My bank locked my credit card once due to suspected fraud. I asked what triggered it and they said "You never buy gas on this card". This was 15 years ago and I'm sure the algorithms have only gotten better.
A different bank used to ask you to tell them if you were planning on traveling so that your card would continue to work, they stopped doing it and said that they had improved their fraud detection and this was no longer necessary. My guess is that they take the data provided by airlines[0] when you book a flight and use that to tell where and when you're traveling.
[0] https://www.marqeta.com/blog/data-details-what-is-level-1-2-...
As a fellow world traveler / international worker, I do still think this is wrong-headed on the part of the banks, but it's the current paradigm in which we all operate.
In the past it helped for me to call my banks and let them know I am traveling "for the next year" and to ease up on the fraud protection. But now with more and more layers of fraud protection, it's often not my bank that's the gatekeeper.
It's things like not being able to download a local version of an app, or not being able to get a local payment account (like as in UPI payments in India, I don't know if its hard for foreigners to get that specifically but in other countries it can be very difficult without being integrated into the local payment platforms)
P.S. - Re: location services...I like the catchphrase "Any device you truly own would lie on your behalf. If it won't lie for you, you don't own it." I should be able to tell my iPhone to report my location wherever I damn well want to pretend to be.
That was entertaining and embarrassing because the machine was returning "insufficient funds" for a $2 ice cream, while I'm scrambling in the app trying to figure out how to turn that shit off.
Like what? I've never encountered this.
