Social media hacks are great for so many things. You can learn the “life changing technique” of how to cut a pineapple without a knife, or how to give yourself a wolf haircut. Most of these hacks are harmless—some are ingenious. Others are ingenious, but not harmless. The latest of these latter category is the viral trend known as the Chase Bank glitch. The “hack” goes like this—roll up to a Chase ATM, deposit a check for any amount (but declare its worth as high as you want), then withdraw funds at the ATM based on the amount you claimed to have deposited (much more than the actual value of the check).
TikTokers have promoted this as a way to get free money. And too many folks out there truly seemed to believe that this counted as a “hack,” a quick way to make money that just hadn’t occurred to anyone before.
In fact, it had. Pre-internet, that was …