The little black book of scams (2016)
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The little black book of scams (2016)
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Re: The little black book of scams (2016)
#2FYI: I've put together an Awesome Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) Truths page. Subtitled The Art of the Steal - The Scammers' Big Lies at https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-ico-truths . Buyer beware! Cheers. Prost.
Re: The little black book of scams (2016)
#3You sit with an old friend in bar, already quite drunk. You haven't seen this guys for years but now that you had such a nice evening you really feel like old brothers. Now he tells you about this great house he has and that he considers to move to another town. He might let you take it before he puts it on the market and to a friendship price that he could certainly not achieve on the market.
Will you, at this point, remember that "Scammers dress up ‘opportunities’ with professional looking brochures and websites to mask their fraudulent operations. They often begin with a phone call or email out of the blue from a scammer offering a ‘not-to-be-missed’, ‘high return’ or ‘guaranteed’ opportunity. The scammer usually operates from overseas, and will not have an Australian Financial Services licence"?
Probably not. But you might remember the story that guy on hacker news told you. You might remember, just as in that story, that you should look out carefully when a "great opportunity" arises. You might check your emotional state and find the comradry you feel to that old friend might not be based on facts since you haven't seen him for a long time. It's rather related to you two having a great night together.
And you might recognize that this combination of great offer, excitement, and a person who doesn't spend time with you often are combining to red flags for a scam.
But that is all because it was a specific example, a story. Not just a list of facts and attributes that generally relate to a set of scams that can be categorized as rather similar.
Therefore I'd argue that such a general list of scams, without specific examples, is not worth much. People's brain simply doesn't work like that. Rather check on Youtube for actual scams. Like "tourist scams in ".
Re: The little black book of scams (2016)
#4You sit with an old friend in bar, already quite drunk. You haven't seen this guys for years but now that you had such a nice evening you really feel like old brothers. Now he tells you about this great house he has and that he considers to move to another town. He might let you take it before he puts it on the market and to a friendship price that he could certainly not achieve on the market. Will you, at this point…
I think I must not be a people, because my brain does generally work that way.
Perhaps it can be that some peoples' brains work one way and others another way, and perhaps there are multiple ways of working.
Re: The little black book of scams (2016)
#5FYI: I've put together an Awesome Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) Truths page. Subtitled The Art of the Steal - The Scammers' Big Lies at https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-ico-truths . Buyer beware! Cheers. Prost.
Great that you put actual examples together. I like that. But I'm not sure if you can really improve the world through that. A lot of these problems are quite obvious and if people iwll still put their money into ICOs I'm not sure anything could help that.
That, I feel, is the hardest part of learning more about scams and how to protect yourself. You inevitably see a lot of people who simply can't avoid it, almost going for getting scammed like a moth goes to the lamp, never learning from bad experience that you simply can't get rich quick if you aren't already rich.
Re: The little black book of scams (2016)
#6You sit with an old friend in bar, already quite drunk. You haven't seen this guys for years but now that you had such a nice evening you really feel like old brothers. Now he tells you about this great house he has and that he considers to move to another town. He might let you take it before he puts it on the market and to a friendship price that he could certainly not achieve on the market. Will you, at this point…
I think I must not be a people, because my brain does generally work that way. Perhaps it can be that some peoples' brains work one way and others another way, and perhaps there are multiple ways of working.
Can you explain how that works out? Like, do you have virtual checklists and for everything you experience over the day your head goes "check check check -> we must be in event X"? It's really hard to imagine.
What I already know is emotional pattern matching. E.g. one smells a spice that one's mother used as a child and one is immediately transferred back to that time. In that way if one recognizes that high excitement is often related to advertisements or scams one might recognize when one feels that way that something might be fishy.
Or what I also know is path recognition. E.g. "at first we did this, then we did this, then we did this, and therefore we arrived at X". In that way we can remember processes like riding a bike or our way home. That's also how memory palaces work.
Re: The little black book of scams (2016)
#7I remember the first time I got one of these "Nigerian scam" mails. In retrospect it is funny that what made me suspicious was not the offer to make millions in return for an upfront price of a few thousand bucks; it was the fact that the mail did not address me by name but started with the claim that I seemed to be trustworthy person. If I was trying to move a huge amount of money out of the country, would I ask some random stranger on the Internet for help? Exactly.
At dinner, I told my parents about it. My mother's husband, who is a (now retired) police officer who worked in white collar crime for more than a decade, started to laugh. "Do they still use that old trick?" And so I learned that this particular type of scam dates back at least to the 1980s, when scammers used fax to contact their potential victims.
Re: The little black book of scams (2016)
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I must not be a people, because my brain does generally work that way. Perhaps it can be that some peoples' brains work one way and others another way, and perhaps there are multiple ways of working.
Can you explain how that works out? Like, do you have virtual checklists and for everything you experience over the day your head goes "check check check -> we must be in event X"? It's really hard to imagine. What I already know is emotional pattern matching. E.g. one smells a spice that one's mother used as a child and one is immediately transferred back to that time. In that way if one recognizes that high excitem…
Experience helps a lot. For example, I will never give money to a Buddhist monk walking the streets asking for donations, er, ever again.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-09/victorians-warned-aga...
"Genuine monks do have a practice of having gifts or giving alms as part of their religion but it is meant to be a generous donation of those who wish to give without any solicitation whatsoever."
In a similar way, I'd never work for another startup again. While I'm sure many startups have great intentions, others are out and out scams, and the vast majority will never break even enough to pay you the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that they promised you. Once burned, twice shy etc.
Re: The little black book of scams (2016)
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I must not be a people, because my brain does generally work that way. Perhaps it can be that some peoples' brains work one way and others another way, and perhaps there are multiple ways of working.
Can you explain how that works out? Like, do you have virtual checklists and for everything you experience over the day your head goes "check check check -> we must be in event X"? It's really hard to imagine. What I already know is emotional pattern matching. E.g. one smells a spice that one's mother used as a child and one is immediately transferred back to that time. In that way if one recognizes that high excitem…
I believe it is more like path or pattern recognition, I have read about X + Y + Z, I experience something that has X + Y + Z, I think that reminds me of something what is it? My past reading flashes for me and then I start to draw conclusions about what I am experiencing.
As a general rule I don't seem to require it to have been an example based communication, or a personal communication on the subject, but just an abstract description can be enough for me to say - hey this situation seems like a subclass of the general class described in that book of scams I read. Maybe I should think about that! That's all I took exception to, that abstract descriptions of things would not be helpful without concrete examples because people don't find abstract descriptions helpful enough. I tend to find them helpful.
that said I have never experienced this smell a spice or eat a food thing and immediately remember that time years ago. To me that seems like bs, but I guess it must happen so many people talk about it.
Re: The little black book of scams (2016)
#10I remember the first time I got one of these "Nigerian scam" mails. In retrospect it is funny that what made me suspicious was not the offer to make millions in return for an upfront price of a few thousand bucks; it was the fact that the mail did not address me by name but started with the claim that I seemed to be trustworthy person. If I was trying to move a huge amount of money out of the country, would I ask som…
It dates back longer than the territorial boundaries of Nigeria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Prisoner