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Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

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Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#131

Post by user_7832 »

wpietri wrote: post #37
andersa wrote: post #34

I don't understand what would motivate someone to ever send an explicit photo of themselves to a stranger. The whole premise of this scam makes no sense. Like, is this not the most basic of the basics of online safety?

The short answer is horniness. They are hoping to get some. And indeed, as I understand it, they've received what they think are explicit photos of someone else, so they believe they are in a reciprocal context. If people were all that good at being rational about safety in the face of possible sexytimes, it's true this wouldn't happen. And we wouldn't have STDs or unintended pregnancies, either. But as the man says,…

To add to the fact, these are teenagers. They already aren't well known for rational thought or low levels of horniness.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#132

Post by delfinom »

rightbyte wrote: post #127
ta1243 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kids are more embarrassed/ashamed about their bodies because all the other penises they've seen are so huge. And this is the problem. In years past kids would be naked with other kids, when changing after gym for example. Nowadays the only penis a boy sees is his own and that of porn people, because we've made normal nude situations extremely rare, especially outside of the context of sex.

Don't childen shower together anymore after gym classes?

Nope, the only kids that used the showers in my high school were the ones after their sports training after school.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#133

Post by delfinom »

olliej wrote: post #76
hannofcart wrote: post #24

While my heart goes out to all the victims' families, what are platforms like Facebook supposed to do here? Are they supposed to monitor the content of the chats? Some would call that eavesdropping. The sad fact is that desperate people exist. And these desperate people are willing to do despicable things to make a buck.

Facebook does monitor - and sell - all user data. You don’t get to say “we will read your messages to sell ads, we will straight up sell your message history to other companies, but no we can’t do anything to protect users from trivially detectable scams.

That's really stretching the definition of sell.

They used to actually sell your days to select groups.

Now they sell advertiser ads based on your data but the advertiser does not get to see said data.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#134

Post by delfinom »

jjmarr wrote: post #17
colechristensen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it is. If a country can’t find and enforce a law or extradite someone for doing such a thing, order the carrier of the extortion messages to block the entire country or charge the message carrier itself, especially if minors are involved. Like if Facebook is being a safe haven for Nigerian extortionists, either they block Nigeria or Australia blocks Facebook.

Even assuming this is technically feasible (a premise others don't believe), it is ethically wrong to cut off an entire country from the Internet because a small portion of the population are committing crimes. Imagine a large American city getting cut off from Facebook because there are many people selling shoplifted items on FB Marketplace and your underfunded govt doesn't have the financial ability to crack down o…

It's not wrong, it's politics.

Said country affected can sign an extradition treaty to restore access.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#135

Post by hnbad »

__rito__ wrote: post #95
petepete wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents' home phone used to receive several scam calls a week from India. There was no way to stop them short of giving up the landline, which is what I did. I can't believe phone companies (in the UK) don't provide better protection, even a registry of whitelisted numbers, that could be set for the old/vulnerable.

Well, I am in and from India, and I receive several scam calls a month from India. Indians, by number of victims, are the biggest victims of Indian scammers. Several people I know personally have been burned. Our phone numbers are in several lists, and they get leaked. I think one solution to this is strict data privacy laws. If there is a list with phone numbers/addresses, it should be subject to highest level of ca…

I live in Germany, famous for having among the strictest privacy laws.

I still get occasional scam calls a few times each month, often using mobile phone numbers or fraudulent VOIP numbers registered in Austria. They usually hang up as soon as you push back on their claim that they got the phone number "from the database, maybe you participated in a contest once" when prompted with the question of how they got your number. The callers are mostly women with Eastern European accents.

I suspect my number ended up in a list when it was leaked in a Facebook data leak because I had to connect it once for account recovery/verification.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#136

Post by k8svet »

EnigmaFlare wrote: post #29
k8svet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit different imo. If some scammer sends me my bro's penile pic, I'm gonna delete it and warn him. If the scammer sends me proof he was consuming illegal, immoral CSAM, I'm having a vastly different reaction. The shame is the key to this scam. The intersection of (especially teenaged) insecurity, and America cultures nonsensical relationship to sex and shame, is tragic.

Teenage boys won't necessarily know the distinction between what's shameful and what's illegal, or the bigger political beliefs around CSAM. Don't you think you're perpetuating the fear of sexuality by effectively threating to cause serious harm to teenagers for looking at the wrong kinds of pictures? Why is there such a binary classification of "no shame" and "calling the cops"? Different countries' laws put that di…

I don't think you should've been downvoted, I reread my comment last night and realized I didn't make it as clear.

I mentioned that shame (of sexuality/nudity/vulgarity) as a contrast to fear of being caught doing something illegal, because I think we should work to remove that shame. Or at least that magnitude of it.

I have my own relationship and journey with this American-puritanical bs shame. Life's short, lots of people are horny, no one really cares about your junk that much anyway. But yeah, I didn't have any of that perspective as a teenager.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#137

Post by k8svet »

rsynnott wrote: post #106
k8svet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit different imo. If some scammer sends me my bro's penile pic, I'm gonna delete it and warn him. If the scammer sends me proof he was consuming illegal, immoral CSAM, I'm having a vastly different reaction. The shame is the key to this scam. The intersection of (especially teenaged) insecurity, and America cultures nonsensical relationship to sex and shame, is tragic.

That's arguably kind of a weak twist ending to that episode; it would actually basically still work if the material had been inoffensive. Throughout the episode, the viewer is meant to _assume_ it's just shame.

Agreed. I don't really know why I thought the distinction mattered yesterday.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#138

Post by andersa »

imtringued wrote: post #73
andersa wrote: post #34

I don't understand what would motivate someone to ever send an explicit photo of themselves to a stranger. The whole premise of this scam makes no sense. Like, is this not the most basic of the basics of online safety?

You go on a dating app, a girl responds with her nudes and you send yours. It turns out it was a guy looking to extort you.

> You go on a dating app, a girl responds with her nudes

My first assumption would be the "girl" is a bot and the image generated by AI until proven otherwise, i.e. by meeting up at a public location and seeing it's a real person from my country. Am I too paranoid? It sure feels like the dead internet theory is just about to get real and we should act accordingly.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#139

Post by petepete »

ta1243 wrote: post #122
petepete wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents' home phone used to receive several scam calls a week from India. There was no way to stop them short of giving up the landline, which is what I did. I can't believe phone companies (in the UK) don't provide better protection, even a registry of whitelisted numbers, that could be set for the old/vulnerable.

They do https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/cordless-phones/article/how-...

They were with Virgin Media and the calls came from UK-looking non withheld numbers, so it wasn't particularly useful. BT and Sky's offerings look better, but you'd hope this kind of thing was part of the default offering.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#140

Post by dmd »

rightbyte wrote: post #127
ta1243 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kids are more embarrassed/ashamed about their bodies because all the other penises they've seen are so huge. And this is the problem. In years past kids would be naked with other kids, when changing after gym for example. Nowadays the only penis a boy sees is his own and that of porn people, because we've made normal nude situations extremely rare, especially outside of the context of sex.

Don't childen shower together anymore after gym classes?

We certainly didn’t in my public school in the 1980s; they’d stopped doing that by the late 70s. (NYC suburbs)
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