I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#441

Post by mort96 » Fri, Apr 01, 2022, 6:35 AM UTC

mdavis6890 wrote: post #348

mort96 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of text in that e-mail. The text you're referring to is perfectly positioned to be almost invisible -- it's in the last paragraph intermingled with the standard "if you have any questions, call us on blah blah blah" text. My brain skipped the rest of that paragraph the first 5 times I skimmed the e-mail.

Does a "scam prevention expert" really need to read that fine print to know not to provide a one-time code to an inbound caller?

Listen, I responded to a particular part of my parent comment. Whether the author's given explanation for why she in the moment read the code over the phone is reasonable or if it proves that she's a fundamentally terrible scam prevention expert is a much bigger topic which my comment didn't touch on.

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#442

Post by ellen364 » Fri, Apr 01, 2022, 6:37 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #267

m463 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think ordering on amazon has become a little like getting your car towed. Towing companies appear to be a large shell game where your $200 tow is handled my one or more middlemen who eventually get some poor independent towtruck driver to tow you for $75 Amazon should do something that would allow partnering with decent brands. Customers would be happy, brands could keep their reputation, amazon could get a reasona…

I'd like to see an economist's view on how the free market is failing here, and what we can do about it.

You might enjoy “The Market for Lemons” by the economist George Ackerlof [0]. It fits people’s descriptions of what’s happening with Amazon.

His idea was: buyers don’t know if a car is good and the risk of getting “a lemon” (a bad car) reduces how much they’re willing to pay. That means sellers reduce the quality of what they’re selling or leave the market. After a while the quality degrades so much that buyers notice and want to pay even less. Eventually the market is 100% lemons.

The paper was controversial when it was published in the 1970s, but helped kick start research into “information asymmetry” and the potential for market failure.

[0] https://www.sfu.ca/~wainwrig/Econ400/akerlof.pdf

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#443

Post by ale42 » Fri, Apr 01, 2022, 6:44 AM UTC

Relating to this sentence in the article:

> I've never heard of a call center system that can accept touch tones seamlessly while a call is active, and it would take extremely sophisticated audio processing capabilities to be able to do that, since the frequencies used by touch tone keys heavily overlap the frequencies of human speech.

It's actually happening all the time. VoIP systems _do_ extract touch tone (DTMF) from the call and convert them to appropriate out-of-band messages (either on RTP or SIP, there are multiple standards). This might also happen with VoLTE, although I didn't verify it myself.

So, while the request was indeed weird, there's nothing technically strange about typing touch tones at any point in a call. Regarding the fact that those frequencies overlap with human speech, it's expected because they were designed to be transferred over phone lines, which are made for human speech frequencies. Since landlines here in Switzerland have been converted to VoIP several years ago, I often hear DTMF tones appearing from nowhere in the middle of a call and covering the voice of the other person. The reason is easy: some intermediate system detected a tone and sent the corresponding SIP/RTP message, while also filtering the tone out of the audio. On the other end of he line, that out-of-band message triggered the generation of an actual in-band tone, whence the result.

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#444

Post by LinAGKar » Fri, Apr 01, 2022, 6:48 AM UTC

Haven't read it yet, but do I want to trust security advice from someone serving their site with a self-signed certificate?

Edit: looks like accessing it over HTTPS just gives you a broken looking site saying "Lupinia Hosting Is Shutting Down".

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#445

Post by feanaro » Fri, Apr 01, 2022, 6:49 AM UTC

ale42 wrote: post #443

Relating to this sentence in the article: > I've never heard of a call center system that can accept touch tones seamlessly while a call is active, and it would take extremely sophisticated audio processing capabilities to be able to do that, since the frequencies used by touch tone keys heavily overlap the frequencies of human speech. It's actually happening all the time. VoIP systems _do_ extract touch tone (DTMF)…

Yeah, I'm confused, isn't "To get help with problems relating to your account, press 4." and similar just par for the course in almost every automated call system?

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#446

Post by richardfey » Fri, Apr 01, 2022, 6:50 AM UTC

I think we should understand how users get scammed with study, research and empathy and not because we get scammed ourselves. Having bias that it's the stupid user's fault us just that, bias, and doesn't help in the pursuit of any scientific results.

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#447

Post by throwaway16374 » Fri, Apr 01, 2022, 6:53 AM UTC

The amazon rep is a scam. Amazon would not waste their time to do a 3-way call with a technician. They always provide you with a refund or direct number if you ask... but that direct number is usually searchable. The fact that they 3-way call suggests they wanted to hide the phone number

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#448

Post by mitchdoogle » Fri, Apr 01, 2022, 6:58 AM UTC

ellen364 wrote: post #442

amelius wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see an economist's view on how the free market is failing here, and what we can do about it.

You might enjoy “The Market for Lemons” by the economist George Ackerlof [0]. It fits people’s descriptions of what’s happening with Amazon. His idea was: buyers don’t know if a car is good and the risk of getting “a lemon” (a bad car) reduces how much they’re willing to pay. That means sellers reduce the quality of what they’re selling or leave the market. After a while the quality degrades so much that buyers notic…

This sounds familiar to my used car shopping experience a few years back. Went to see at least 20 private party sellers over a period of a few weeks and most were junk, bought by shady dealers at used car auctions. And their prices were well above the blue book for excellent condition, despite the cars being fair at best. I did manage to find some actual private sellers, and ended up with something I like and still drive now, but it required a lot of time and determination. I can understand why some people would just go to a lot and drive off a couple hours later

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#449

Post by mitchdoogle » Fri, Apr 01, 2022, 7:00 AM UTC

mlindner wrote: post #270

amelius wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see an economist's view on how the free market is failing here, and what we can do about it.

I'd say it's working just fine, by causing people to switch away from using Amazon. Amazon continued to lower their brand's quality and as the name becomes less and less trusted, their products are worth less and less.

Is that actually happening though? I know there's lots of anecdotes around here, but there are still many people using Amazon frequently. I wonder if their numbers have actually gone down

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#450

Post by kmonsen » Fri, Apr 01, 2022, 7:01 AM UTC

alskdjflaskjdhf wrote: post #74

klik99 wrote: post #21

There's one easy rule that could have avoided all of this - never give out any info on incoming calls. If I get a call or text about fraudulent transactions, I'll keep them on hold while I log into the bank website. If I get a call about a late payment, I'll thank them for the info and ask them to stay on while I pay online. If I get an inbound call with a more complex request, I'll ask them for their employee info a…

Yes, this is scam prevention 101. Anyone who called you is always unverified. It's hard for me to take seriously a "scam prevention expert" who doesn't seem to know or follow this rule, which by itself is enough to protect you from most scams. Normally I try not to victim blame people for getting scammed, but when you've made a declaration like that you forfeit that right. I'll also point out that the author seems to…

I can see a normal person falling for this, but in my opinion this person called themselves a scam expert is a scam in itself. The claim that this has only been praise since 2018 is absurd, even if true being four years behind on current practices is making you a no longer expert.