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Beware of the perfect gentleman

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Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#171

Post by thephyber »

andrewflnr wrote: post #25

So are the scammers already using deepfakes for this, or is that still to come? A video chat is already a pretty obvious thing to do in a long distance relationship, so it will be weird if they can't do it (building an orphanage in Africa is a pretty good excuse, but it won't last forever). If it's possible, they'll definitely want to be able to deepfake video chats.

You are thinking about it all wrong. Any effort to create deep fakes would be a waste of effort for the con artists.

They already know that (1) they want to avoid any type of verification attempts by the victim and (2) the relationship with each victim has a timer.

The attractive picture is just a lure (like in fishing). It only matters for the initial hook. All effort after the initial contact is directed towards building a story/narrative of the profile and latching onto the victim's emotions.

Deepfakes aren't needed. Until the con saturates the supply of victims, these cons don't need to evolve.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#172

Post by thephyber »

robocat wrote: post #49

As a tech guy, I would write some web pages with my image and textual explanations of the scam, then SEO optimise them for reverse image search. Hypothetically, of course, since I will never need to do it for myself as I am definitely not handsome enough. I wonder why the guys didn't want their faces in the article? That way any reverse image lookup could find the story, the victims would know without getting in touc…

> I wonder why the guys didn't want their faces in the article?

These guys get frequent death threats. It's reliving trauma.

> That would solve the problem for those guys at least!

That's how therapy is supposed to work. You just asked "why don't people just face their fears in therapy RIGHT NOW and get it over with?" The answer is "because people have emotions".

Sadly, emotions are also the reason these fraud schemes work.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#173

Post by MikePlacid »

wbazant wrote: post #166
MikePlacid wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is now normal to give personal pronouns, even if you are he/she Eagerly waiting for this “new normal” to come to Russia. You see, we have 6 forms of each pronoun. Mine’s are: “он / его / ему / его / им / нём”. Please, remember and use each one correctly. Like: You blame его. But: you are speaking about нём. Not a single mistake, please.

In English, do you prefer he or she? And do you prefer that one to 'they'?

Why on Earth would I care? I can be referenced as "he" or "she" only if you are talking about me to somebody else, right? It's not my business to even listen to such talk.

But if you insist - could you please refer to me by Russian pronouns I've just listed. Is it really that much harder to learn 6 short foreign words than some "English" ones like "zee", "vi" and "vim"?

But again, why stop at short ones? If you insist that my pronouns are there for my comfort (but not for your convenience while speaking about me) - could you please refer to me as "they-masters-of-Universe-and-true-electors-of-American-presidents"? So that your listener will know that my gender is "Russian male". It will give me a huge comfort.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#174

Post by differt »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #96
MikePlacid wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>“‘Can I meet you? Can I FaceTime you?’” also >even after he convinced them that they had been scammed, they sometimes wanted to strike up a friendship with him. “I can’t even tell you. I would spend an hour on the phone sometimes talking to these women So: "Sure. Here's my 900 number".

In a similar vein to how it is now normal to give personal pronouns, even if you are he/she, we should normalise opsec when online dating, even if you feel it is not needed: if everyone mentions “can I check you are not a scammer and goes through a verification call”, and it is normal it wont be seen as rude or breaking the romance”. Same should be done for a lot of interactions, such as hiring, employee to employee…

No post body was provided.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#175

Post by jack_pp »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #164
jack_pp wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read the article tbh but the comment I replied to implied they used fake social media profiles which makes sense and would be prevented by what I suggested. The scammers would need to make a profile on a website you're familiar with and if those websites guarantee that a profile is who they say they are by law then all these problems go away. Doesn't matter if someone outside the system gets your photos

Read the article and come back to delete your nonsensical comments once you realize how irrelevant they are to the subject matter.

I'm sorry but I don't understand your vitriol.

> The women claimed to have met him on a dating app, social media platform, or a less-expected online space, like an app-based word or puzzle game (Words With Friends is popular with scammers)—anything with a chat feature. What the women didn’t know was that the 50-something fellow with the goatee who smiled back at them in photograph after photograph wasn’t the same person they were speaking with. Their charming lover was a scripted character used by gangs of overseas fakers to bilk cash from unsuspecting romantics, and Geras’ stolen photos were the bait.

The article says the man feared for his life because husbands of these women called him. Presumably these women are from the same country as this guy so my suggestion would've stopped most of those vectors of attack. I mean yeah if they gave their phone number in the chat of a puzzle game then the scammers could send whatever pictures they wanted but that's a much harder thing to pull off than scam someone on a dating app or with a fake social media profile

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#176

Post by rkagerer »

joenot443 wrote: post #138
rkagerer wrote: post #42

When I was growing up you never posted your photo online where strangers could see it. Earlier than that, it was also considered proper etiquette to ask before taking someone's photo. There's been a huge culture shift and some of the outcomes are disheartening but quite predictable. ...little recourse other than to continuously report fake profiles across social media platforms If they don't take down your fraudulent…

