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GoodWill ransomware forces victims to donate to the poor

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Re: GoodWill ransomware forces victims to donate to the poor

#291

Post by iepathos »

pigtailgirl wrote: post #206
iepathos wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't make people have empathy, but you can make them carry out empathetic acts over and over again through blackmail with this ransomware.

-- to nitpick -- empathy is the ability to put yourself in someones position & truly feel what their reality must be like -- compassion is acting on that empathy --

It doesn't actually require having empathy to commit empathetic acts which are acts that display empathy. For example, smiling is an empathetic act, but it doesn't require having any actual empathy to do it. Sociopaths can smile and commit other empathetic acts to appear to have empathy without having any true empathy behind it.

Re: GoodWill ransomware forces victims to donate to the poor

#292

Post by iepathos »

oliv__ wrote: post #184
iepathos wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't make people have empathy, but you can make them carry out empathetic acts over and over again through blackmail with this ransomware.

Is it empathetic if you don't mean it?

Yes, an act can be empathetic even if the person doing it doesn't feel empathy. For example, smiling at another person is an empathetic act. Sociopaths do this all the time without feeling actual empathy for people. It makes it easier for them to blend in if they seem to have empathy via empathetic acts however disingenuous they may be.

Re: GoodWill ransomware forces victims to donate to the poor

#293

Post by leovander »

We similarly did this at a hackathon.

> Droplock is a tool to help you when your laptop is stolen... The thief is prompted with an option to donate to charity (through JustGiving, another BattleHack sponsor) or pay the laptop owner directly via Braintree. If they fail to take one of these options, the laptop gets locked down until payment is made.

https://dropbox.tech/developers/droplock-a-dropbox-hack-wins...

Re: GoodWill ransomware forces victims to donate to the poor

#294

Post by pigtailgirl »

iepathos wrote: post #291
pigtailgirl wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-- to nitpick -- empathy is the ability to put yourself in someones position & truly feel what their reality must be like -- compassion is acting on that empathy --

It doesn't actually require having empathy to commit empathetic acts which are acts that display empathy. For example, smiling is an empathetic act, but it doesn't require having any actual empathy to do it. Sociopaths can smile and commit other empathetic acts to appear to have empathy without having any true empathy behind it.

-- not disagreeing with you! - just talking to the linguistics - the distinctions here are interesting :=) --

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/compassion/definition

Re: GoodWill ransomware forces victims to donate to the poor

#295

Post by iepathos »

seoaeu wrote: post #143
iepathos wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People generally accept free stuff. Kids aren't some exception to this. You can accomplish this in any developed country with minor effort imo. Have any kids even distantly in your family? Kids know other kids so ask them to invite friends. "less fortunate" is a very broad descriptor for the children you need to feed, especially if you're fortunate.

Depending on the context you could probably give away pizzas pretty easily/innocently. Walking up to some children you do not know and offering to take them to a secondary location in return for free food… would come across very differently

Hey want to go get some free food at this public and safe place you've been before with all your friends for backup? Checks out ok.

Re: GoodWill ransomware forces victims to donate to the poor

#297

Post by l33t2328 »

oehpr wrote: post #270
temp8964 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "do some majorly positive action for the world" What can Jeff Bezos do more positive than creating Amazon? What can Elon Musk do more positive than creating Tesla and SpaceX? etc. etc.

/s?

Do you honestly think Amazon isn’t a net positive for the world? Even ignoring how useful AWS is, Amazon.com is incredibly convenient.

Re: GoodWill ransomware forces victims to donate to the poor

#298

Post by exabrial »

DarylZero wrote: post #284
exabrial wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My income is the fruit of my labor... That not really disputable... I'm not working for free.

It's very unrealistic, one might say childishly naive, to assume that this is how income is distributed.

They have a word for that: Slavery.

Re: GoodWill ransomware forces victims to donate to the poor

#300

Post by KronisLV »

barneygale wrote: post #191
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Picking up random children from the street and taking them to a restaurant comes at almost no cost. In fact if anyone sees this and calls the authorities they are likely to give you free lodging and food at a state owned facility top of it :)

Again, this is mostly an American problem. In other countries you know your neighbours and local community and wouldn't have a problem feeding hungry kids.

> In other countries you know your neighbours and local community and wouldn't have a problem feeding hungry kids.

This is probably only viable in smaller communities where people know one another, which may or may not show something about the authors of the malware. It's not just a social "issue", but rather one of population density, where you end up not knowing almost anyone around you personally.

Approaching random people, worse yet, kids, with promises of food in any metropolitan area or even moderately sized city would be viewed as exceedingly weird and creepy. Source: Eastern European country.

I get what the malware authors were trying to do, but it sounds like a somewhat naive and perhaps detached from reality implementation of a "sort of positive" idea.

It would have been way more viable to understand that payments for scammers work because they don't take hours or days of mucking about, but rather a payment through whatever means are available - which could also be applied to making the people affected donate to any number of charities of their or the authors' choice.

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