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The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

npr.org

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Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#101

Post by bsamuels »

localhost wrote: post #88
munificent wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teach them how do respond and how to handle these scammers. Concretely, the way to respond is this: If you ever get a call that claims to be from business X, tell them "OK, I'll call you back." Then get off the phone, look up the number for X yourself , and call them. If it was really X calling you, you'll get back to where you need to be. If it was a scam, X will tell you they don't know what you're talking about.…

Many years ago, I had a police detective call me about an active investigation. He wanted to come over to visually verify that I had something in my possession. I was suspicious, and he totally understood. He said, "go look up the phone number for and ask to speak with detective so and so, badge number ZZZ".

Did you actually look it up and call the number?

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#102

Post by megaremote »

rhizome wrote: post #92
chiph wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My mom only ever uses Thunderbird and Firefox, I've been considering converting her to Linux, which would make all of this impossible. She already knows the IRS isn't going to call her on the phone, much less arrest her.

Or, get her an ipad.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#103

Post by megaremote »

ravenstine wrote: post #33
danso wrote: post #2

The radio version: https://www.npr.org/2019/08/07/749135286/episode-931-the-it-... The climax of this story involves the belief that “Linux servers don’t just crash”.

If he was familiar with those servers, he probably had a sense of how likely it would be that they would just "crash" out of the blue. I've seen Linux servers crash, but that's because they were setup by a dumbass and were doing all sorts of insane shit that kept filling up the disk and memory. If a server isn't doing anything stupid, it's pretty unlikely it's going to simply crash. He was working for criminals, and…

Also the fact it crashed on a Sunday when no one was supposed to be at work.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#104

Post by rasz »

munificent wrote: post #72
rdtsc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is such an interesting essential part of scams. I guess it's a part of human nature. Absolutely. It happened to my relatives too. The way I found out was I was there visiting and they got a call which I picked it up. It came from what sounded like an Indian person. You see, they wanted to "refund the money" and just needed the bank account details. Aha! I thought, I'll play dumb and pretended to mistype their…

> Teach them how do respond and how to handle these scammers. Concretely, the way to respond is this: If you ever get a call that claims to be from business X, tell them "OK, I'll call you back." Then get off the phone, look up the number for X yourself , and call them. If it was really X calling you, you'll get back to where you need to be. If it was a scam, X will tell you they don't know what you're talking about.…

Doesnt work. Scammers already adopted this to their advantage.

Conman calls a landline, starts conversation with "please call the bank back, im putting down the phone now" and ... just plays Dial tone. The trick is call ends only when the person who started it hangs up.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#105

Post by rasz »

knowow1 wrote: post #74
munificent wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teach them how do respond and how to handle these scammers. Concretely, the way to respond is this: If you ever get a call that claims to be from business X, tell them "OK, I'll call you back." Then get off the phone, look up the number for X yourself , and call them. If it was really X calling you, you'll get back to where you need to be. If it was a scam, X will tell you they don't know what you're talking about.…

It works in the average situation, but unfortunately there are some huge scams happening(passing unnoticed) in undeveloped countries where somehow the scammers can hijack the number for a certain time frame. If you call the same number the next day the real institution is going to answer, but nobody knows a thing. Apparently, in some cases, they can hijack the phone number of an institution, but only for the specific…

Look my comment above, scammers are exploiting basic principles of landline operation. Its the victims landline that gets "hijacked", not some institutions number.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#106

Post by jtbayly »

rasz wrote: post #104
munificent wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teach them how do respond and how to handle these scammers. Concretely, the way to respond is this: If you ever get a call that claims to be from business X, tell them "OK, I'll call you back." Then get off the phone, look up the number for X yourself , and call them. If it was really X calling you, you'll get back to where you need to be. If it was a scam, X will tell you they don't know what you're talking about.…

Doesnt work. Scammers already adopted this to their advantage. Conman calls a landline , starts conversation with "please call the bank back, im putting down the phone now" and ... just plays Dial tone. The trick is call ends only when the person who started it hangs up .

If you hang up and pick back up too quickly, yeah. But the call doesn't just stay connected until the cake hangs up. Either party can end it by hanging up, right?

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#107

Post by hermitdev »

dev_dull wrote: post #53
danso wrote: post #2

The radio version: https://www.npr.org/2019/08/07/749135286/episode-931-the-it-... The climax of this story involves the belief that “Linux servers don’t just crash”.

"That's the one day I saw a linux server crash..." Most unbelievable part of the story. Cracked me up.

It happens. I sent a dev server into a kernel panic when I kill -9'd a hung ddd debugger. This was about 15 years ago, on a 2.x kernel. Pretty sure that issue has long been resolved, but Linux isn't bulletproof.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#108

Post by macintux »

jtbayly wrote: post #106
rasz wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesnt work. Scammers already adopted this to their advantage. Conman calls a landline , starts conversation with "please call the bank back, im putting down the phone now" and ... just plays Dial tone. The trick is call ends only when the person who started it hangs up .

If you hang up and pick back up too quickly, yeah. But the call doesn't just stay connected until the cake hangs up. Either party can end it by hanging up, right?

Landline calls, at least when I was younger, were not disconnected until the caller hung up. I assume there’s a technical reason involving channels instead of packets but I never researched it.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#109

Post by ilaksh »

knowow1 wrote: post #74
munificent wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teach them how do respond and how to handle these scammers. Concretely, the way to respond is this: If you ever get a call that claims to be from business X, tell them "OK, I'll call you back." Then get off the phone, look up the number for X yourself , and call them. If it was really X calling you, you'll get back to where you need to be. If it was a scam, X will tell you they don't know what you're talking about.…

It works in the average situation, but unfortunately there are some huge scams happening(passing unnoticed) in undeveloped countries where somehow the scammers can hijack the number for a certain time frame. If you call the same number the next day the real institution is going to answer, but nobody knows a thing. Apparently, in some cases, they can hijack the phone number of an institution, but only for the specific…

One time I was having trouble with my PayPal MasterCard and called them from Mexico. I was sort of stranded because I needed the card to work to get an Uber and it was really hot so I didn't want to walk home. I don't remember if it was the 800 number or the local area code in the US. Probably 800 number. But I was in Mexico and dialed it the same way as I would in the US.

Someone from Mexico answered and initially it sounded very similar to what PayPal employees really say. It took like two minutes before I was really suspicious. I was really tired that day and didn't want to walk though so I kept trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. But a few minutes after that they actually asked me to go into 7/11 and buy a Google Play card for $150 or something. At that point it was just really obviously a scam and I decided to walk home. Called the real PayPal from my computer using the US area code.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#110

Post by localhost »

bsamuels wrote: post #101
localhost wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many years ago, I had a police detective call me about an active investigation. He wanted to come over to visually verify that I had something in my possession. I was suspicious, and he totally understood. He said, "go look up the phone number for and ask to speak with detective so and so, badge number ZZZ".

Did you actually look it up and call the number?

Yes I did. And a couple of days later, 2 detectives showed up, verified the item was in my possession and went on to the next person on their list. Incidentally they also marked the item by etching a number on it to make sure that they didn’t see it again, i.e., to rule out my cooperating with the person they were looking for.
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