Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd rather do assembler than CSS.
You only say that because you have spent more time in assembler (I presume). I've spent enough time doing CSS that I find it to be pretty easy.
Assembler doesn't have margin collapse.
I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
211–220 of 332 posts
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#212Can these people actually be this stupid? I am having a hard time believing it. I would expect scammers to be more aware of the possibility of deceitful behavior by others. Incredible if true, but hard to believe...
He streams live on Twitch and the stuff that ends up on Youtube is the most interesting stuff. Watching it live can be a bit of a dud sometimes but other times he has new ideas and it is, as you put it, incredible.
He got a bunch of scammers to give up bank routing information for an ostensible wire transfer using a script he wrote to use speech-to-text software combined with a natural language interpreter which determined what prerecorded voice lines to play. The process took 8 minutes in one case. https://youtube.com/watch?v=maP2DwgdBts
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
You have to accept that they might actually cancel the account, and deal with the inconvenience of actually switching (which may be worth it anyway).
Not really you can usually back out before finally pulling the trigger.
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were not. The Stanford Prison Experiment used to be a case study on people following orders and fulfilling assigned roles, and now it's the case study for the problem of the replication crisis.
Didn’t they ban attempts to replicate because of violence?
It wasn't an experiment in the first place, it was a political stunt with a predetermined outcome. All the participants were coached in the political implications of the stunt and told how they should behave. Psychology departments present it to undergrads as a legitimate experiment with some ethical issues because their discipline is a pseudoscience (or if you're inclined to be generous, a humanity masquerading as science.)
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#215Must be a tough balance. By posting this video he blows this process since the scammers will now know the details.
He's already known to many of these scammers, I've seen multiple videos where he was identified. But by that time he'd already wasted the time of two or three people in the call center.
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#216While it’s entertaining, it’s just a bit sad that people continue to fall for these scams. The one woman who believed the Amazon refund scam sounded young, maybe in her 40s.
While the idea of wasting the call center operators time appears noble. After watching a few of these scam baiter videos, it appears the call centers are staffed with at least a few dozen people. If one dumb operator stays on the line for 8+ hrs with a scam baiter while the other operators are taking calls from real potential victims. The impact seems limited.
Also, some people will say that it’s educational. But if you look at the target audience of the scammers, it’s mostly the elderly and/or those with dementia or some other progressive mental illness. The education won’t help this vulnerable population.
How do we stop the root of the issue? How do we make it so that scamming the elderly and vulnerable population is not profitable?
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd rather do assembler than CSS.
You only say that because you have spent more time in assembler (I presume). I've spent enough time doing CSS that I find it to be pretty easy.
I've done more things in asm than CSS, but I've spent far more time doing CSS.
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were not. The Stanford Prison Experiment used to be a case study on people following orders and fulfilling assigned roles, and now it's the case study for the problem of the replication crisis.
Didn’t they ban attempts to replicate because of violence?
There isn't a specific ban on replicating the Stanford Prison experiment but instead a ban because it would violate current ethical codes for experiments, that any information gathered through a replication would not be generalizable. Here is one discussion:
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-stanford-prison-experiment-...
In other words, while the experiment appeared to demonstrate interesting things, those conclusions are based on the specifics of the experimental setup and it would be better to study more representative environments to draw useful conclusions.
From the above discussion: "The Stanford Prison Experiment is frequently cited as an example of unethical research. The experiment could not be replicated by researchers today because it fails to meet the standards established by numerous ethical codes, including the Ethics Code of the American Psychological Association."
And the APA ethics code: https://www.apa.org/ethics/code
"Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm"
"8.07 Deception in Research (a) Psychologists do not conduct a study involving deception unless they have determined that the use of deceptive techniques is justified by the study's significant prospective scientific, educational, or applied value and that effective nondeceptive alternative procedures are not feasible.
(b) Psychologists do not deceive prospective participants about research that is reasonably expected to cause physical pain or severe emotional distress."
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#219The 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…
FWIW, when I had to get in touch with EDD several years ago and had absolutely no luck calling the main number, I eventually got through with the foreign language numbers. They’re generally staffed higher in proportion to the number of callers they get. IIRC, Vietnamese was the one with the best ratio, though that may have changed in the years since I looked into it.
It can be tricky to make it through the automated menus if you don’t speak the language (though I’m sure you’ve memorized the sequence by now), but once you get to a human, they’re bilingual and completely fluent in English.
Re: I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
#220Can 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?
The classic way is that people forward him the scams or he finds them in web searches.
There is a relatively new technique though: scammers often have victims call them back once the victim has bought gift cards or whatever. So if once you get one of those callback numbers you can just call in pretending to be a victim in process. The scammers don't currently have pipeline management adequate to know if you're really a victim or not.
This lets you skip a bunch of the early and failure prone stages (scammers hang up calls eagerly at the beginning if they get the slightest hint you're not a real victim) and go right to the end game where things are much more fun and the scammers are much less likely to bail out.