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Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

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Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#41

Post by hermitdev »

jessriedel wrote: post #30
CoastalCoder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of that recent issue with a Canadian airline, where (IIRC) a court ruled that their chatbot made a wrong, but binding, commitment to a customer. I'm curious if a Canadian court would hold Meta liable for the man's losses in this case as well.

Yea, it’s certainly a reasonable argument if the wrong information comes from the company itself.

Yeah, headline is overly broad by just saying 'AI'. From just the headline itself, it'd be easy to write this off as "duh, this guy's a fool", but the AI in question here is from Meta, itself. And, not only is it from Meta, but it's the AI they've put in charge of support.

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#42

Post by throwaway48476 »

JohnMakin wrote: post #34
_cs2017_ wrote: post #9

Seems like this information came from Quora: https://www.quora.com/Is-1-844-457-1420-really-Facebook-supp... . Screenshot: https://postimg.cc/gallery/2nFq5Cm . I suspect the helpful SEO guy who posted this answer was trying to get more visibility on Quora so answered many questions automatically or semi-automatically without verifying anything. This is the beginning of the post: Ruhul Alom Social Media Marketer at So…

Bit tangential, but what the heck is it with scammers saying "dear" so much? Pretty much every pig butchering or social engineering attempt has had them repeatedly addressing me as "dear."

It fell out of fashion in western English speaking countries decades ago but not the 3rd world English speaking countries the scammers come from.

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#43

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

not_your_vase wrote: post #7

As a millenial, I'm more amazed that someone willingly uses a phone for non-mandatory and not-burningly-urgent phonecalls... why on earth would anyone do that is way beyond me.

Fellow millennial, I also hate using the phone for anything, but very often a business provides no other interface to resolve my edge-case issue. Connecting to a human representative to discuss the situation ends up being the only way to resolve it. If they have a [solve my specific problem] button on their website, I'll use that, but often there is no such button.

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#45

Post by dotnet00 »

Gigachad wrote: post #39
idle_zealot wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bad thing is that people still think LLMs can be trusted at all . Companies integrating them into their offerings are not helping the public adopt the correct mental framing of these tools as "plausible text generators".

The general public is getting lied to constantly. HN users have a bit more context to see through the bullshit but the marketing getting pushed in people is that these AI tools are super genius incredible world changing tools that make everyone 100x more productive.

Even many HN users instantly resort to misdirection via comparisons to humans or nebulous upcoming AGI instead of acknowledging that we have to live with these limitations for the forseeable future.

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#47

Post by astrange »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #21
simonw wrote: post #5

This one is pretty bad. This guy found a fake Facebook customer support phone number in a Google search, then asked the Meta AI chat in Facebook Messenger if the number he found was a real Facebook help line... and Meta AI said that it was. There's a screenshot of the chat in the article.

I wonder if he has a legal claim like the Air Canada passenger who the AI quoted a ficticious reimbursement policy.

That incident happened before ChatGPT was released and probably didn't involve AI. Anyone can write a wrong customer support script if they try.

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#48

Post by RecycledEle »

This reminds me of the time I reported a fake PayPal email saying my account had been suspended to PayPal. The woman who answered the phone for PayPal told me very emphatically that I HAD BETTER HURRY UP AND DO EVERYTHING THEY TOLD ME TO!

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#49

Post by erremerre »

not_your_vase wrote: post #7

As a millenial, I'm more amazed that someone willingly uses a phone for non-mandatory and not-burningly-urgent phonecalls... why on earth would anyone do that is way beyond me.

Millenial here. I hate receiving phone calls. Being a foreigner in the country I live where they speak another language being the most important.

I do not mind a phone call when I am the one initiating and hence, I know the context of it and the expectations.

Re: Man scammed after AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was real

#50

Post by ghaff »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #42
JohnMakin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit tangential, but what the heck is it with scammers saying "dear" so much? Pretty much every pig butchering or social engineering attempt has had them repeatedly addressing me as "dear."

It fell out of fashion in western English speaking countries decades ago but not the 3rd world English speaking countries the scammers come from.

As well as the instantly recognizable obsequious politeness.
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