Apple Pay apple pay inserts made up name when adding card to wallet

[stevemiller]

first off, was trying to update the expiry info on my credit card for apple pay. there seems to be no way to do it. you have to entirely delete your card and then re-scan the new one.

so i scan the new card, and it properly reads the card number (which hasn't changed, only the expiry). but it also autofills the name associated with the card as something completely made up, like a string of random letters for a first and last name. i cancel and scan it again, and it autofills my proper name. this doesn't seem to have anything to do with the anonymized aspect of apple pay, this is literally the screen where you have to verify your info to add the card.

what on earth is this? where did this name come from? it makes me feel like my info has been compromised. or is it a bug? but is it on apple's end or the bank's end? it's a completely confusing and unnerving mess for the end user.

its just getting irritating how flippant big tech is about letting poorly designed or outright broken features run rampant in all aspects of our lives and we're just supposed to shrug and accept it.

 

[floral]

Seems like a pretty odd thing to make a post about, a onetime resolved issue.

As for the random string of letters it conjured up, I'm assuming it is just that, a bug. Ignore it and move on. They'll fix it eventually and for the mean time it won't affect you much. That's just how it is...

 

[stevemiller]

Seems like a pretty odd thing to make a post about, a onetime resolved issue.

As for the random string of letters it conjured up, I'm assuming it is just that, a bug. Ignore it and move on. They'll fix it eventually and for the mean time it won't affect you much. That's just how it is...

that seems pretty dismissive given the world we live in where there are so many elaborate identity theft scams. having your banking info show up under another made up name should be concerning to anyone.

and if companies have bugs where "sometimes your personal info is improperly processed" in my opinion isn't some shrug and move on type of issue. and i have no idea if this is a one in a million type of bug, something that happens frequently, or something that someone else has experienced that did turn out to be malicious. thats why i posted here.

 

[floral]

that seems pretty dismissive given the world we live in where there are so many elaborate identity theft scams. having your banking info show up under another made up name should be concerning to anyone.

and if companies have bugs where "sometimes your personal info is improperly processed" in my opinion isn't some shrug and move on type of issue. and i have no idea if this is a one in a million type of bug, something that happens frequently, or something that someone else has experienced that did turn out to be malicious. thats why i posted here.

No, I mean if it was a random string of letters then it wasn't someone else's name. I don't exactly know anyone named Xhsylocaskty Stxnakfuvl, and if I did then I'd probably be in immediate danger.

 

[floral]

As for your shrug and move on complaint, while this is obviously a weak point of all large corporations / "Big Tech" (a tendency to ignore small but exploitable issues), that is all we can do: Shrug and move on. We can't change it.

Only people with remote influence, like, say, people with a few million minions on Twitbook or something, could persuade a large corporation to fix something. And often times, the point in which they gain a sizable megaphone is also the point where they gain an ego large enough to not use it towards things that should be given light.

With enough of a push, it is possible for a large crowd to make a change, but it's unlikely and for a small issue like this I unfortunately doubt many people would make enough of an effort for it to be heard. This isn't the place for that though, so I won't elaborate.

 

[stevemiller]

No, I mean if it was a random string of letters then it wasn't someone else's name. I don't exactly know anyone named Xhsylocaskty Stxnakfuvl, and if I did then I'd probably be in immediate danger.

i guess this whole thing is just a dummy whammy of the opaqueness of technology anymore. i would not expect a scammer to be using a real name. a weird generated made up name that is untraceable seems like a plausible thing they'd do. but i don't know. i also don't know why apple would have a code path that generates a made up name in your banking info.

also worth noting apple pushed out a security patch to devices just yesterday, so clearly exploits can and do exist, so i'd argue people can and should be vigilant against strange behaviour especially when tied to banking tools.

 

[iStorm]

The camera likely just didn't get a good read of your name on the card the first time. The camera's main intention is to find and scan/OCR the card number. If it finds what it thinks to be your name and/or expiration date, it'll OCR those too and put them in the appropriate fields. When scanning the card, the text it detects will briefly show up on the image before going to the next screen to autofill them. I tried to get a screenshot of a bad read on a dummy card, but the card/camera doesn't show in the screenshot. Give it a few more tries to see what I mean (don't have to actually add the card...just scan it to see how your name is detected before it's autofilled.)

