Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Someone is pretending to be me

connortumbleson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 395 posts

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#241

Post by wanderingmind »

blastwind wrote: post #125

Andrew here. Connor, thanks for releasing this on the orange site. This story is also more fun from my position. I've been applying to internships and interviewing every week. They're mostly rejections. They're the same questions over and over with minor variation (sorry to top comment for "impersonating" your comment style). My days are deteriorating from a colorful sphere down to two points. In fact, down to two po…

Plot twist. The same organization is pretending to be Andrew to get some work opportunities . But seriously, its a breath of fresh air to see someone displaying strong ethics in the face of adversity (losing a job albeit a fake one pays real $$). Trending on HN first page will open a world of new opportunities. Good luck.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#243

Post by alexanderh »

jeroenhd wrote: post #121
dont__panic wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can play devil's advocate for a moment... if the company gets decent work, the non-US participant gets better (and fairer, globally) pay compared to what they'd get locally, and the US participant takes care of the "soft" side of the operation... who's getting hurt? I can't deny that something smells skeevy about this and I don't think I could ever trust a random foreign developer who I haven't built up a solid…

Everybody wins until the tax man comes knocking for all of the dollars owed, or when "Connor Tumbleson" gets flagged as a terrible employee when all those copy-pasted qualifications don't line up with reality and the work is mediocre. As reported elsewhere in these threads, the credentials and interview process are all worked out upfront, the interview no long becomes a valid test of qualifications for the position.…

>I'm not sure if these people are a small step up from the call center scammers because at least they deliver something or a small step down because they're supposedly capable enough to do better.

This is what I don't understand.... They have the skills (supposedly).. I mean sure, if they are foreign developers they wont always be getting the best pay or opportunities in their own country... But I have never seen a startup shy away from hiring foreign development teams in the past, so long as they do good work. I have a hard time believing they are competent enough to do good work, but with a complete lack of valid, legal and morally sound opportunities.

I also have such a hard time believing this type of fraud is actually all that profitable or pans out successfully often enough to make it worth it... Are companies really doing that little due diligence?

On the flip side, I also hate that the interview process for valid candidates is turning into a 3 ring circus of hoop jumping because of scams like this. Companies really need to find the right balance between due diligence and not making interviews absolutely absurd and insulting.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#244

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

blastwind wrote: post #239
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW, why are you applying just for internships? I checked out your (non-forked) github repos and you're definitely better than I was as an intern. It's not senior engineer level, but you could definitely go for at least a junior eng position for sure. God knows we hire much worse junior FE engineers than that. Or are you interviewing for FAANG(-like) positions only? edit: small tip though, I would rename the App2.js…

Ha! You're good. I'm still in uni, so I am interviewing for internships (mainly for big tech companies right now since I had a taste at a IoT startup last year). Perhaps I am underestimating myself, but I'm in no rush. Thank you reminding me about that diagramming and xml-parsing repos. Regarding the diagramming repo, that was honestly some of worst code I've written (2000 lined React class with 15 states). It's so b…

All the luck to you! You seem to have all the qualities needed to succeed in our industry, and some on top: not many engineers are this good at speaking. If you can wrestle with the technical problems well enough you'll find soft skills to be such a force multiplier it's ridiculous.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#245

Post by yazzku »

What is the end game from the scammer's point of view? Sign-on bonus? I don't understand how that would work given all the legal work required. At some point the fake identity must be made obvious?

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#246

Post by raydiatian »

I had a similar experience on Triplebyte, but didn’t have the nerve to pursue the line as far as Connor did here.

Was reached out to on Triplebyte by a guy claiming to work for a large casino in Las Vegas which I won’t name. Asked me to sign an NDA before the interview or that he would tell me what the job was. Couldn’t find him on LinkedIn or anything. The NDA was a word document which I think I signed via online service but never physically opened on my machine because (thank god?) I don’t own Microsoft word, on a Windows machine.

Pretty sure it was some sort of scam, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was they were after. Perhaps this is it.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#247

Post by lupire »

sinoue wrote: post #165
filmgirlcw wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you're hiring a contractor off of Upwork, not from a reputable consultancy (to be clear, I'm sure established consultancies do shady shit too, but the risk profile is different), so I think the risk is pretty small. We're talking edge cases on a scenario that is already an edge case.

Even UpWork requires government ID verification. https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010609234-ID... I wonder what financial fraud they'll need to do to get the funds as I'm assuming UpWork has to deal with tax payments being pulled out.

Scammer can open a bank account using a fake ID for Connor. So they hire the real Connor but money goes to a foreign country, to an account owned by the imposter.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#249

Post by lupire »

raydiatian wrote: post #246

I had a similar experience on Triplebyte, but didn’t have the nerve to pursue the line as far as Connor did here. Was reached out to on Triplebyte by a guy claiming to work for a large casino in Las Vegas which I won’t name. Asked me to sign an NDA before the interview or that he would tell me what the job was. Couldn’t find him on LinkedIn or anything. The NDA was a word document which I think I signed via online se…

Might just "hire" you, get your vital data, and then impersonate you to get a loan or withdraw from your bank.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#250

Post by toss1 »

jstarfish wrote: post #207
radarsat1 wrote: post #181

This is amazing. I wanted to add one thing. I noticed after reading the full blog post, and scanning through all the HN comments here, that there has been actually no mention, as far as I can tell, from any parties involved, or even any commenters, of any intention to make a police report. Now, I understand not trusting the police, and often it's more trouble than it's worth to deal with them. But this is a situation…

You vastly overestimate the degree to which the police give a shit. Unless there's an actual financial loss or threat to life, they don't care. This barely qualifies as identity theft anyway; it's attempted fraud. They won't take a report of your phone number being spoofed, but they'll deploy SWAT teams to unsuspecting houses at the word of bored teenagers. Do you know the imposter's actual identity? What would you e…

Yes, the police are definitely the wrong group, as their jurisdiction is just local or state, and almost none would have much a clue of how to proceed.

However, the FBI might be very interested. While these situations may be just be a couple of friends scamming, it could also be the tip of the iceberg of an organized crime operation or an espionage operation. Many countries are actively working to get inside American corporations to steal both their technology and anything related to any govt work and secrets. There is not much better way to gain access to the network than to be able to login as an employee.

Even if that one case alone isn't that interesting to them, having the data may very well help crack a much more important NatSec case. Gather the info and report it.

Post reply on HN