221–230 of 264 posts
From a profitable prediction markets trader: > "Prediction: in 1-2 years, almost everyone will agree that open sourcing the best AIs is totally crazy as the AIs become capable of autonomous hacking of most humans and institutions, serious terrorism and creation of biological weapons, etc." https://xcancel.com/SemioticRivalry/status/20815246004504824...
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the point though of a proper scam is to filter out the believables and find the guillibles. You don't exactly want convincing evidence; you want a good story.
I think you are taking that line of reasoning a little too far. The point of a scam is to trick people out of their belongings. There may be certain advantages of targeting and filtering for gullible people, but it's not the point itself.
So I stand by my terms.
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Say what?! It sounds extremely obvious and infinitely practical. How often are you (or your parents) legitimately asked for money via email / internet? I mean, my answer is: never. My parents' answer is: never. My parents-in-law answer is: never.
The scam is usually a phone call from a loved one in jail or the hospital. It immediately creates a sense of panic and fully explains the random phone number. The voice doesn't have to sound like you either.
While he was still living on his own, my grandfather struggled with people sending him scam letters in the mail. He sent a meaningful amount of money to obvious scams despite being a shrewd businessman all his life. AI will take these cons to another level. Is there any way to help the elderly navigate this shift?
You could stand in real life in front of your parents or grandparents while they're talking on the phone to a scammer pretending to be you, and they would rather believe the scammer than believe you.
The current generation of elderly have great disdain and distrust for their children and grandchildren, and the highest respect and deference towards any perceived authority, and especially if they are contacting them through mail or phone. It's just the hyena mindset: Kiss ass of those you perceive to be higher in rank than you, kick down on those you perceive to be lower in rank than you.
You could be the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and your elderly relatives would rather believe a scammer calling and pretending to be their banker than believe you.
There’s little to no reason why someone from Africa should be able to make a call to the first world. It should be either extremely expensive or simply impossible.
There is a very high volume of legitimate calls from Africa, and scammers actually have tons of capital to work with.
And this does not even get into the technical difficulty of defining and detecting a “call” “from” Africa. Voice can be tunneled to U.S. infrastructure and then passed to telephony carriers as a “domestic call.”
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It would be great if not for the fact that at least over here in the UK your doctor or anyone from the NHS will always call you from a restricted number. So especially if you're elderly and have regular check ups or anything medical going on, the advice to "only answer known numbers" falls apart. And in my experience NHS receptionists have zero patience for the whole "tell me why you're calling" automated screens too…
Yeah, I think thats a valid edge case - and a manageable one. If you are expecting a call from a doctor, lift the firewall for a while.
That and trying to walk my parents through turning this sort of thing on already was a 3 hour long process. That they will in no way remember even with a checklist.
There is unlikely going to be a technical way to solve this social problem, as is usually the case.
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This is where "security questions" can be useful; neither the question nor answer need to be real, and the more outrageous the better. "You're my daughter? Then tell me the name of your twelth pet centipede."
I use "Queen to queen's level 3" and then wait for the appropriate response.
African scammers used to be small scale or lone wolf type of operations. You had scammers like Hushpuppi etc who become celebrities John Gotti style. Now the Chinese have taken over , they are moving from places like Malaysia and setting up these huge scam compounds , they combine the legitimate businesses (construction, import/export) with gambling and these crypto, mobile money and pig butchering scams. This is onl…
Chinese criminal syndicates have even begun to conduct lure and abduct Indians into scamming centres. They do this by posting fraudulent online job ads leading Indians to clandestine compounds in the golden triangle nations. And then confiscate passports after they arrive, restrain them and then enslave them using threats of physical torture, electric shocks, and isolation cells. Why do they even bother with India ?…
just finally start treating them as terrorists and airstrike them.