The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

Post by jjeaff » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 8:38 PM UTC

jansan wrote: post #46

klenwell wrote: post #10

The 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…

Post by chiph » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

klenwell wrote: post #10

The 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…

Post by giarc » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 9:04 PM UTC

jbarberu wrote: post #44

fencepost wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With the exception for CarTalk, which I run at 1x because it's more about the joy of listening than the information, I tend to playback at between 1.6x-2x depending on the podcast. Occasionally listening to a podcast at 1x, live or whatever, sounds like the hosts are stoned :D

Post by klenwell » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

chiph wrote: post #54

klenwell wrote: post #10

The 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…

My dad got taken by the "Hello this is Microsoft Support calling" scammers. They quickly got him to approve a remote connection to his machine and then they showed him a random registry entry as "proof" that his machine was infected with a virus. Which they just so happened to have the anti-virus for, for $300. Dad was computer savvy, but by this point he was 80 years old and they flat-out took advantage of him. He h…

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 9:18 PM UTC

Bokanovsky wrote: post #41

gumby wrote: post #17

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.

A thousand times this. I wish more podcasts would have transcripts. I much prefer it to listening to podcasts as I can read at my own speed, which would often be quicker than the audio.