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Scammers unleash flood of online gaming sites

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: Scammers unleash flood of online gaming sites

#21

Post by dagw »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #13

Who exactly is online gambling? And out of that subset, who is doing super shady appearing online gambling? I don’t mean to be flippant, but who exactly is falling for this slop? At some point, permit me to victim blame, the victim is somewhat to blame.

who is doing super shady appearing online gambling?

At a guess, mostly people who for various reasons aren't allowed to gamble on more 'legit' sites, either because of their age or other local laws and jurisdictions. If you 'need' to gamble and are forbidden to gamble legally, then you will find a way to gamble illegally. Just look at the 'offline' world, before sports gambling became basically legal, lots of people would place bets with very shady operations.

Re: Scammers unleash flood of online gaming sites

#23

Post by citizenpaul »

shkkmo wrote: post #14
MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #13

Who exactly is online gambling? And out of that subset, who is doing super shady appearing online gambling? I don’t mean to be flippant, but who exactly is falling for this slop? At some point, permit me to victim blame, the victim is somewhat to blame.

I would hazard a guess is that a generation of youth has been addicted to gambling by mobile game companies and even some desktop game companies like Valve (which has worked to limit it, but only when it was forced to by bad publicity.) Gambling is a dangerous addiction for some people. I don't think victim blaming is an effective response. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_gambling

>a generation of youth has been addicted to gambling by mobile game companies

I think you nailed it. I made a comment about the new "religion" of games in the current youth in another discussion a while back. It really seems to me that there is an incredibly strong illogical loyalty to game companies in the current youth. So much that they ignore bad actors assuming that they must be just another game company, even after they get scammed. I'm guessing it has something to do with zero real value nature of loot box and skin gambling that is prevalent.

Re: Scammers unleash flood of online gaming sites

#24

Post by blaufuchs »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #11
ryandrake wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand who keeps falling for this stuff. The victims are not all 90 year old grannies suffering from cognitive decline.

If you thought you had won thousands of dollars you would likely be tempted to pay a hundred to get that out.

Well there's the problem, who honestly thinks they won thousands of dollars from an ad?

Re: Scammers unleash flood of online gaming sites

#25

Post by toast0 »

blaufuchs wrote: post #24
datadrivenangel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you thought you had won thousands of dollars you would likely be tempted to pay a hundred to get that out.

Well there's the problem, who honestly thinks they won thousands of dollars from an ad?

I punched that damn monkey, where's my prize?

Re: Scammers unleash flood of online gaming sites

#26

Post by alt219 »

blaufuchs wrote: post #24
datadrivenangel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you thought you had won thousands of dollars you would likely be tempted to pay a hundred to get that out.

Well there's the problem, who honestly thinks they won thousands of dollars from an ad?

Sadly, I have a family member who is susceptible to these types of scams. They’ve been duped too many times to count. They’re overly eager to believe they’re exceptional and that good fortune is due them. No amount of explaining has had any impact on their beliefs for the past fifteen years. It’s heart-wrenching.

Re: Scammers unleash flood of online gaming sites

#28

Post by simmerup »

JoeOfTexas wrote: post #2

I spent too much time trying to build one of these gaming portals, and they pop them up as a scam like nothing. Must be a team of people behind it. The technology behind the scenes and UI design are all well made.

Must be easier to build them if you don't have to commit to building the actual product to be fair

Re: Scammers unleash flood of online gaming sites

#29

Post by ovulator »

ryandrake wrote: post #8
chihuahua wrote: post #3

A random website asks me to give them my cryptocurrency, and then they refuse to return it? Why, I thought I had seen the most shocking thing on earth, but this takes the cake!

I don't understand who keeps falling for this stuff. The victims are not all 90 year old grannies suffering from cognitive decline.

Large of law numbers. There are a lot of idiots out there. I had a buddy; super nice, super funny guy, late 20's, but financially an idiot.

He sent a $1,000 check as "collateral" to some online "bank" to get a $10,000 "loan". I explained to him that this isn't how any of this works and he just paused and said, "Huh, so should put a stop payment on the second check?" He had sent them another $1,000 as some sort of second round of collateral for the loan or some other nonsense.

And I've known dumber people than him.

Re: Scammers unleash flood of online gaming sites

#30

Post by psychoslave »

jerf wrote: post #10
JoeOfTexas wrote: post #2

I spent too much time trying to build one of these gaming portals, and they pop them up as a scam like nothing. Must be a team of people behind it. The technology behind the scenes and UI design are all well made.

As I like to say in some other contexts on HN, you must not underestimate the criminal underground. You should not model it as some hacker alone in his basement trying to run scams. You're probably a lot closer thinking of the industry as at least the equivalent of a Dark Google in size and sophistication. If I can imagine a framework where I have a strong set of modular APIs that we can deploy rapidly and put togeth…

Wait, didn't they officially adopted Darth Google as name when they drop the don't be evil moto façade ?
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