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“Subject: Urgent Warning”

daniel.haxx.se

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Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#51

Post by EdwardCoffin »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #46
madaxe_again wrote: post #24

Ah, this sort of thing is as old as the moon. We run an eCommerce platform, have a variety of clients using it, they have a number of customers. At least once a week we get an accusation either from a client or an end-user of some outlandish nefarious behaviour, usually due to some complete lack of understanding of the nature of technology. Way back when, we responded, tried to help, tried to explain, but it tends to…

> Anyway. When you have a conversation with an idiot, nobody watching can tell which one of you is the idiot. A friend of mine who works as a college professor has a fun approach to deal with the kinds of random cranks who contact him out of the blue seeking someone to validate their wild Time-Cube-style theories and "research": he responds to each one by providing an introduction to the previous one. Apparently, he…

This idea terrifies me even more than it amuses me. The notion of the long-term influence that could be gained by a network of cooperating Time-Cube-style theorists is enough to give me nightmares.

Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#53

Post by jordigh »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #46
madaxe_again wrote: post #24

Ah, this sort of thing is as old as the moon. We run an eCommerce platform, have a variety of clients using it, they have a number of customers. At least once a week we get an accusation either from a client or an end-user of some outlandish nefarious behaviour, usually due to some complete lack of understanding of the nature of technology. Way back when, we responded, tried to help, tried to explain, but it tends to…

> Anyway. When you have a conversation with an idiot, nobody watching can tell which one of you is the idiot. A friend of mine who works as a college professor has a fun approach to deal with the kinds of random cranks who contact him out of the blue seeking someone to validate their wild Time-Cube-style theories and "research": he responds to each one by providing an introduction to the previous one. Apparently, he…

That seems a bit... I want to say cruel, but maybe it's not? I'm sure most of these mathematical cranks have various kinds of mental illnesses. Perhaps referring them to each other is creating an ad-hoc support group, or perhaps it's just ridiculing them.

Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#55

Post by hospes »

Unfortunately in this kind of cases more technical you get and try explain things, more they think that you have something to do with it. If you still want to try to convince her, then ask her to check the same information from any of her friends devices or any other device, so she can confirm that your name can be seen in all of them. This is simple enough that she can do herself. If I would you, I would just forward the email to Instagram support.

Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#56

Post by pjc50 »

jerf wrote: post #27

About nine years ago now, I worked for a small security startup that managed to make its way up to PCI certification for scanning websites before keeling over dead. It died the "just one more feature before we can release" death, so you've never heard of it. You've probably never even heard of the company that bought it/put it out of its misery. I'm pretty sure the customer base never exceeded the low single digits.…

There's an amazing amount of this sort of thing going on. At scale the only thing you can really do is ignore them; engagement doesn't go well for anybody

This is the "Trump for President" demographic.

Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#59

Post by emilburzo »

Walkman wrote: post #19

I'm starting to believe to use my real name for my email address was not a very wise choice (kissgyorgy@me.com).

Oh wow, I never thought about how Hungarian names sound in English.

A website where you input a name and it spits out if it contains profanity in any language would be useful.

But yeah, you should definitely change it.

Re: “Subject: Urgent Warning”

#60

Post by AznHisoka »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #35
pilif wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or, even easier to understand analogy: Daniel is the person on the photograph, Spotify/Instagram are the photographers and the hacker is the person who just stole the picture.

I fear you're still overcomplicating it: Daniel is a battery manufacturer. The person complaining bought a camera from Spotify, which came with one of Daniel's batteries inside. Someone stole that camera. (It's not perfect, but it's probably as close as you're going to get)

Most people don't associate batteries with cameras these days..
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