Live data from Hacker News

The little black book of scams (2016)

accc.gov.au

11–20 of 70 posts

Re: The little black book of scams (2016)

#11
post #5

FYI: 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 go…

>never learning from bad experience that you simply can't get rich quick if you aren't already rich.

or a scammer

Re: The little black book of scams (2016)

#13
post #7

I 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

My favourite Steve Martin film :)

Re: The little black book of scams (2016)

#14

“Only pay via the website’s secure payment method—look for a web address starting with ‘https’ and a closed padlock symbol“ Someone should notify the Australian govt. that a padlock and https do not equate to security.

"Only" implies necessary but not sufficient here.

Re: The little black book of scams (2016)

#15
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was once waiting to board an airplane and a Buddhist monk sat beside me. I had a glance at him and notice a rolex watch. "That's odd", I thought. But sometimes Buddhist monks have stuff like that. And then I noticed that he hadn't shaved his head. Or his beard. "That's odd", I thought. But different orders do different things. And then he got called up to the desk and the attendant asked him, "I'm sorry sir, but I noticed that you didn't have a the vegetarian meal ordered. Would you like me to order one for you?". He said, "No thank you." "That's odd", I thought, but even monks have free choice in their meals. And then some guards with sniffer dogs walked up to him and took him away. "Oh. Not so odd after all".

Re: The little black book of scams (2016)

#17
post #16

I didn't know there's a special "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence" (and apparently there are separate versions for other countries as well).

It was the old Creative Commons v3 license. At that time, people thought, in addition to the "international version", it would be good idea to write many localized licenses for each country, so that people from each country can use the license in their native language and the legal experts can take special cares to make sure the license is completely valid under the copyright laws of a country, and the courts can understand it easily.

But people eventually decided that localized CC licenses were "considered harmful" - The biggest problem is that you can never be sure whether all the localized licenses are equivalent. It makes things very complicated when you want to create a derivative work of a project, even under the same conditions, if the work released under another localized version by the author. Also, it creates lots of ambiguity in a international community project. Finally, it was difficult to maintain, they need legal experts from all the countries if the license needs changes.

So localized CC licenses have been abolished when Creative Commons v4.0 was released, v4.0 only has the One True Version, the international version, it was made to be a perfectly valid license for all countries that signed Berne Convention, I believe.

Re: The little black book of scams (2016)

#18
These TV shows are very educational about this, especially the Real Hustle, which was a documentary demonstrating how to avoid scams in real life situations. I'm sure you can find them on some streaming service as repeats.

The Real Hustle https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0791615/

Hustle https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379632/

Re: The little black book of scams (2016)

#20

“Only pay via the website’s secure payment method—look for a web address starting with ‘https’ and a closed padlock symbol“ Someone should notify the Australian govt. that a padlock and https do not equate to security.

"Never pay via a website with an address that does not start with HTTPS" would maybe be better?

The padlock is the first step, and possibly the most impactful security check that a non-technical person can do. Recognising Fake webpages, XSS, CSP, malware, etc is very hard and impossible to expect from any visitor of a website.

Post reply on HN