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Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

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Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#11

Post by nthitz »

cm2187 wrote: post #2

I don't know if it's related but I found something deeply worrying a couple of months ago. I purchased a laptop on Dell's website at my home address using a personal email and my personal paypal account. No reference anywhere to my job or employer. A couple of weeks later I receive a call from India on the mobile number provided to Dell, from a guy pretending to be from Dell (and he might have been) who wanted to dis…

Axciom, Epsilon and similar companies track your credit card purchases and correlate them with a profile of who they think you are. If you work for a large corporation that is probably easier to identify than a small one.

http://www.acxiom.com/ http://www.epsilon.com/

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#12

Post by stevebmark »

Sincerely, thank you for reporting this and helping bring it to the spotlight. It's too easy for things like this to fall under the radar of any major acknowledgement, letting corporations get away with major scandals without any accountability.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#13

Post by samstave »

nthitz wrote: post #11
cm2187 wrote: post #2

I don't know if it's related but I found something deeply worrying a couple of months ago. I purchased a laptop on Dell's website at my home address using a personal email and my personal paypal account. No reference anywhere to my job or employer. A couple of weeks later I receive a call from India on the mobile number provided to Dell, from a guy pretending to be from Dell (and he might have been) who wanted to dis…

Axciom, Epsilon and similar companies track your credit card purchases and correlate them with a profile of who they think you are. If you work for a large corporation that is probably easier to identify than a small one. http://www.acxiom.com/ http://www.epsilon.com/

These companies need to burn to the fucking ground.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#15

Post by imbellish »

nthitz wrote: post #11
cm2187 wrote: post #2

I don't know if it's related but I found something deeply worrying a couple of months ago. I purchased a laptop on Dell's website at my home address using a personal email and my personal paypal account. No reference anywhere to my job or employer. A couple of weeks later I receive a call from India on the mobile number provided to Dell, from a guy pretending to be from Dell (and he might have been) who wanted to dis…

Axciom, Epsilon and similar companies track your credit card purchases and correlate them with a profile of who they think you are. If you work for a large corporation that is probably easier to identify than a small one. http://www.acxiom.com/ http://www.epsilon.com/

It's the isolating arm of capitalism drilling its elbow grease directly into your personal life.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#16

Post by Johnny555 »

acomjean wrote: post #3

Am I the only one thinking that we've lost total control over the machines and data we've created. It seems like nothing is safe and or verifiable anymore. Add to this the backdrop of governments wanting backdoors. People calling you in the US pretending to be from the "IRS" and yet nothing is/ can be done about it? Maybe its really high time for C and its buffer overflows to go... And SQL injection. We're tech savy…

Maybe its really high time for C and its buffer overflows to go... And SQL injection.

Because no one ever wrote an insecure website in Java? And certainly PHP must also be completely safe since it has no buffer overflows to worry about.

Are you sure the language is at fault?

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#17

Post by Natsu »

roflaway wrote: post #7

Throwaway account because I just shared this story with a buddy of mine: I, too, have received these "Dell" tech support calls and angrily yell at them as I hang up within 15seconds. Lately though, I received a bombardment of calls (15 to be exact) in the past 3 days from the same number. I answered the one of them, and it had the same 1minute 10s message saying to call the number back regarding a computer threat the…

I prefer not to hang up right away. Instead, I try to waste a bit of their time. For automated calls, I just put down the phone and wait a while to hang up.

But for people? I try other means of time wasting, so they can't call someone else to scam them.

Last time they called, I told them that it was good that they called, because my computer had detected a virus on their computer and that I wanted them to download an install malware.exe to remove it.

Next time they claim to call from Microsoft, I think I'll tell them I'm glad they've called, because I really need to speak to Bill Gates. Or if he's not available, Steve Ballmer.

I guess Bill might not answer his own phone any more, but I have to admit that I wonder what Bill does if he gets a call from them?

Maybe next time I should say that I'm Bill Gates and they're all fired?

At least this is more amusing than simply hanging up in disgust. And it helps slow down the rate at which they scam new people, even more so the more people who do this.

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#18

Post by derefr »

adventured wrote: post #10
acomjean wrote: post #3

Am I the only one thinking that we've lost total control over the machines and data we've created. It seems like nothing is safe and or verifiable anymore. Add to this the backdrop of governments wanting backdoors. People calling you in the US pretending to be from the "IRS" and yet nothing is/ can be done about it? Maybe its really high time for C and its buffer overflows to go... And SQL injection. We're tech savy…

> People calling you in the US pretending to be from the "IRS" and yet nothing is/ can be done about it? Not quite sure I understand your premise on that one. You can't stop people from pretending to be from the IRS any more than you can stop criminal activity by outlawing it. Essentially anyone can call anyone else and pretend to be from a government agency. Ultimately you're going to have to verify that or otherwis…

I think the suggestion would be something like having SSL certificates tied to phone numbers the way they're currently tied to domain names, such that there's a difference between a call from some phone number that when reverse-lookuped says "the IRS", and a call that actually shows up as being from "[padlock] the IRS"; and eventually the former could become "[x] Probably Not Actually The IRS".

Re: Dell Computers Has Been Hacked

#19

Post by ctstover »

acomjean wrote: post #3

Am I the only one thinking that we've lost total control over the machines and data we've created. It seems like nothing is safe and or verifiable anymore. Add to this the backdrop of governments wanting backdoors. People calling you in the US pretending to be from the "IRS" and yet nothing is/ can be done about it? Maybe its really high time for C and its buffer overflows to go... And SQL injection. We're tech savy…

You do realize that if "they" took C away from us, then all we would be allowed to use is closed source lock-in oriented ecosystems to the point we wouldn't even be able to trust the very language itself. That's always been the dream, trusted computing all the way from boot to .NET (or similar). You can not in the same breath call for secure computing and spread propaganda against C. (I know it's too much of a leap for most, but it's the same non sequitur as being against government's tight grip on society and for gun control at the same time.)
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