151–160 of 326 posts
Two weeks ago I received an email saying I had funds in Bitcoin and I could cash out, with login details for a website account [1]. I knew this must be a scam, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out the angle. Now I'm thinking it's a similar type of scam. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ_flb9tGuc
https://blog.confiant.com/how-one-crypto-drainer-template-fa...
Simple: it's time to stop using phone numbers. I use Apple's Messages. If someone spams me, I report them. They're blocked and have to go through the extra work of setting up a new account to try again. Compare this with, say, Google. Gmail lets spammers / scammers have limitless accounts and they don't do shit when an account is reported for spam. You can block and report Gmail spammers all day long and you'll get n…
Assuming you're talking about iMessage, comparing that to E-mail (GMail) is literally apples and oranges.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did this with some 419 scammers, and led them on a merry chase. I documented it in a private web forum, which entertained my friends for weeks. I had created this persona which was just too good to be true: A bank manager who was getting ready to run off with his mistress, and trying to secure a future for themselves with a quick payout. This fake persona was a total maniac. At the end, the scammers were super piss…
Some years ago I was selling an expensive aquarium on Craigslist, a scammer ‘paid’ me with a fake PayPal payment before asking to come pick it up. So I convinced him that I was the manager of a Red Lobster restaurant and it was an old lobster tank that we were selling. I told him to show up during business hours and tell the manager he’s there to pick up the lobster tank. The next day I got some ‘on my way’ texts and…
It's hard to turn a profit by reselling an expensive aquarium tank that's probably pretty unique and they don't come up for sale frequently.
I suspect you fleeced a real buyer
Terrified to consider what happens when these scammers get hold of large language models here in a year or so. Rather than fading into the background as this article posits, I expect people to have models finetuned on convincing them to make purchases/send money. Probably trained by being pitted against other models which have been trained on the mark's social media feeds. Train the scambot to perfectly push your but…
I've long assumed they do the exact opposite - try to filter out people who likely see through the game so they don't waste their time mining a hill with no gold. And they do this by intentionally making basic mistakes or other easy to spot errors so the clever people will just see themselves out and by the time their funnel gets to an actual human scammer, they have a highly probable sucker.
Simple: it's time to stop using phone numbers. I use Apple's Messages. If someone spams me, I report them. They're blocked and have to go through the extra work of setting up a new account to try again. Compare this with, say, Google. Gmail lets spammers / scammers have limitless accounts and they don't do shit when an account is reported for spam. You can block and report Gmail spammers all day long and you'll get n…
So don't be like Google Pay? (Which originally used proper accounts but was switched to be based on phone numbers, specifically because the new google pay was developed targeting India, where phone number based login is considered normal thanks to apps like WhatsApp.)
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The point is not to "be perfect", the point is to raise the standard of acceptable practices, to make it harder to abuse it. Just as an example: phone numbers should not be used for validation of anything as they are public. So companies who are requiring phones for any kind of authentication should be shamed into changing their practices, much like we learned to not trust companies that stored passwords in plain tex…
The abuse is that without sufficient guardrails a ten-digit number can be used to bother me at all hours of the day or night unless I want to be less accessible to people who I may need to hear from, not that it's used as an authentication source (which, yeah, not great, but also not the end of the world). Out-of-band authentication aside, a company is going to retain my phone number to be able to contact me. So are…
Phone numbers were and will always be assumed to be public. (Yellow pages are still a thing)
> unless I want to be less accessible to people who I may need to hear from.
You don't need to be less accessible to anyone. Your phone can and should be able to filter things for you.
And is not just a matter of setting up number filtering, I am talking about implementing changes in the application layer. One could imagine, e.g, a phone app that only rings if the caller provides a secret code provided by you, effectively making you reachable by phone number (public) + caller-specific code (private). You could also make that if you have the code on your addressbook, it sends it via DTMF after the call being completed.
> other than that the system cannot be repaired.
It can be repaired, it is just that the cost of these changes might be too high if mandated for all network operators.
But even if the system couldn't be repaired, the solution is not to encourage adoption of a proprietary solution. Apple already controls way too much stuff, we shouldn't give them yet another monopoly for them to exploit.
In this case, the victim deposited the money into a fake crypto platform that told him his investments were performing well, presumably to entice him to deposit even more. Of course, once he tried to withdraw the money, he found he was unable to. That sounds just like the "binary option" business which used to be run out of Israel. The Times of Israel blew that apart with "The Wolves of Tel Aviv" investigation series…
> Scamming people outside Israel was legal in Israel at the time. My head just exploded here. I think I need to go lie down. Please nobody tell the Florida legislature about this.
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I'd give anything to get rid of my phone, but almost everyone you do business with (DMV, electric/gas/water company, etc) expects you to have one. Same thing with USPS and their paper spam. At this point they're little more than government-mandated spam delivery channels. Private companies are handling the spam situation infinitely better.
I don't think I agree with that. I rarely get scams via USPS, never get explicit or potentially damaging content, the senders are all in my legal jurisdiction, and the spam arrives once per day in a manageable format. Almost all of the content is from businesses in my local area, businesses that I have previously shopped at, or political ads. Electronically from private companies I frequently get a larger volume of s…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'd take 10x the amount of spam in my mailbox if I could get rid of all of the rest of the garbage I'm bombarded with I for one would not. Digital spam is easy to deal with. There are automated filters, easy ways to block them, and the few that slip through are simple to deal with. Mailbox spam is physically painful to deal with and it's a massive waste of paper.
Paper is a renewable resource, and also a carbon sink. Throw it in the garbage and consider it carbon sequestration.
In this case, the victim deposited the money into a fake crypto platform that told him his investments were performing well, presumably to entice him to deposit even more. Of course, once he tried to withdraw the money, he found he was unable to. That sounds just like the "binary option" business which used to be run out of Israel. The Times of Israel blew that apart with "The Wolves of Tel Aviv" investigation series…