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ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug
A charity that spends 3% of the donated money on what it was actually donated for in the first place is a lovely charity that should shrivel up and go away.

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lifg
Dec 4, 2000
<this tag left blank>
Muldoon

JoelJoel posted:

I knew a guy (real dirt bag) that imported crates of cheap garbage from China and walked around selling it. No real scam, just selling crap to unemployed people during the day at bars and strip clubs. He actually pulled a decent profit most of the time as units would come in costing him pennies and he'd flip em for a few bucks.

If he knew better he could build a website that accepts monthly subscriptions, mail subscribers a box of the junk, and call it the Chinese version of the Kawaii Box.

Sk8ers4Christ
Mar 10, 2008

Lord, I ask you to watch over me as I pop an ollie off this 50-foot ramp. If I fail, I'll be seeing you.

lifg posted:

If he knew better he could build a website that accepts monthly subscriptions, mail subscribers a box of the junk, and call it the Chinese version of the Kawaii Box.

Am I crazy or was there a goon who was doing just this a few years back? He was selling "mystery boxes" full of plastic junk and silly putty for like $50 or something.

Professor Shark
May 22, 2012

Yeah that was a thing, guaranteed $50 min per box, I think a few goons figured they had $9 worth of stuff (literally from the Dollar Store)

SomeJazzyRat
Nov 2, 2012

Hmmm...
Oh yeah, and didn't he try to play it up as 'You will never know what value you could get -wink wink-', leading to 'another' goon proclaiming that his investment landed him either a TV, a car, or a boat?

Lutha Mahtin
Oct 10, 2010

Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!

the "bag of crap" thing from woot became literally some plastic crap stuffed in a bag once amazon bought them out

Korgan
Feb 14, 2012


SomeJazzyRat posted:

Oh yeah, and didn't he try to play it up as 'You will never know what value you could get -wink wink-', leading to 'another' goon proclaiming that his investment landed him either a TV, a car, or a boat?

That was a fun thread.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3338464&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

Kerbtree
Sep 8, 2008

BAD FALCON!
LAZY!

Fatty posted:

In the UK if you're called on a landline and hang up it doesn't actually terminate the call. The call is only terminated when the caller hangs up. This has lead to a scam where victims are called by the police/their bank, being told that illegal activity on their account has been detected, and they need to phone their banks fraud line now. The victim then hangs up and the scammer waits on the line. The victim makes a new call using the actual number they know is for their bank, the scammer hears a bunch of dial tones over the line, and then pretends to be a different person and gets the victim to give them account info. The scammer also frequently plays fake dial tones and ring tones to further fool the victim that their phone is working normally.

Its effective, because quite often the natural response for people who are very suspicious of scams is to hang up, and call the number thats been provided previously by their actual bank.

Part of my job is dealing with this kind of thing :argh:
You see quite a few variations, but one that really pisses me off is in addition to the above stuff, they'll tell the poor pensioner that they're investigating a member of branch staff, and they want them to either move their savings to a "safe police account" or take it all out in cash and lend it to them to do a "sting".

Also super common is the Microsoft/Talktalk scam where they call you up and go "your computer's full of nasties, let me remote in and fix it!"
Doesn't help that talktalk has been actually hacked, twice, so there's actual details floating around on their customers.

thrakkorzog
Nov 16, 2007
So here's my story about how I was both a con-man and a troll. I'm not proud of myself, but here's my story. (And if any feds are investigating, I never made a dime off of this, my sole intent was to make people more aware of keeping their personal info secret. )

Back in the 90's, the place where I worked had a phone in the break room that was like one digit off from the local Western Union office, so the phone was constantly ringing off the hook for people wanting to know about their money order transfers. So I would eat my lunch in the break room, and after lunch I would pick up the phone and say, "Thank you for calling Western Union, how can I help you?"

And from there I had the Golden ticket to just ask people's most personal info. I would just tap on the walls to make it sound like I was typing. So I would ask them for things like did they pay by Credit card, check, or cash? Oh, it was by credit card, what's your credit card number? Well it's not showing up on our system, what's your CCV? OK, still not showing up, well what's your mother's maiden name?

And people would just give out that info without a second thought.

Followed by me getting bored and telling callers that that they dialed the wrong number, and they shouldn't give out their info like that. I told them that I didn't bother to write down any of that info, but they should be more cautious about who they gave that info to. Then I would hang up the phone. (I'll admit I'm an rear end in a top hat, but I'm not an identity stealing rear end in a top hat.)

thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 12:36 on Mar 21, 2016

Angry Salami
Jul 27, 2013

Don't trust the skull.
One scam a friend of my parent's fell for in Bangkok is the suit scam. Basically, the scammer dresses as a tourist information guide and waits outside the Royal Palace, and regretfully tells tourists the palace is closed to the public today because of a public holiday/religious festival/the King's visiting/whatever. He then encourages you to take a – conveniently waiting – taxi to some other attraction you'll really love.

