HBCI questions (was: The financial contribution issue)

[Christian Stimming]

Jon Lapham schrieb:
>> On a side note, in Germany I could even add a "Click here to donate 
>> through HBCI" menu item to gnucash, where the donator would only need 
>> to fill in the value, enter his/her online PIN and *poof* the money 
>> goes to our account. Although care has to be taken so that nobody 
>> perceives such an opportunity as intrusive in some way.
> 
> Wow!  Could you add a link to my bank account too?  Maybe I could get 
> some accidental donations...
> 
> :)
>
> Just curious:
> 
> So, in Germany's HBCI system, if you accidentally type an extra zero 
> when transferring money, is there an way to recover the money?

You mean, your order had a higher amount than intended? No, then there 
is no [easy] way to recover the money, except when the benificiary is 
cooperative or probably by court order. Just the same if you 
accidentally write a cheque for a higher-than-intended amount.

In both cases, nobody else except you did a mistake. Things are 
different if the destination account number did not match the 
destination party's name and so forth.

> Is the other party legally required to even return it?

Maybe they are, maybe they are not. I'd guess they are, but IANAL.

> If you leave GnuCash running after having logged in the HBCI system, 
> what happens if your kid sits down at the computer and gives away all 
> your money?

:-) This works exactly as your RSA-keys and -passphrase for signing your 
outgoing email. If the application stores the passphrase in memory and 
you leave the application up and running, then in fact others can screw 
things up. On the contrary, if the passphase is not stored in memory, 
then it has to be entered each time a HBCI transaction is made, and 
nobody else can mungle with your money. By default, the option "store 
passphrase/PIN in memory" is unchecked/deactivated in gnucash. Which 
should leave people rather on the safe side...

Christian