I hire a lawyer, they submit a takedown request to FB or TikTok or wherever else they’re using my identity, now what? Correct me if I’m wrong, but if someone lives across the world and is doing all this impersonation online, what legal recourse does a lawyer have access to? Drag them to The Hague? I’ve been in cases before where someone in a different continent is trying to impersonate or sink you, and I can say in m…

True it's more difficult cross-jurisdiction. Especially if the country doesn't have a robust legal system. I've had a lawyer hire another lawyer in said jurisdiction to help with enforcement across borders.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#177

Post by rkagerer »

coldtea wrote: post #152
rkagerer wrote: post #42

When I was growing up you never posted your photo online where strangers could see it. Earlier than that, it was also considered proper etiquette to ask before taking someone's photo. There's been a huge culture shift and some of the outcomes are disheartening but quite predictable. ...little recourse other than to continuously report fake profiles across social media platforms If they don't take down your fraudulent…

> When I was growing up you never posted your photo online where strangers could see it. When was that? For those over 40, when they grew up there was no "online". And if one was a kid or teenager growing up the the mid to late nineties, people had personal websites and online photos of themselves up regularly, and it wasn't considered much. You didn't have regular snaps of your life, or pictures of the food you ate,…

What you've described is part of the culture shift I'm talking about.

If you accept the Internet became popular in '85-'95 [1], someone 40 today would have been 3yrs to 13yrs old in that span so right in the sweet spot of their formative years.

As others pointed out, prior to the Internet there were BBS's, message boards, forums like CompuServe, AOL, etc. which were its precursors and what was known as going 'online' at the time. I did intend that to be included in my meaning when I used the term.

Of course I'm speaking from personal experiences and your own may vary. :-)

[1] https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories....

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#178

Post by SuoDuanDao »

MikePlacid wrote: post #173
wbazant wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In English, do you prefer he or she? And do you prefer that one to 'they'?

Why on Earth would I care? I can be referenced as "he" or "she" only if you are talking about me to somebody else, right? It's not my business to even listen to such talk. But if you insist - could you please refer to me by Russian pronouns I've just listed. Is it really that much harder to learn 6 short foreign words than some "English" ones like "zee", "vi" and "vim"? But again, why stop at short ones? If you insis…

My preferred pronouns are 'latefordinner' and 'delayedfordinner'. It's a reference to a very old English joke going 'you can call me almost anything you want - but don't call me late for dinner'. My way of saying the inquirer can even call me late for dinner if they want. I realize this is serious business to some people, but I also want to signal that it is very much not serious business to me.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#179

Post by SuoDuanDao »

MikePlacid wrote: post #58
DoreenMichele wrote: post #45

My mind is blown. Even when the ruse is revealed, many victims are unwilling to let go. The truth triggers an emotional whiplash—the promise of a soulmate, a new, fulfilling life, and mutual trust is suddenly lost, leaving the intense feelings of love behind. Once found, the real man in the photos becomes a surrogate for the fantasy. “Some of them would reach out to me and [say], ‘Now that I know what the real person…

> Time to retire Cinderella and similar stories. The article mentions Tindler Swindler, and I can vouch - it's a great film. It is an absolute puzzle at first, cause the man spares no money to trigger a Cinderella in the victims: real charter jet, real high-class hotel, real flowers and gifts. And she has 0 at her bank account - what the man that can burn more money in a day that she makes in a year may potentially w…

I don't think it's correct. There would be much less incentive for men to seek status if it didn't widen his dating pool, and a huge amount of our society's value comes from men seeking to gain status legitimately.

I think the problem comes from attraction being hackable via a particular kind of hypernormal stimulus. It should be easier to distinguish a psychopath putting on a show from someone who is stably or meta-stably in a higher status bracket than it is. People caught in these kinds of webs mention all sorts of red flags they failed to pay proper attention to after the fact, so it's not like there's no difference. And yet, we're not evolved to pay attention to the warning signs. On the bright side, the evolutionary pressure to pay attention now is pretty great.

Re: Beware of the perfect gentleman

#180

Post by wbazant »

MikePlacid wrote: post #173
wbazant wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In English, do you prefer he or she? And do you prefer that one to 'they'?

Why on Earth would I care? I can be referenced as "he" or "she" only if you are talking about me to somebody else, right? It's not my business to even listen to such talk. But if you insist - could you please refer to me by Russian pronouns I've just listed. Is it really that much harder to learn 6 short foreign words than some "English" ones like "zee", "vi" and "vim"? But again, why stop at short ones? If you insis…

Well, sometimes your identity is referenced in a group setting while you're part of the group, say when a manager praises your work in a standup: "MikePlacid did a really good job with this feature, you should all be like _". I'm guessing people know which pronoun to use in those situations when talking about you, probably because you regularly broadcast your identity as a Russian male.

The English-speaking world has largely settled on singular 'they' as a catch-all for the small minority that prefers neither he or she. Practically it looks like an extra drop-down option on official forms, and when you meet someone who looks like they don't try to go with a stereotype of any particular gender you can optionally ask them what pronoun they go by.

Those made-up pronouns are a fringe thing, some internet communities will make them into a game. On the other hand, if we met and you preferred we switched to Russian, I would totally try to accommodate that!

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