411–420 of 549 posts
I actually got suckered by the 3d printer scam. My bank helped while PayPal figured it out (2 months). Facebook is still showing the fake Bambu labs ads. There’s no FBI to enforce online fraud so why would they care?
Alongside a password manager and keeping things up to date, using an ad blocker is truly a foundational security practice these days. The big advertising players simply have all of the wrong incentives to control this problem. They could massively reduce the volume of scams advertised on their networks, but it’d be worse for them on two fronts: they’d have to pay for more moderation, and they’d lose billions in reven…
This isn't a situation we accept out of other industries. You water provider doesn't get to pipe you sewage every now and again because its too expensive to moderate. We shouldn't accept it for big tech either. And we certainly shouldn't make it the responsibility of the end use to protect themselves
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I don't see how the yearly tech support I do with my parents at Christmas will not one day converge to an outright ban of the internet. I am now demoing the level of sofistication of AI powered scams, telling them that it is now entirely possible they will get a VIDEO CALL from me that's not actually me asking for God knows what in a very convincing way using my face and voice. I am scared and this close to setting u…
I half joke that the term “parental controls” will change meaning from restrictions set by parents on children to the opposite: restrictions now set up by children to protect their parents.
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I half joke that the term “parental controls” will change meaning from restrictions set by parents on children to the opposite: restrictions now set up by children to protect their parents.
I have the feeling that there's a sandwiched generation who will have to protect both their parents and their children from these things.
Once I got an Instagram ad for buying ketamine that just linked to a telegram channel. They didn't even bother being coy or using mispelling or slang. A simple keyword search to flag for more review would have caught it. I can't even wrap my head around what internal controls exist when something like that makes it out to users.
The bad actor serves a benign ad to the ad review system, and only serves the scam to real users. It's called "cloaking" - an interesting (but a bit depressing) topic to explore.
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I half joke that the term “parental controls” will change meaning from restrictions set by parents on children to the opposite: restrictions now set up by children to protect their parents.
That's me! I use parental controls to try and protect my elderly father on other platforms (he's always quick to fall for ads and download Android apps he doesn't need). Unfortunately Facebook doesn't allow you to enable parental controls on an adult, and they also pretty severely limit your ability to update your birthday! Which is unfortunate because Facebook is such a hostile platform.
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I don't see how the yearly tech support I do with my parents at Christmas will not one day converge to an outright ban of the internet. I am now demoing the level of sofistication of AI powered scams, telling them that it is now entirely possible they will get a VIDEO CALL from me that's not actually me asking for God knows what in a very convincing way using my face and voice. I am scared and this close to setting u…
Literally had this conversation this week with my parents. Weird fucking times…
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Yes, the world is full of custom car builders. I'm sure I'll find someone that can build me a replica of the f150 lightning that doesn't enable spyware on me. Mind to help me out a bit and point me at a few companies doing that? Around Kentucky if you don't mind since that's where I am.
I'd start with Ford. They're well known for their custom builds — what they call VSO. And they're already tooled up for production of an F-150-style vehicle around Kentucky to boot. It won't come cheap like an F-150, but nobody can expect it to be cheap when the value proposition is much higher.
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I already setup a secret passphrase with my family. My mother is particularly naive when it comes to what's online. Of course she is going to get abused. A passphrase is cheap. If you never need to use it, so what?
And if she got a desperate, pleading call from "you" and "you" claim you can't remember the passphrase, then what? These scams are imaginary. Yes they have probably happened but it's far more likely that your mother will get scammed by a "legitimate" financial advisor than some stranger using an AI to impersonate you.
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Real companies don't give a damn about what they are actually doing. Facebook tells them that their ad which nobody clicked on got them 40 000 new customers. The worker who put the ad on Facebook gets a pat on the back from his boss. The boss gets a raise and maybe a promotion. Leadership gets shown numbers of how great advertising on Meta is and doesn't take 5 minutes to check them. If sales are low it is those god…
Yet in the days of newspapers companies collected data to see how well their ads worked. There are a lot of statisticians working in this area - or there were 20 years ago.