Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beware of the perfect gentleman

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 185 posts

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#31

Post by EdwardDiego »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #29
markus_zhang wrote: post #7

I have been constantly harrased by accounts with pretty girl pictures on LinkedIn, wish they could do something. Why did I know they are fake? One, I'm not handsome, neither do I work in those high status companies, why did they reach out to me? Two, they look more like models than software engineers. Completely bullshit.

Lets face it. The "pretty girl profile" strategy works on a wide enough fraction of men that with probability close to 1 you can establish a legit connection to at least a few legit people at the company. Once you get that far, you can start getting recommendations for other people you "might know" and have enough of an "in" to get a glimpse at the entire org chart of the place. From there your a short jump away from…

Back in the MySpace (Bebo also maybe?) days, I met a programmer who harvested womens' profile pictures from social media for the AdultFriendFinder.com adverts on porn sites.

He didn't consider it unethical because "you'd have to be really really stupid to think that women are posting their face on a site like AFF".

I kinda thought exploiting the really stupid was still unethical, but his response was given that I worked in adtech, I wasn't really in a place to judge.

Which was hard to argue against, tbh, as I spent a lot of my time then either making popunders work again after Firefox released a new version that broke our old approach, or figuring out how to store our tracking data better.

But now that I've got a few years between me and adtech, I'm totally going to judge you hard, eug1505.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#33

Post by prawn »

layman51 wrote: post #26

I think about what I would do if I were in the situation of these men. If possible, I wouldn't engage with scam victims at all. This sounds impossible though because there are those situations where your workplace security team or relatives get involved. The scary thing is how this scam can happen anywhere there is a chat function, such as Words With Friends.

One argument for engaging with them is that you are more likely to get some warning of a threat or head off a threat if someone sounded serious about showing up at your door.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#35

Post by rurp »

timrice wrote: post #5

Upsetting that in an article all about photos being used to scam people, there's not a single sample of an offending image! I mean, I think I get why. But still, it's the first thing I want to see when I read a story like this.

Haha, yeah my thought process reading the article was basically:

- Why aren't there any photo examples?

- OK, I get why not

- But still. Couldn't they find a way to add some photos?

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#36

Post by dehrmann »

markus_zhang wrote: post #7

I have been constantly harrased by accounts with pretty girl pictures on LinkedIn, wish they could do something. Why did I know they are fake? One, I'm not handsome, neither do I work in those high status companies, why did they reach out to me? Two, they look more like models than software engineers. Completely bullshit.

> they look more like models than software engineers

I worked with someone (she was on the sales team) who looked like a model. Her mom was a model--go figure. So while unlikely, it does happen.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#37

Post by verdenti »

dehrmann wrote: post #36
markus_zhang wrote: post #7

I have been constantly harrased by accounts with pretty girl pictures on LinkedIn, wish they could do something. Why did I know they are fake? One, I'm not handsome, neither do I work in those high status companies, why did they reach out to me? Two, they look more like models than software engineers. Completely bullshit.

> they look more like models than software engineers I worked with someone (she was on the sales team) who looked like a model. Her mom was a model--go figure. So while unlikely, it does happen.

No post body was provided.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#38

Post by thephyber »

diego_moita wrote: post #9

For me, the most fascinating part is about women refusing to accept they've been scammed or wanting a relationship with the men whose pictures were stolen, even though some of them are gay. It is quite similar to cult followers like QAnon. They want to believe desperately on what is comforting discarding what is reasonable. My Brazilian family of Bolsonaro supporters camping in front of barracks demanding a coup-d'et…

I think you are conflating System 1 and System 2 thinking (from Kahneman's _Thinking Fast and Slow_ [1]). Frauds typically work by triggering our System 1 ("lizard brain", containing our emotions and our innate mate selection/attraction) which selectively / temporarily disables our System 2 (cognitive / rational faculties). We have words to describe the abstractions in the mind ("ego", "defense mechanism") which form filters that prevent information from passing System 1 into System 2 unless our mind is open to accepting it. The entire point of these frauds is to trigger System 1 of the victim.

This article[2] was eye-opening for me in helping me understand how the brain filters information before it can reach System 2. You probably notice it when you talk to people and they reject / deflect facts that disconfirm their priors.

While I agree with you about the {QAnon, The Big Lie, Bolsonaro protesters} examples, I think people (including myself) severely overestimate _our own_ ability to withstand something untrue that tickles our confirmation bias. We all have these features, only some people have better control over their System 1 filters.

I'm fascinated by these topics because (1) I work in cybersecurity and (2) I have family members that fell into QAnon + The Big Lie. Learning about _Street Epistemology_[3] has been really interesting to help me better understand not only many of these belief systems, but how discussing them in selective ways can avoid the filters/defenses of System 1.

[1] https://suebehaviouraldesign.com/kahneman-fast-slow-thinking...

[2] https://eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/truth-status-and-tribes

[3] https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Street_Epistemology

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#40

Post by flooo »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #31
IIAOPSW wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets face it. The "pretty girl profile" strategy works on a wide enough fraction of men that with probability close to 1 you can establish a legit connection to at least a few legit people at the company. Once you get that far, you can start getting recommendations for other people you "might know" and have enough of an "in" to get a glimpse at the entire org chart of the place. From there your a short jump away from…

Back in the MySpace (Bebo also maybe?) days, I met a programmer who harvested womens' profile pictures from social media for the AdultFriendFinder.com adverts on porn sites. He didn't consider it unethical because "you'd have to be really really stupid to think that women are posting their face on a site like AFF". I kinda thought exploiting the really stupid was still unethical, but his response was given that I wor…

How about the women whose profile pics he “harvested” (stole)?

Isn’t there a huge ethical issue there?

Post reply on HN