@abucci I don't know where you live, but in the US the relevant consumer protection laws for credit vs debit vary pretty dramatically. You're far more protected using a credit card than a debit card for purchases. With debit card fraud, they can drain your account of money you actually have; with credit, they're just borrowing money in your name - you haven't lost anything until you actually make a credit card payment. Furthermore, the maximum liability for credit fraud is $50; the maximum for debit fraud can be the total amount stolen, depending on when you report it.
I suspect your bank has their fraud settings tuned so high because debit card fraud can be catastrophic. If someone fraudulently uses your debit card fraudulently and drains your account, you may start bouncing checks, lose your ability to buy food or pay rent/mortgage, etc. Those things carry fees, fines, and long-lasting consequences that, even after the fraudulent money is returned (which can take a long time), you'll still have to deal with. It's especially risky for people who have limited funds - a few bounced check or late fees can be the difference between staying afloat and sinking into an inescapable debt cycle.
Additionally, if you fail to notice a fraudulent transaction for more than 60 days on a debit card, you lose any legal protection; that money is gone unless your bank decides out of the goodness of its heart to reimburse you. I don't know any banks that would do that.
I highly doubt they have per-customer tuning of their system-wide fraud monitoring software. Furthermore, the new hotness (as of a few years ago anyway) in scams is subscription services, where you make a purchase but the vendor signs you up for recurring subscription, and makes impossible to cancel. I don't pretend to know the inner workings of fraud detection algorithms, but it seems reasonable that recurring subscriptions to niche things could trigger this. Without knowing your details, it's hard to guess why they're flagging, and it'd all be speculation anyway, but it's possible that the vendor you're subscribing to has been flagged as fraudulent by other customers - maybe they used dark patterns and tricked people into subscriptions, like many US Republican organizations were doing in the run-up to the 2024 elections. Maybe they make it difficult to unsubscribe, so customers report it as fraud to get the charges to stop. Maybe the payment processor has actually been fraudulently charging customers (it's not uncommon for small businesses to get compromised and have their systems used for fraud-adjacent activities like validating stolen card numbers).
At the end of the day it seems like being moderately annoyed by false positives is a better outcome than being financially ruined by a false negative; your bank is probably tuning their software with that in mind. Even if you're in a financial situation where fraud won't affect you, they likely have customers who aren't so lucky.
If it's a source of that much frustration for you, you always have the option of switching banks, or switching your subscriptions to a different payment method. I highly doubt you'll have much luck getting them to re-tune their entire system just to avoid the inconvenience of a fraud alert, especially in the context of debit card transactions.
@abucci I don't know where you live, but in the US the relevant consumer protection laws for credit vs debit vary pretty dramatically. You're far more protected using a credit card than a debit card for purchases. With debit card fraud, they can drain your account of money you actually have; with credit, they're just borrowing money in your name - you haven't lost anything until you actually make a credit card payment. Furthermore, the maximum liability for credit fraud is $50; the maximum for debit fraud can be the total amount stolen, depending on when you report it.
I suspect your bank has their fraud settings tuned so high because debit card fraud can be catastrophic. If someone fraudulently uses your debit card fraudulently and drains your account, you may start bouncing checks, lose your ability to buy food or pay rent/mortgage, etc. Those things carry fees, fines, and long-lasting consequences that, even after the fraudulent money is returned (which can take a long time), you'll still have to deal with. It's especially risky for people who have limited funds - a few bounced check or late fees can be the difference between staying afloat and sinking into an inescapable debt cycle.
Additionally, if you fail to notice a fraudulent transaction for more than 60 days on a debit card, you lose any legal protection; that money is gone unless your bank decides out of the goodness of its heart to reimburse you. I don't know any banks that would do that.
I highly doubt they have per-customer tuning of their system-wide fraud monitoring software. Furthermore, the new hotness (as of a few years ago anyway) in scams is subscription services, where you make a purchase but the vendor signs you up for recurring subscription, and makes impossible to cancel. I don't pretend to know the inner workings of fraud detection algorithms, but it seems reasonable that recurring subscriptions to niche things could trigger this. Without knowing your details, it's hard to guess why they're flagging, and it'd all be speculation anyway, but it's possible that the vendor you're subscribing to has been flagged as fraudulent by other customers - maybe they used dark patterns and tricked people into subscriptions, like many US Republican organizations were doing in the run-up to the 2024 elections. Maybe they make it difficult to unsubscribe, so customers report it as fraud to get the charges to stop. Maybe the payment processor has actually been fraudulently charging customers (it's not uncommon for small businesses to get compromised and have their systems used for fraud-adjacent activities like validating stolen card numbers).
At the end of the day it seems like being moderately annoyed by false positives is a better outcome than being financially ruined by a false negative; your bank is probably tuning their software with that in mind. Even if you're in a financial situation where fraud won't affect you, they likely have customers who aren't so lucky.
If it's a source of that much frustration for you, you always have the option of switching banks, or switching your subscriptions to a different payment method. I highly doubt you'll have much luck getting them to re-tune their entire system just to avoid the inconvenience of a fraud alert, especially in the context of debit card transactions.