I literally can't think of anything funnier I've seen in my life.
I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
131–140 of 332 posts
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#132So this is real? I always presumed the person he's talking to in these videos was just a friend/colleague playing the part. Some of the stuff he does to them seems like it would violate international hacking laws or something.
There are no "international hacking laws". That's why all these scammers operate with impunity.
I meant it would violate the laws in the victim's country. There are certainly laws against installing malware on someone else's machine in lots of countries.
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#133You are all laughing, but I was just presented with an impossible captcha trying to login into my OpenAI account, that I pay $20/month for. To solve the captcha, I need to click the puzzle 80 (!) times, and if I make a mistake, I should start everything anew. That's totally not funny. Had to cancel the subscription. Anyway, Phind is faster and better quality.
Yeah, as hilarious as this is when it happens to a bad guy the really sad aspect of it, for me, is that their customer service experience is not so abnormal. If it were, most would immediately identify it as fake. Like, counting the numbers of nuts in a photo is a bit much, but we are so used to horrible CAPTHAs now that it's just plausible. Same with the phone menu, etc.
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Considering a lot of these scams originate from countries with low wages Is it a faux pas to say the truth, which is Calcutta ?
Calcutta is not a country, but many of them are located in in India or Bangladesh.
I'm very much aware of the fact that Calcutta is a city. The city where most online scammers originate from. Most is the right word, not many.
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#135What I don't understand is the bit at the end (spoilers): he finds out that a person who Kraken's fraud team sees as a victim of scams, but hasn't been able to contact, has called his Gauntlet. He's then able to reach out and help her, as well as other scam victims who end up in the Gauntlet.
So, three questions -
1. How do scam victims end up in the Gauntlet at all? I thought the idea was that Kitboga and his team pose as marks, send the bogus QR code to the scammer, and that's their whole pipeline. How do legitimate people end up in there?
2. Assuming the above is something like "scammers are clearly manipulating scam victims into helping them with the Gauntlet", doesn't that raise questions about the glee with which he, and all of us, are watching "scammers'" frustration? It becomes a more nuanced moral calculus if some number of the people you are frustrating are innocent people manipulated into navigating this system for scammers. You could argue it's still net good because otherwise the effort spent manipulating them would have been spent doing a real scam on them, but honestly I'm not sure
3. How did they identify the non-scammers who ended up on the platform? If there was a solid answer to this I suppose it could mitigate (2), but it's hard for me to believe (unless it's something very labor intensive that would make the automated nature of the system less useful)
Overall I still enjoyed the video and found parts completely hilarious (and far too realistic given my own experience on phone trees). But the above does give me pause about unreserved support for what he's doing
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#136I know Kit through a friend. Played magic the gathering with him once. No difference between his persona and personality, one of those people made for the job. Absolutely great guy, too, nice wife and kids. He also started off as a Web Dev. The fake banking websites are all his own work. Really clever stuff, ironically using phishing tactics to catch phishers.
Really, never would have thought he was a programmer.
Web Dev sometimes isn't. Sometimes it is CSS and HTML and art/design specialty. I don't say that to be a gatekeeper, I think CSS expertise is harder! heh
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#137Can someone explain how the scammers are pulled in in the first place? That is, what's the 'funnel' for this? I get that this is amusing and a good way to waste scammers' time, but where did he originally find the scammers?
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Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#138The part where someone waits for a super long time in a queue, finally gets connected, but then gets sent to an answering machine that says "the mailbox is full" hit too close to home. I know this was set up on purpose but I've had that exact same thing happen to me on a real & important government system recently. I've been trying to call California EDD to get some back pay for my state paid family leave. There is n…
Calling comcast customer support almost guarantees this happens. You call in, repeatedly ask for a representative, they will hang up on you. The only way I've reliably been able to talk to anyone to say you wish to 'Talk to a representative about cancelling my account'. TBH, I kind of dread when they start incorporating LLMs or better ai, because it will be truly impossible to speak to a human anymore.
> The only way I've reliably been able to talk to anyone to say you wish to 'Talk to a representative about cancelling my account'.
Threatening to leave is also a reliable technique to stop ridiculous price hikes and even get hefty discounts.
Sometimes you have to talk to someone on the "retention team." At other times you can do it online. Most recently I preserved the NYT intro rate of $4 every 4 weeks (instead of $25) and I got a 33% discount on an Adobe subscription after they announced a 50% price hike and I started the cancellation process.
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#139It would be interesting to see how far the 'scammers' would go in an attempt to withdraw funds. I imagine someone that sits for hours on hold and revisits numerous times would happily install a mobile app. One could develop a mobile app that collects data from scammer while presenting a simple web view of existing trap sites.
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought a lot of them don't even know they are running scams, and that is all coming down from the top. They are barely paid phone workers just doing scripts and doing what they are told just so they can feed their families.
Only on HackerNews could I find some idiot trying to drum up sympathy for phone scammers.
A 20 year old failed social engineer scamming a 80 year old retired American veteran requires all our empathy.