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They’re vibe-coding spam now

tedium.co

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Re: They’re vibe-coding spam now

#31

Post by SchemaLoad »

integralid wrote: post #30
shusaku wrote: post #29

For years I’ve read people claim that the reason spam emails were low quality was to filter for idiots. If the spammers are now reaching for coding agents to clean up the presentation, it seems that theory was bunk.

That theory was always bunk. People just can't comprehend, that the average spammer really is that bad. So that theory was created to make sense of that. Because of my work I investigated a lot of spam, and I discovered real life identities of senders in many cases (because of horrible or no exostent opsec). Most of them were either underage, lived in third world countries, or both.

Scams got sophisticated a while ago where they would exactly replicate things like password reset emails and such including a whole fake replica website that looks identical to the real one.

I saw someone fall for one recently where a scammer had created a fake announcement from an email sending company stating they were adding political messages to the bottom of your sent emails, and to log in to opt out. The look and feel of the email was pretty much perfect.

Re: They’re vibe-coding spam now

#32

Post by SchemaLoad »

qsera wrote: post #19
sankalpnarula wrote: post #6

Blacklisting Phone numbers and IP are gonna become extreme now, to the point it wont allow any unknown number/email without `karma` to reach anyone.

I don't understand why something like this exists natively on phones. If someone calls from an unknown number, they get some sort of captcha to prove that they are a human, or they matter is important. For example, the message should say that, if you are geniune, then please call again after 1 minute..

ios added "Call screening" which asks unknown callers to explain who they are and what they want before it rings the receiver.

The tricky part for scammers is there is no good answer here, if you claim to be a plumber and the victim hasn't booked a plumber, they won't answer.

Re: They’re vibe-coding spam now

#33

Post by bombcar »

integralid wrote: post #30
shusaku wrote: post #29

For years I’ve read people claim that the reason spam emails were low quality was to filter for idiots. If the spammers are now reaching for coding agents to clean up the presentation, it seems that theory was bunk.

That theory was always bunk. People just can't comprehend, that the average spammer really is that bad. So that theory was created to make sense of that. Because of my work I investigated a lot of spam, and I discovered real life identities of senders in many cases (because of horrible or no exostent opsec). Most of them were either underage, lived in third world countries, or both.

Remember that a large portion of the "real scam" is selling scamming techniques and systems to wanna-be scammers, some who never figure out how to replace the "insert viagra link here" text.

Re: They’re vibe-coding spam now

#34

Post by rkomorn »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #31
integralid wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That theory was always bunk. People just can't comprehend, that the average spammer really is that bad. So that theory was created to make sense of that. Because of my work I investigated a lot of spam, and I discovered real life identities of senders in many cases (because of horrible or no exostent opsec). Most of them were either underage, lived in third world countries, or both.

Scams got sophisticated a while ago where they would exactly replicate things like password reset emails and such including a whole fake replica website that looks identical to the real one. I saw someone fall for one recently where a scammer had created a fake announcement from an email sending company stating they were adding political messages to the bottom of your sent emails, and to log in to opt out. The look a…

Scams are getting good enough that I'm now skeptical/paranoid every time I get a legit email.

"Click link" ? I think not. Gonna log in myself in a new window and try to navigate to the same thing on my own.

Re: They’re vibe-coding spam now

#35

Post by SchemaLoad »

rkomorn wrote: post #34
SchemaLoad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scams got sophisticated a while ago where they would exactly replicate things like password reset emails and such including a whole fake replica website that looks identical to the real one. I saw someone fall for one recently where a scammer had created a fake announcement from an email sending company stating they were adding political messages to the bottom of your sent emails, and to log in to opt out. The look a…

Scams are getting good enough that I'm now skeptical/paranoid every time I get a legit email. "Click link" ? I think not. Gonna log in myself in a new window and try to navigate to the same thing on my own.

The sophistication of scam emails these days is a big part of the switch to Passkeys, just physically making it impossible to give your credentials to the scammer site.

Re: They’re vibe-coding spam now

#36

Post by [deleted] »

shusaku wrote: post #29

For years I’ve read people claim that the reason spam emails were low quality was to filter for idiots. If the spammers are now reaching for coding agents to clean up the presentation, it seems that theory was bunk.

[deleted]

Re: They’re vibe-coding spam now

#37

Post by tdeck »

integralid wrote: post #30
shusaku wrote: post #29

For years I’ve read people claim that the reason spam emails were low quality was to filter for idiots. If the spammers are now reaching for coding agents to clean up the presentation, it seems that theory was bunk.

That theory was always bunk. People just can't comprehend, that the average spammer really is that bad. So that theory was created to make sense of that. Because of my work I investigated a lot of spam, and I discovered real life identities of senders in many cases (because of horrible or no exostent opsec). Most of them were either underage, lived in third world countries, or both.

Phishing too. At one point in my job I was involved with taking down phishing sites, and we would sometimes get a copy of the Phish kit code from the site owner. These were basically extremely poorly written PHP scripts that people would buy from a scam-enabler and deploy to some website. The sophistication was the lowest possible level at each step. But even if you find the perpetrator bragging about it on Facebook, they're in Nigeria (for example) and the local government doesn't care at all.

Re: They’re vibe-coding spam now

#38

Post by 2postsperday »

craftkiller wrote: post #22
qsera wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why something like this exists natively on phones. If someone calls from an unknown number, they get some sort of captcha to prove that they are a human, or they matter is important. For example, the message should say that, if you are geniune, then please call again after 1 minute..

That already exists, it's "voicemail". The scammers never leave a voice mail (idk why). If a real person is trying to reach you, they'll either leave a voice mail or text you after you don't pick up.

[dead]

Re: They’re vibe-coding spam now

#39

Post by jordanb »

sudo_cowsay wrote: post #28

But is this something new? Wasn't using AI for scamming around for a long time? Scammers started using LLMs to write fishing emails, then scammers started generating images, then they started using AI to vibe code it. Its just a natural progression. From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47435156 , we can know that India has a ~70% positive view on AI. While scammers likely didn't fill out the survey, it shows the…

Scamming and cheating on homework were the original use cases of AI like buying drugs and extortion were the original use cases of crypto.

Re: They’re vibe-coding spam now

#40

Post by obezyian »

craftkiller wrote: post #22
qsera wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why something like this exists natively on phones. If someone calls from an unknown number, they get some sort of captcha to prove that they are a human, or they matter is important. For example, the message should say that, if you are geniune, then please call again after 1 minute..

That already exists, it's "voicemail". The scammers never leave a voice mail (idk why). If a real person is trying to reach you, they'll either leave a voice mail or text you after you don't pick up.

This is country-specific, though.

In my country, despite voicemail being available since the introduction of mobile phones decades ago, I am yet to hear of a single instance of anybody actually leaving a message.

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