this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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The core purpose of KYC - to make it harder to launder money, and for the ultra rich to hide away their ill gotten gains - is not evil, far from it.
The fact the very same people which benefit from a perception that KYC is evil and/or ineffective, are the same people making the decisions to penny pinch on security which directly lead to data breaches, is obviously a complete coincidence!
KYC does nothing against rich people. Panama Papers came out and nothing happened. Law enforcement does not target rich people.
Don't use that example. Look up consequences of Panama Papers. At least say that nothing happened in USA, land of the corrupt, home of the slaves.
Yep. KYC is to stop the movement of funds that could be used to undermine the system. A.k.a terrorism.
Bruh, the ultra rich have operated state sanctioned child rape islands for several decades. Do you really think KYC has any impact on their crimes?
If so, I have a bridge you might be interested in acquiring...
those crimes in specific? no.
in how they carried out specific other crimes? yeah, it changed methodology at very least. it sounds like you don't understand KYC. it was not targeted at sex trafficking. it's aimed at financial crimes.
I agree that KYC isn't inherently evil. But the way its been weaponized is.
For instance in the telecommunications space it make total sense for mitigating spam SMS messages and Robocalls. But the carriers all sell your data for profit. They also don't protect your data properly and are breached all the time. That's malicious.
So no, I won't throw the baby out with the bathwater and agree its an oversimplification to simply call KYC evil. But I also don't blame people when all they see is abuse and never a good and proper implementation that isn't exploitative.
There's also an execution problem.
Truly knowing your customer might produce very different outcomes than the current compliance checkbox approach.
"I know Fred just sold his old car. The idea he suddenly has $12k in cash is not suspicious" or "Jane's been talking about going to Montreal for momths. We should not block her card when it lights up there.". That's real KYC, but it requires human connection and human judgement, which doesn't scale and doesn't provide the right paperwork for demonstrating compliance with arbitrary mandates.
There absolutely is. Way too many of these fuckers are still breathing.