The taxi guy then either takes you to some small temple where you 'coincidentally' meet a fellow foreigner who just got a great deal on a suit – or, if they're less subtle, just drives you to a nearby suit store and refuses to take you anywhere else until you buy a suit.

Honestly, since the scam requires at least two confederates and they do still tailor you a suit, even if it's a crappy one, I'm not convinced this is the most profitable scam they could be running. But it and related scams are apparently enough of a problem that now the Royal Palace has loudspeakers all over it constantly broadcasting messages saying the palace is open to the public, as well as signs warning tourists of scams and to 'avoid wily strangers'.

Actually, I was a little disappointed when I visited Thailand – I think I got ripped off a little on the fare by one of the taxi drivers I hired, but other than that, everyone I dealt with seemed to be on the level...

Kopijeger
Feb 14, 2010

Angry Salami posted:

One scam a friend of my parent's fell for in Bangkok is the suit scam. Basically, the scammer dresses as a tourist information guide and waits outside the Royal Palace, and regretfully tells tourists the palace is closed to the public today because of a public holiday/religious festival/the King's visiting/whatever. He then encourages you to take a – conveniently waiting – taxi to some other attraction you'll really love.

How is this going to work if the Palace isn't actually closed? I took a look at the site in google street view, and it looks like the compound is surrounded by big white walls with large gates in them and soldiers posted next to them. If the gates are open and tourists are miling about, how is the fake guide going to convince anybody?

eine dose socken
Mar 9, 2008

The scammers and tourist lures in Bangkok are super obvious, it's incredible that there are still idiots falling for their retarded schemes.

They lurk around anywhere near the palace, at a distance where you can't see the gates bustling with people.

Mostly they prey on tourists which are so naive and credulous that they will instantly accept anything a friendly local tells them.

Every time I've been to Thailand, i was quite impressed how simple and how badly executed the scammer's approach was.

It's nothing like a real con man, getting to know you, trying to gain your confidence, it's just some random guy who walks up to you and says "Going to XY landmark? It's closed, hop in my taxi"

Travelling in northern Africa, like Tunisia or Morocco, is where you'll meet people who put in some real effort.

In Tunis, one dude came up to us, speaking perfect German (like no accent at all) and told us he was a waiter at our hotel (60 kilometers away in another city), then proceeded to tell us all about the neighborhood we were walking in, telling about his family and travels. He's been to various European countries, even our home city, knew all kinds of landmarks there.

This guy was friendly and interesting and did seem completely uninvolved in anything, so we walked and talked for like 45 minutes, before he said that he has to pick up his car from a repair shop.

He left, but an hour later in a completely different part of town, after a tram ride, we meet him again, sitting at a coffee shop.

He invites us for a cup of coffee, we chat some more, then part ways again.

Before going back to the bus station a couple of hours later, we meet him again, and this time I ask him where he put his car. And now he starts with a long story about his car troubles, and about how he didn't have enough cash on him so the repair shop still kept the car, and he doesn't have a ride back to the other city.

Then he asks if we have cash on us and could spare to lend him a couple thousand dinars (like 10 euros). Although i'm a pretty skeptical person, at this point i believe this guy is the real deal, and pull out my wallet. He goes oh, not 10 euros, he misspoke, we need to lend him at least 150 euros, or he won't get his car back.

He will definitely meet us tomorrow at the hotel when he has his next shift, and repay us with cash he keeps at home.

When he suddenly raised the sum he needed, i got kinda suspicious and i said that i only had 20 euros on me and we still needed bus fare, so I gave him half.

After profusely apologizing and thanking us, we made plans to meet the next day and go out for coffee.

Of course he never showed up at our hotel, all the other waiters didn't know a guy with his name or description, and one of the waiters told us that it's a very common scam.

These guys actually follow you from your hotel, take the bus for 1,5 hours, then follow you around Tunis all day, "randomly" bumping into you, being friendly and nice, and at the end they somehow get some money from you after gaining your trust. Some tourists have given them a lot of money.

What impressed me was how natural the guy's delivery and demeanour was- he was so relaxed, knowledgeable and well dressed- he played his role perfectly, he put in some real effort, like a whole day's worth of following us around and getting to know us.

Josef K. Sourdust
Jul 16, 2014

"To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

^^ man, that's a lot of work for e10. But I guess he sometimes hits e150. Guess you only need one good day per week to turn a profit.

Kopijeger
Feb 14, 2010
If he really was that affable and interesting, he could probably make a decent living being a legitimate tourist guide. Seems like a waste.

