One of the things I like about Plant money is that they have transcripts for all their podcasts. I used to listen when I was a driver, but now I don't I can just read the transcript in a few minutes instead of spending 20 minutes or so listening.
The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist
41–50 of 161 posts
Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist
#42The victims didn't come forward because they felt so ashamed about falling for the con. This is such an interesting essential part of scams. I guess it's a part of human nature. I remember tracking down a phone scam that caught my grandmother once (based out of Montreal) and I eventually got to a point where I discovered that my grandmother had provided a verbal consent over the phone that had kept it just this side…
I couldn’t help but wonder why the FCC hasn’t required CallerID Verification years ago.
Especially in this age where we are all being forced to get RealID cards so that our every move can be monitored...
Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist
#43Great story but a little anticlimactic. It's like yadda-yadda-yadda, he gets arrested and goes to prison. That's it? The story is just an IT guy that tells US authorities before he takes on a job with scammers and is then a mole? It's neat and all, but not a totally captivating tale. If you haven't heard it, this is a good one: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/6nh3wk
I'm from Bradford - this is not at all surprising.
Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Increase playback speed. You'd be surprised how your hearing can adjust. Just work your way up in small increments. Just be prepared that if you ever go back to 1x speed, it sounds really weird.
Up to 1.4 is not a big deal, somewhere around 1.5 or starts to get a little strange. Since I generally have technical or industry related podcasts going while doing other things too high a speed becomes a hindrance.
Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
maybe the disk filled up?
That would cause any disk-write-dependent service to crash, yeah, but the kernel isn't one of those. Syslog will stop and a bunch of things will complain, but I've always been able to SSH in and free up some disk.
Anyway none of this is particularly important for the story, but I don't think the guy telling it is lying for dramatic effect, I think he's probably being honest that the boss saying "the server crashed" made him suspicious cause that server never crashed, and I too found it amusing for this to be included in the story (as a sort of by-the-by advertisement for linux). (Also, though: it turned out the server really did "crash" in some way).
Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist
#46The victims didn't come forward because they felt so ashamed about falling for the con. This is such an interesting essential part of scams. I guess it's a part of human nature. I remember tracking down a phone scam that caught my grandmother once (based out of Montreal) and I eventually got to a point where I discovered that my grandmother had provided a verbal consent over the phone that had kept it just this side…
Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
maybe the disk filled up?
That would cause any disk-write-dependent service to crash, yeah, but the kernel isn't one of those. Syslog will stop and a bunch of things will complain, but I've always been able to SSH in and free up some disk.
BTW I've seen an error where app server couldn't write files to a directory but only for specific filenames (that wasn't already created). Turns out if you have dozen thousands of files in one directory the hash table has collisions and some files you can create while some other names you cannot. It was lot of fun to discover that :)
And customers described it as "server doesn't work" but when we connected the randomly generated names it was trying to write were different and it worked.
Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist
#48The victims didn't come forward because they felt so ashamed about falling for the con. This is such an interesting essential part of scams. I guess it's a part of human nature. I remember tracking down a phone scam that caught my grandmother once (based out of Montreal) and I eventually got to a point where I discovered that my grandmother had provided a verbal consent over the phone that had kept it just this side…
Long time (maybe twenty years) ago I read about a fascinating scam. The scammers were announcing a totally cool sex toy (maybe early VR, don't remember), but they never intended to deliver. Through clever marketing they managed to find enough potential customers who were asked to prepay a certain amount to finance production of the product (comparable to crowdfunding). When delivery day arrived, the scammers sent out…
Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist
#49The victims didn't come forward because they felt so ashamed about falling for the con. This is such an interesting essential part of scams. I guess it's a part of human nature. I remember tracking down a phone scam that caught my grandmother once (based out of Montreal) and I eventually got to a point where I discovered that my grandmother had provided a verbal consent over the phone that had kept it just this side…
Long time (maybe twenty years) ago I read about a fascinating scam. The scammers were announcing a totally cool sex toy (maybe early VR, don't remember), but they never intended to deliver. Through clever marketing they managed to find enough potential customers who were asked to prepay a certain amount to finance production of the product (comparable to crowdfunding). When delivery day arrived, the scammers sent out…
Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist
#50The victims didn't come forward because they felt so ashamed about falling for the con. This is such an interesting essential part of scams. I guess it's a part of human nature. I remember tracking down a phone scam that caught my grandmother once (based out of Montreal) and I eventually got to a point where I discovered that my grandmother had provided a verbal consent over the phone that had kept it just this side…
Long time (maybe twenty years) ago I read about a fascinating scam. The scammers were announcing a totally cool sex toy (maybe early VR, don't remember), but they never intended to deliver. Through clever marketing they managed to find enough potential customers who were asked to prepay a certain amount to finance production of the product (comparable to crowdfunding). When delivery day arrived, the scammers sent out…
The guys need to raise money to repay a debt, and one of them presents this idea, which gets tossed out because it's gonna take too long for them to receive the checks.