I just tried it myself... First time it only detected my number and filled in my name from my Apple ID. Second time, it detected my number and name, and filled in my name in all caps from the card. Third time I tried, it detected the number, name, and expiration date; but my name was gibberish due to poor lighting and glare.

 

[stevemiller]

The camera likely just didn't get a good read of your name on the card the first time. The camera's main intention is to find and scan/OCR the card number. If it finds what it thinks to be your name and/or expiration date, it'll OCR those too and put them in the appropriate fields. When scanning the card, the text it detects will briefly show up on the image before going to the next screen to autofill them. I tried to get a screenshot of a bad read on a dummy card, but the card/camera doesn't show in the screenshot. Give it a few more tries to see what I mean (don't have to actually add the card...just scan it to see how your name is detected before it's autofilled.)

I just tried it myself... First time it only detected my number and filled in my name from my Apple ID. Second time, it detected my number and name, and filled in my name in all caps from the card. Third time I tried, it detected the number, name, and expiration date; but my name was gibberish due to poor lighting and glare.

thanks, this makes things make more sense. the new card does not actually show a name, only my number. so the OCR must have hallucinated a name from the image on the first try. the second try it probably realized there was no name and pulled it from my apple id.

it is reassuring that this name field is not a reflection of any sort of external banking data, but just what the device tries to piece together either from the scan or your known personal info. i'd mark this as resolved with that info in mind!

 

[Expos of 1969]

thanks, this makes things make more sense. the new card does not actually show a name, only my number. so the OCR must have hallucinated a name from the image on the first try. the second try it probably realized there was no name and pulled it from my apple id.

it is reassuring that this name field is not a reflection of any sort of external banking data, but just what the device tries to piece together either from the scan or your known personal info. i'd mark this as resolved with that info in mind!

Can you not add cards directly through your bank app without going the scanning route?

 

[stevemiller]

Can you not add cards directly through your bank app without going the scanning route?

did not realize this! i just checked and it was buried 3 layers deep in my banking app. good to know its an option though.

i'd always just added through apple's wallet app in the past, and this was the first time i'd run into unnervingly strange behaviour. but i'm guessing iStorm's explanation is the right one. probably most of the time when it goes wrong its an obvious error like a single digit or letter that's off. what threw me was that it wholesale invented a name that wasn't even remotely there.

 

[cjgrif]

Just a random thought not to your main point, but did your card in Apple Pay stop working? I have never had to update the expiration in Apple Pay when I got a new card so I figured I would look it up...

Update your Apple Pay card number and expiration date​

With Apple Pay, your payment card has a unique Device Account Number used to process payments and an expiration date associated with that Device Account Number.
If your card expires or you otherwise get a new card:

• The card number and expiration date linked to the Device Account Number should be updated automatically.
• If your card issuer doesn’t support these updates, you might need to remove the card and add it again.

It sounds like there are banks/cards out there that wouldn't support the automatic update, though you would think Apple would require it as part of the implementation on the bank's side.

 

[stevemiller]

Just a random thought not to your main point, but did your card in Apple Pay stop working? I have never had to update the expiration in Apple Pay when I got a new card so I figured I would look it up...



It sounds like there are banks/cards out there that wouldn't support the automatic update, though you would think Apple would require it as part of the implementation on the bank's side.

yeah that was what i did at first; i tried adding the new card and it said it was already in my wallet. the wallet didn't show any expiry info to change, and i saw this help article saying the expiry might already be updated automatically. so i tried using apple pay, and it said the card was in fact expired. so i followed the fallback step of deleting and re-adding the card.

unrelated, but i just did see a news article about apple pay issues affecting some users today. i don't know if it was just coincidence or not. it's still weird how there was nothing visible on the card that could have been misinterpreted as the name it came up with.

Apple Pay, Apple Card, and Apple Cash Experiencing Issues [Resolved]

Apple Pay, Apple Card, and Apple Cash are currently experiencing issues for some users, according to Apple's system status page. The page...

www.macrumors.com