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The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

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Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#141

Post by irq-1 »

redler wrote: post #77
klenwell wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please - teach your parents to just hang up on these clowns. That was the other thing. It was impossible to get my grandparents to do this. I think I eventually got them to let the answering machine answer and not return calls for messages from anyone they didn't recognize.

Maybe this is a new angle for Google Voice or similar services. Protect vulnerable members of your family with a fail-safe auto-attendant system with approval rules.

Or live monitoring -- mention money or bank accounts and Google Voice contacts a family member, or cuts off the call, or ..?

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#142

Post by rdtsc »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #123
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…

They played a high pitched sound into the earpiece? Wow, that's on another level. Overall I think it's not worth being on the phone with these people. It's a no-win situation. For them it's a 'job', while you'd be investing your precious time and energy. There is something about just watching, say, scammers doing the shell game in the streets, that is incredibly draining.

> They played a high pitched sound into the earpiece? Wow, that's on another level.

Yeah I expected the name calling but that was just something new. I guess I had really upset them. I imagine they had put my relatives on some kind of a "high value" mark list after they had gotten so much money from them, and they thought they were getting another easy $500 from them again. Instead they spent 30 of their time talking about weather, holidays, barbecue styles in US and other crap.

> There is something about just watching, say, scammers doing the shell game in the streets, that is incredibly draining.

Agree. In case of my relatives, I have to admit, I share some of the shame just because I felt I hadn't done my part to protect them earlier. There is an element of that that expand to the society. You know, watching this happen to other members of the community and thinking what can be done to stop it, why are they wasting their resources like that.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#143

Post by justinclift »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #124
justinclift wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm... "No worries, I'll do that but it'll probably be in a few days as I'm pretty busy now." If they want to leave their line open "for a few days"... then good luck to them. :)

A good one. Or if it’s something you really should verify right away, call your friend or relative first. If the scammer answers again, you’ll definately know.

Good tactic, that'd work. :)

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#144

Post by liability »

OhneHerren wrote: post #98
liability wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try out rubberband. I find that with rubberband and mpv I can get close to 3x and still understand many (but not all) speakers. It depends on their particular accent/annunciation/cadence though. Some accents, like RP, are very clear to me at 1x but degrade more rapidly (for me) than others at high speeds. https://breakfastquay.com/rubberband/

What is improved by using Rubberband rather than the internal playback speed setting on mpv, which keeps pitch the same?

Good question. By default mpv will automatically insert the 'scaletempo' filter to adjust pitch when speeding up or slowing down audio, and it does a reasonable job at modest speed changes. And it's fast; very little CPU load. However at more dramatic speed changes it starts to sound choppy with parts of words getting cut out which limits how fast it can go while maintaining comprehensibility. Scaletempo sounds choppy at high speeds because the way it works is by playing small snippets of the audio stream at 1x, skipping ahead past some audio to keep pace with the sped up video. There is also some blending of those snippets, but in principle it's a very simple approach that generally works well enough.

How precisely rubberband works is something I've not looked into deeply, but the end result is increased CPU load and less choppy audio at high speeds. If you throw together a little script to switch back and forth between rubberband and scaletempo in realtime, I think the difference is pretty dramatic.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#145

Post by kls »

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…

My great aunt was taken by the same scam twice. The second time even after I told her it was a scam. After the second time I locked her account down on her PC to not have install or remote desktop permissions and I had the only admin access. She only read email and chatted on skype with her grandkids. So she never felt the restrictions but it eliminated the problem of her giving access to these scammers.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#146

Post by paggle »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #99
paggle wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was downvoted because the same people who have the influence to legalize their crimes have the influence to make the public believe that it is right and proper.

That is absolutely not why you were downvoted.

Read Alex Karakatsanis

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#147

Post by tm1265 »

"So his friends at the U.S. Embassy got him a visa and got him to the States, where he works in IT."

This stuck out to me. Puerto Ricans are United States citizens and as such do not require any kind of visa to live and work in the states. There isn't even an embassy in Puerto Rico since it is part of the United States.

Makes me question the rest of the article.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#148

Post by dointheatl »

tm1265 wrote: post #147

"So his friends at the U.S. Embassy got him a visa and got him to the States, where he works in IT." This stuck out to me. Puerto Ricans are United States citizens and as such do not require any kind of visa to live and work in the states. There isn't even an embassy in Puerto Rico since it is part of the United States. Makes me question the rest of the article.

Puerto Rico != Costa Rica, which is the country this story took place in.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#149

Post by saint_fiasco »

intarga wrote: post #134
cosmodisk wrote: post #118

We don't have IT scams like this in Lithuania,as nobody ever pays for IT support,they just get someone they know to do it for free. However massive prize scams used to be quite popular and still are to certain degree today. Scammer calls a victim and claims he's calling from a radio show,some company, events organiser, whatever.Then obviously comes the part where he saya that the victim won x,y,z and all they. need t…

> get someone they know to do it for free. Because people with technology skills should perform free labour for people without...

Labor is cheap in the third world, which is annoying when you are the labor, but fortunately it cuts both ways. Dentistry, hair cuts, cleaning services and excellent food are affordable even on low wages.

Re: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

#150

Post by natpalmer1776 »

majortennis wrote: post #139
localhost wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

what was it?

I would guess a firearm of some sort, as that's the only thing I can think of that would:

1.) be relevant to a police investigation 2.) be registered or associated with individuals 3.) have few enough of an exact thing in an area for the manual checking to be effective

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