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I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

lupinia.net

531–540 of 562 posts

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

#531
post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

shipping both ways is 100% not free in canada. I went to price match a power supply I had just purchased and they said they don't price match. I said no worries since it's unopened I'll return it and buy it again and they quoted me $30 shipping to return it. I had prime and it was a prime item. I've also reported businesses who sneak 'give us a 5 star review and we'll give you $30' cards into their parcels and amazon…

>"shipping both ways is 100% not free in Canada." It is free for what I order. >"suddenly I found myself spending less money on junk" I do not buy "junk" just what I really need (mostly for business), so do not have this problem. I buy some things locally as well but it is not my goal to favor either. >"Highly recommend getting rid of prime" I am very service averse person and am trying to use as little as possible.…

>It is free for what I order.

I thought that too until suddenly it wasn't.

>it means I need it as it saves me money / time whatever.

Only you know your balance book I guess

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

#532
post #71

I expected some crazy new attack vector that was so sophisticated it could fool this Scam Prevention Expert, but this post is laughable. They fell for textbook "scamming 101" that my grandma knows to avoid. Here's one tip for this expert – if you get a 2FA code over text or email that clearly has the line "we will never contact you for this code over phone or text" right under it, DON'T give it to a "support agent" o…

This feels like an unreasonably nasty and condescending response to an article about how anyone can make mistakes in the moment. I thought it was a pretty good article about how easy it is to sit at your computer and look down at people who fall for scams, but that scams are effective precisely because they take advantage of mistakes and the fallibility of people - even knowledgable ones. I feel like this comment mis…

even worse is spreading this attitude is something that only aids a scammer. Fear and shame at reputational harm prevent victims from alerting authorities, about alerting their friends. About getting help.

Worse than being wrong. Worse than just being a jerk. This poster is being actively harmful.

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

#533
post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure can. And as a result you will get... > a separate isolated network

They specifically called for dual-NIC.

As an extension of their suggestion. There’s no mystery here.

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

#534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all I could think. This guy sounds like a typical person prone to scams. Expert my ass.

Not a single reader in this forum thinks she is an expert. Let's not hurt her feelings further with insults. She probably knows she isn't an expert, it is just a title she came up with, randomly?

Randomly? No, it was deliberately used to make this article clickbait. Its not that fascinating when a normal person gets scammed. She scammed us by telling us she's a expert when she's clearly not.

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

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that, to some degree. But amazon.de has a lot of problems, too. There are a lot of fishy listings, but it's also often quite easy to detect those fishy offers, because the German text is usually full of grammar and spelling errors, and often obviously a result from Google translate, and often not even fully translated, with larger parts still in (shoddy) English. Outright counterfeit products seem to be somewha…

Honestly maybe you just have a better detector than most.

I don't agree. It's extremely obvious when a listing on Amazon.de is sketchy because the German used is quite bad compared to normal listings.

I'm also quite skeptical of most positive reviews, because it's a known problem in Germany too. I don't think most people are aware of that though and still believe high ratings still mean anything.

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

#536
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was blown away that Amazon would transfer me to a scammer. I contacted Amazon again and let them know what had happened. Hopefully they will figure out how their guy got this scammers phone number and teach him how to find a 3rd party phone number... 1) Amazon is complicit in shady behavior on their platform, whether it's inventory commingling, sketchy sellers repurposing existing, well-reviewed listings for a to…

> Amazon is complicit in shady behavior on their platform Bought some wireless earbuds a while back, they sent me a horrible knock off. Contacted the store, he said the delivery guy made the switch, took forever but sent me new ones. Left a review stating all of this and warning users not to buy from this sketchy store, my review never saw the light of day.

At this point I only really buy things from Amazon that are essentially fungible. Cables, adapters, toiletries, tools, none of these matter enough to me to care about exactly what I get, as long as it’s roughly what’s in the picture, and to be honest they’re not even worth counterfeiting.

For everything else there’s rarely a reason to not buy directly from brands or niche specialist retailers. Customer support is typically better, warranties are often better, repair processes are better, and that’s not to mention the issue of counterfeiting.

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

#538
post #204

I was at my local coffee shop yesterday when the manager was on the phone for 10+ minutes with a scammer. Was a new one to me. The landline caller ID showed "Madison Police Dept" - the local police. The caller introduced themselves as an investigator working a case with counterfeit bills. "Don't contact your boss/owner because we are not sure if they are in on it." The caller knew details like employees names and the…

Sometimes scammers will have you do varrious bits of busy work that can't possibly result in loss just to get the mark into the flow of doing what the scammer says and distract them from thinking critically.

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

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's easy to convince yourself you're way too smart to make this mistake. At the same time, you now deliberately skipped over the fact twice that he just skimmed the mail and didn't fully realize it was specifically a 2FA code, just assumed it was some verification code. I mean, the wording explicitly talks about entering this code somewhere to enable stuff. That's already two dead giveaways. Otherwise you'd be…

It's pretty obvious what is a 2FA code and what is not. If I'm being sent a code on my email or phone, I know not to tell it to someone on the phone. Indeed, even that very email she was sent contained a reminder not to tell it to someone on the phone. I read the entire article, I am just unimpressed by the justifications as to how this "could happen to anybody."

> It's pretty obvious what is a 2FA code and what is not.

Unless you're distracted or otherwise having a bad day. Everyone has bad days, even experts. To stay secure you must be secure always, while the scammer only has to be successful rarely. This dynamic favors the scammer very strongly.

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

#540

No offence but as an "expert" there is no excuse to run a webpage/blog etc. with no https. With Vercel, Netlify and many others offering free stating hosting and let's encrypt https certificate there is no excuse to run a site without an SSL certificate. To me the moral of the story and that you should never ever follow instructions by an alleged bank calling you asking to confirm informations and, even worse, give t…

HTTPS provides essentially no security to a broad spectrum of attacks-- particularly, any attacker that can position himself between the webserver or name server and any CA is largely unaffected by https. Only attackers that are limited to intercepting between the webserver and end client are meaningfully thwarted. It isn't magical pixie dust. It doesn't appear that this page provides any information or service that would be meaningfully protected by https.

The most important reason to have it is to avoid the automatic search engine downraking that google now applies to non-https sites (helpfully elevating all manner of spam and scams over decades of technical documentation).

> To me the moral of the story and that you should never ever follow instructions by an alleged bank calling you asking to confirm informations and, even worse, give them codes over the phone.

Unfortunately, as pointed out by many others in this thread many banks engage in and even sometimes require you to comply with scam indistinguishable behavior, making your maxim hard to follow. Even ignoring that, everyone makes mistakes, gets distracted, or has bad days... this makes security very hard, even for experts.

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