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The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
81–90 of 152 posts
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#82Did anyone notice that the author talks about scams and cons, but when it actually comes to a list of examples the majority are actually about plagiarism? Which... I largely don't care about. I understand why it's super important for academics, but in my book it's not a con or scam. It's accurate information. If somebody is giving me accurate information, the fact that they don't have correct citations isn't really a…
> Which... I largely don't care about. I understand why it's super important for academics, but in my book it's not a con or scam. It's accurate information. This is not correct on a few levels, at least in the context of science. At the most basic, you're engaging in circular reasoning. You're accepting it's "accurate information" as a truism when the point of science is to discover what is actually "accurate inform…
You're making a lot of assumptions about the nature of the plagiarized content.
If plagiarizing is bad because the copied info might be wrong, then original research is bad because it might be wrong.
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The police don't call you if they are trying to serve a warrant, they show up. But be aware that the converse isn't true: someone who shows up at your door claiming to be law enforcement with a warrant isn't necessarily legitimate. E.g.: https://madison.com/news/local/crime-courts/jack-mcquestion-...
I really wish there was a certificate authority run by the government. In the past we didn't have the capacity to do a lot of these things but now we can make many improvements, even if incomplete. Can we not have something like a CA but for, at minimum, officials? Or something like keybase for identity proofs? This seems quite invaluable. Couldn't this even be done within the phone, mail, and email systems? I don't…
A certificate authority; like a sitting judge?
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#84Shame and pride are such strong motivators. My wife was taken by a very elaborate and well-crafted scam in November. In retrospect, it all sounds ridiculous... but in the moment, with kids in tow, it was very convincing. It was so traumatizing that when it was over and she finally realized it was a scam, she was relieved! They had convinced her she was going to jail and that was terrifying. Losing the money was less…
> Shame and pride are such strong motivators.
That's why they drill them into you in public school.
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve received so many of these scam calls from fake authorities that I used to just hang up (now I don’t answer calls ever). One time I didn’t hang up because something felt weird. Turned out it was legit and I owed a $20 traffic ticket from years ago. I’m pretty certain it wasn’t a scam, maybe it was.
I would guess any traffic ticket that was only $20 was a great number of years ago…
It was smaller than that, some kind of bridge toll, then got multiplied by late payment up to that number
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
This scam is pretty active right now. My brother in law was called 2 days prior and they called my wife again 2 days later… Rough scam script: - - hello, is this XYZ? - this is Officer Z, do you agree to abide by Judge ABC’s orders? - we have been trying to reach you by mail about this case. It has to do with a minor. - the judge has issued a gag order, do not talk with anyone about this - look up the number from the…
Every step feels plausible to me, except the last. Sending crypto to a government agency? Not saying I wouldn't be taken in by this or other scams in the heat of the moment, but from my armchair position, that redlined my suspicion. EDIT: heart -> heat
Just a small thing if it helps someone; you don't pay bail to avoid pretrial detention, you're paying to get out of it. I.e. you can't bail out if you aren't in jail.
Even if you do bail out, you still have to be processed, get your fingerprints done, mugshots, whatever.
This may change if you're someone notable, but for us run of the mill people, the police won't call to say "pay bail or well arrest you". You get arrested and then pay bail, in that order.
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#87Shame and pride are such strong motivators. My wife was taken by a very elaborate and well-crafted scam in November. In retrospect, it all sounds ridiculous... but in the moment, with kids in tow, it was very convincing. It was so traumatizing that when it was over and she finally realized it was a scam, she was relieved! They had convinced her she was going to jail and that was terrifying. Losing the money was less…
> Shame and pride are such strong motivators. That's why they drill them into you in public school.
They don't need to drill in anything. Shame and pride are intrinsic human nature.
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was listening to Joe Rogan interview David Blaine and he said there are plenty of card players where it’s literally undetectable the tricks they use, even with cameras everywhere. Makes me have no interest in playing card games with anyone but a few friends.
Oh, there's so many card manipulation tricks it's hilarious. I can false shuffle a deck, I can seed a deck through shuffles. I can false cut. Tricks with my hands to 'do nothing's with a deck even though it looks like I'm shuffling or cutting the deck. When we get to truly skilled magicians, they can perfect shuffle (IIRC, 8x rifle shuffles in a row with perfect precision returns the deck to it's original state). The…
Perfect bridge hands are pretty common because perfect shuffles happen randomly pretty often when you play a lot of games starting from an unshuffled deck.
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The police don't call you if they are trying to serve a warrant, they show up. But be aware that the converse isn't true: someone who shows up at your door claiming to be law enforcement with a warrant isn't necessarily legitimate. E.g.: https://madison.com/news/local/crime-courts/jack-mcquestion-...
I really wish there was a certificate authority run by the government. In the past we didn't have the capacity to do a lot of these things but now we can make many improvements, even if incomplete. Can we not have something like a CA but for, at minimum, officials? Or something like keybase for identity proofs? This seems quite invaluable. Couldn't this even be done within the phone, mail, and email systems? I don't…
You can call 911 or your local police station and they can verify if there is a law enforcement officer at your front door.
I guess someone could run a Stingray and re-route your 911 call to a hostile party but at that point, I don't think a CA would help you given that they are right outside your front door.
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#90Shame and pride are such strong motivators. My wife was taken by a very elaborate and well-crafted scam in November. In retrospect, it all sounds ridiculous... but in the moment, with kids in tow, it was very convincing. It was so traumatizing that when it was over and she finally realized it was a scam, she was relieved! They had convinced her she was going to jail and that was terrifying. Losing the money was less…
> If you say it all out loud, it is obvious, but if you go step by step, each one was somewhat plausible.
The step by step at the time vs the "in hindsight" really is a powerful persuasion tool/learning tool.
e.g. the below is a real situation that happened at work:
- I run a SRE team
- We do a short term embed of an SRE member to do some one off dev work for a migration
- Dev Mgr to my team member: "oh, since you are touching that code, you should probably also work on this tiny business feature that depends on it"
- DM: "Oh, since you worked on that, you should also work on this other feature"
- DM: "Oh, since you worked on the above, just take over the whole feature"
- DM: "Oh, since you did all THAT, can you talk to the business and figure out the next features??"
Again, totally ridiculous overreach but spread out over 6 months in a fast moving, high stress environment, it can go unnoticed.