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“Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

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Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happened to me. I paid rent for a couple of months to a lady that I thought owned the appartement. Then one day someone knocked on the door, asked who I was, why I was living in his appartement, and why his tenant stopped paying rent. In retrospect, it was eye opening how gullible everyone involved was (myself included), and how little the police did about it. For every appartement I've since rented I checked the off…

> I checked the official register Sorry for the stupid question, but what does this mean? How does one check this?

In most (all?) states in the U.S., the local and/or state government has an official record of real property ownership. In some states it's available online; otherwise you may find it at the local courthouse, city hall, or county government.

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#62

Sounds like a hi tech version of a scam in my city where a guy rents an apartment (or just squats it) and then turns around and sublets it and stops paying rent to the actual owner. People actually living in the unit stuck holding the bag.

Happened to me. I paid rent for a couple of months to a lady that I thought owned the appartement. Then one day someone knocked on the door, asked who I was, why I was living in his appartement, and why his tenant stopped paying rent. In retrospect, it was eye opening how gullible everyone involved was (myself included), and how little the police did about it. For every appartement I've since rented I checked the off…

Geeze man, I’m sorry you had to go through that.

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I checked the official register Sorry for the stupid question, but what does this mean? How does one check this?

In my country (Austria) there is a registry (called the "Grundbuch") where the owner of every parcel of land (and buildings, appartements, etc) is formally recorded. It costs about 10€ to get a record online. You type an address, pay 10€, and the website tells you who are the owners of the land and buildings at that address.

Does it also tell you who is managing the property? At least where I live, renters deal with property managers, and very rarely the owners. It doesn't apply to houses and other single-home properties, but does for just about anything else.

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#64
post #20

What’s the rationale for not naming them here?

Reddit users are like a swarm of zombies sometimes. If something negative gets shared about a person or company, you can be fairly certain that there will be hundreds to tens of thousands of Redditors expressing their anger. That anger, whether deserved or not, results in everything from DDOS attacks, phonecalls from thousands of people, people contacting employees at home, death threats, etc etc. There's also the ta…

That's far from a Reddit-specific thing. Granted, it occurs on Reddit, but the behavior is observed throughout all "social media."

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#65
post #7

Sounds like a hi tech version of a scam in my city where a guy rents an apartment (or just squats it) and then turns around and sublets it and stops paying rent to the actual owner. People actually living in the unit stuck holding the bag.

Subletting is entirely legal is it not? And it’s not a free ticket to do whatever you want with the property either.

No, it depends on the contract, and usually you forbid it, at least without approval, as things can get pretty nuts. There are some real horror stories.

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#67

What is “the startup” in this case? What is preventing from disclosing the name of the business?

Mostly "wanting to use the law". You can disclose that information if you want, but you really don't want to, because you give up any legal power you might have had if you do. If you rile up a mob (and an internet mob certainly counts), even if you don't do so directly but let "the comment section figure it out", and then don't get that content moderated, you lose whatever legal standing you might have had if the cou…

[deleted]

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#68
post #52
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling those who did the Boston Marathon detective work "Reddit" is like calling those who hailed the NZ mosque shooter "4chan".

I think it is worse than that. I was actually actively involved in the process of looking through those photos on /r/Boston at the time and the whole "red herring" story was not organic to that process and just seemed to be something that an outside group of trolls (maybe outside of Reddit or outside of r/Boston) decided to bandwagon and got it picked up by the media. Nobody really involved in the process really boug…

I didn't know that, and I'm sorry that I only read this response after my comment's edit window had closed.

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#69
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit users are like a swarm of zombies sometimes. If something negative gets shared about a person or company, you can be fairly certain that there will be hundreds to tens of thousands of Redditors expressing their anger. That anger, whether deserved or not, results in everything from DDOS attacks, phonecalls from thousands of people, people contacting employees at home, death threats, etc etc. There's also the ta…

Calling those who did the Boston Marathon detective work "Reddit" is like calling those who hailed the NZ mosque shooter "4chan".

I did edit my post a little after reading your response. My apologies for misrepresenting the actions of a smaller subset of Redditors as being those endorsed by the entire userbase.

Re: “Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of Dollars Overnight”

#70
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit users are like a swarm of zombies sometimes. If something negative gets shared about a person or company, you can be fairly certain that there will be hundreds to tens of thousands of Redditors expressing their anger. That anger, whether deserved or not, results in everything from DDOS attacks, phonecalls from thousands of people, people contacting employees at home, death threats, etc etc. There's also the ta…

That's far from a Reddit-specific thing. Granted, it occurs on Reddit, but the behavior is observed throughout all "social media."

Yes, it ties in to the outrage culture that has developed on the internet. A lot of people now seem to treat others as NPCs in a video game, to be abused or treated in any way that trips the "player's" dopamine.

I hope that it burns itself out and the web as a whole moves on from it.

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