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U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

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Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#191

Post by DrillShopper »

johtso wrote: post #103
TeMPOraL wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is, crypto makes irreversibility a fundamental part of the system, making it impossible for any party to unilaterally reverse a payment without having to first take over the entire chain. With regular fiat money and banks, such reversals are perfectly possible on a technical level. The banks are usually unwilling to do them, and an individual may not be able to force them to in practice, but it's still…

This seems like the correct way to go though.. if you want reversibility, then introduce escrow into the situation, the foundational building block should be irreversible.. as there's no way to make a means of transfer _more_ irreversible if you're inherently giving control to a 3rd party with no choice.

That just kicks the can of trust to the entity performing the escrow, and there have been many, many cases of fly by night escrow companies (or companies pretending to be escrow companies) who just take the money and run.

So introducing another third party to trust makes it more complicated than the alternative of allowing transactions to be reversable.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#192

Post by DrillShopper »

smeej wrote: post #106
TeMPOraL wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is, crypto makes irreversibility a fundamental part of the system, making it impossible for any party to unilaterally reverse a payment without having to first take over the entire chain. With regular fiat money and banks, such reversals are perfectly possible on a technical level. The banks are usually unwilling to do them, and an individual may not be able to force them to in practice, but it's still…

This was mostly true of v.1 cryptocurrencies, but it's not like it's inherent to the system. It's just as easy to design cryptocurrencies where there are control mechanisms, governed however you'd like them to be. USDC, for example, can be frozen in any wallet at any time, and has still become hugely popular. IF reversibility is a desired feature of digital currencies, the market will bear that out. People can and wi…

USDC is only popular because it can be easily used to evade taxes while retaining its value

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#193

Post by larrik »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #120
infecto wrote: post #94

The US does not do enough in this space to punish companies. It feels like such low hanging fruit too that would significantly help the elderly population. Reported to Vercel a bank phishing site weeks ago, no response still. It’s amazing how little companies care.

Forcing telecos to authenticate phone calls would probably be the single most important change. But instead of forcing them, we have been letting them drag their feet while while regular people are losing billions to scams. The whole phone system is ancient and long deprecated. When I get a call from my bank I should see their name and a badge of authentication. Not a random phone number. Imagine you could register i…

It's worse than that.

I got a call with the caller id of my (credit union) credit card company. They had my name and address, knew I had a card, and were claiming they were investigating fraudulent charges. It sounded more official than my actual credit card company. The only real things to tip me off was that the list of fraudulent charges kept changing, and they were super keen on me reading the entire credit card number back to them.

There were never any fraudulent charges, and the actual fraud department didn't seem to care.

I'm guessing it was due to the Experian leak.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#194

Post by FabHK »

dehrmann wrote: post #38
abletonlive wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experienced the same thing in my family. It sucks. I still haven't fully forgiven them (the supposed victim). As much as I agree it's partially mental decline, it's hard for me to imagine it's not at least also partially a character flaw that would get you into this situation

> character flaw It's usually greed. The aphorism isn't entirely true, but you can't cheat an honest man.

Disagree. These unprincipled scammers often exploit character flaws, sure, but also exploit positive traits - trust, a desire to help, the desire for love and belonging, or (in the case of cyber trafficking victims that are then forced to scam others) the desire to find a good job to support one's family.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#195

Post by ianburrell »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #133
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telcos have systems in place that are specifically to allow international phone calls to appear as if they're local calls. This is to "facilitate business". They have these services and continue to offer them because they get paid for having them, despite the double decker bus sized hole this provides for scammers. I agree 100% that there should be much tighter regulation on telcos. What I'm not sure of is actually w…

Phone numbers should just be deprecated and move towards a DNS like system.

Phone numbers have nothing to do with the spoofing problem. Hierarchical identifiers would have the exact same problem. The problem is that VOIP callers can set whatever phone number they want. Email is also vulnerable to spoofing.

The solution is to roll out signing for phone numbers. The owner of each phone number is known. It could even be published in DNS with ENUM. Most phone calls are from big companies like telcos and mobile providers. The VOIP callers would be harder to update, but could be restricted so can't spoof known numbers.

If going to roll out new identity system, easier to use existing phone numbers than make a whole new identifier system.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#197

Post by loaph »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #157
nottorp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like begging for censorship…

I've divided my stuff into four layers: basic, recommended, aggressive, and paranoid. Choose your own level of "censorship" or choose none at all. All such things can descend into the political mudpit, it just takes effort to keep the pigs noses out of the technical experts trough.

I suspect they're saying ISPs doing it would be begging for censorship, not that your project is

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#198

Post by thinkingtoilet »

shoo wrote: post #28

Sue-Lin Wong has an excellent 8 part podcast series "Scam Inc" about pig butchering scams, the first three episodes are free to listen: https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc

John Oliver has an informative episode on it as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#199

Post by gosub100 »

silisili wrote: post #21
Auracle wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happened to my father. I told him he was getting scammed. My mom (divorced) told him. So did my sister. It didn’t matter. He lost all of his savings - 300k+. I wish I had taken his phone away, changed his passwords, etc. My mom didn’t want me to take drastic action because she was concerned that if he knew how much I knew he wouldn’t keep telling her things. It doesn’t matter once they’ve lost everything, of cours…

Sorry to hear that. Makes me angry just reading it, I can't imagine how it makes you feel. I've mentioned before here wondering if there is a name for this phenomenon, it's similar to sunk cost fallacy, but more emotionally charged. Like, the thought of having been scammed makes you put on blinders and keep going hoping you weren't. It doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but it happens all the time, to people of all a…

Perhaps simple denial? If you continue having contact with them after giving them some money but they keep elaborating on how the money helped or satisfied their (scammer's) wishes, the victim may not think they have been scammed. Like "look she's still talking to me every day. We're close. A scammer would have vanished by now"

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#200

Post by FabHK »

throwaway912312 wrote: post #85
Auracle wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happened to my father. I told him he was getting scammed. My mom (divorced) told him. So did my sister. It didn’t matter. He lost all of his savings - 300k+. I wish I had taken his phone away, changed his passwords, etc. My mom didn’t want me to take drastic action because she was concerned that if he knew how much I knew he wouldn’t keep telling her things. It doesn’t matter once they’ve lost everything, of cours…

I hear you. Same with my dad. Found out after he gave his old phone to my mom without logging out. Tried to show him he was falling for MS-clipart certificates and bossofbigbank@gmail.com but to no avail. After tracing 250k wired in just 6 months, we detangled my mom out of potential liability and reported him. He was put into financial stewardship (= personal finances done by an attorney). He appealed and the court…

Sorry to hear. Heartbreaking. I truly don't understand why we as a society give these scammers (a $500bn a year industry, according to The Economist) better tools for their trade, crypto, with virtually no other use cases.
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