair enough. You're putting more weight on the harm of arbitration agreements, whereas I'm putting more weight on the harm of identity theft and phishing/online scams.
I would say that more broadly speaking the harm of arbitration agreements is solvable in other ways, such as government or advocacy actions. I'm guessing that's what led to this letter/form in the first place: some regulator, or litigation resulted in Chase having to provide an "opt out", and they fulfilled their requirement by making it a mail-in form to discourage opt-out.
If the harm persists then consumer advocates, elected representatives, and regulators can take another crack at it.
Educating people to be wary and careful with personal information is trickier. It's hard enough to spot a very well crafted spear-phishing attack, even when you know better and are generally vigilante. I don't know how else to deal with that except hyper-vigilance, and yes "this behavior is wrong in all circumstances, period,"
But again, I guess I'm weighing that risk higher than you are.
It's a false dichotomy to say its either this web site or Chase wins.
Promoting risky and insecure behavior is just wrong. period. That's independent of whatever Chase or any other company is putting in their agreements.
I think you'd be helping people far more by pointing out all the problems with this kind of website, so they can be aware of the risks and hopefully avoid scams, rather than getting them out of binding arbitration clauses.