On the subject of scams requiring extreme naivety on part of the victim, in Rome some dude attempted to pull the following scam on me:

quote:

The lost fashion designer. Here's a classic: A guy pulls up next to you in a car and asks for directions, or some other way to start chatting with you. He's suave, speaks English and dressed well. He tells you he's a manager/designer/executive for Armani/Versace/Gucci and seems to "prove" it by showing you his designs. Oh, and just because you're so friendly, he gives you a couple of coats he just happens to have in his car that are leather/silk/suede. That's when he asks you for gas money, because he's almost out -- you know, €50 or €100. Because he just gave you a couple of coats and because he's such a swell-seeming guy, you fork it over. This has happened again and again and again over the past few years. The guy must be making bank. Don't be part of his profit margin.

The thing about this is that you would have to be extremely naive and credulous to fall for it. In my case, he saw fit to ask me for the way to Piazza del Popolo. From an obvious non-Italian like me. In English. While brandishing a road map and being in view of at least two obvious landmarks (the Aurelian walls with the Porta Pinciana and the Villa Borghese park). And for some reason he wore sunglasses even though it was cloudy. This made it difficult to read his expression, but he did seem surprised when I laughed derisively at him and walked on.

DrBouvenstein
Feb 28, 2007

I think I'm a doctor, but that doesn't make me a doctor. This fancy avatar does.

Fruits of the sea posted:

On this note online sttorefronts (usually for MMO's, browser games and mobile apps) that let you purchase bundles of in-game currency, but price everything at odd amounts. Users are forced to pay for more digital currency than they need or can use.

Hell, wasn't Microsoft (and I think Nintendo?) pulling that sort of "scam" back in the day with the X-Box "points" or whatever they called them?

Sony just priced things in their store in actual dollar amounts, and you paid what it cost at checkout. But MS priced everything in "points" that were like a 10 to 1 or 100 to 1 ratio of points to dollars or some poo poo like that. But you could only buy points in "blocks" of, say, 1,000 points each or something, and games, avatars, X-Box Live subscriptions, etc... were all priced in an odd amount of points, so you'd always end up with leftover points that you couldn't use until you finally bought enough other things that your "leftovers" were enough for a small game that would cost like $5 or $10.

eine dose socken
Mar 9, 2008

Kopijeger posted:

If he really was that affable and interesting, he could probably make a decent living being a legitimate tourist guide. Seems like a waste.



Yes, in fact we met a couple of guys in Tunisia who were ultra friendly, spoke several languages really fluently and still turned out to be crooks.

One explanation I heard was that while the education system is pretty good, the whole country is so corrupt that a lot of qualified people with no connections can never find a real job and turn to ripping off tourists instead.

It really affects your attitude towards the locals after a while, which sucks because not every friendly or helpful person wants to take advantage.

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

DrBouvenstein posted:

Hell, wasn't Microsoft (and I think Nintendo?) pulling that sort of "scam" back in the day with the X-Box "points" or whatever they called them?

Sony just priced things in their store in actual dollar amounts, and you paid what it cost at checkout. But MS priced everything in "points" that were like a 10 to 1 or 100 to 1 ratio of points to dollars or some poo poo like that. But you could only buy points in "blocks" of, say, 1,000 points each or something, and games, avatars, X-Box Live subscriptions, etc... were all priced in an odd amount of points, so you'd always end up with leftover points that you couldn't use until you finally bought enough other things that your "leftovers" were enough for a small game that would cost like $5 or $10.

It gets even worse when you look at the price points of the various amounts. It didn't get cheaper by the point as you bought more in chunks. You'd think that if you bought 100 points you'd get a worse deal than if you bought 1,000. I forget which service it was but the point chunk that was labeled "best deal!" actually turned out to cost twice as much per point as any other point chunk.

Ham Equity
Apr 16, 2013

i hosted a great goon meet and all i got was this lousy avatar
Grimey Drawer

DrBouvenstein posted:

Hell, wasn't Microsoft (and I think Nintendo?) pulling that sort of "scam" back in the day with the X-Box "points" or whatever they called them?

Sony just priced things in their store in actual dollar amounts, and you paid what it cost at checkout. But MS priced everything in "points" that were like a 10 to 1 or 100 to 1 ratio of points to dollars or some poo poo like that. But you could only buy points in "blocks" of, say, 1,000 points each or something, and games, avatars, X-Box Live subscriptions, etc... were all priced in an odd amount of points, so you'd always end up with leftover points that you couldn't use until you finally bought enough other things that your "leftovers" were enough for a small game that would cost like $5 or $10.

There are legit reasons to do this. It allows you to give out "points" instead of cash as freebies, and allows you to have sales on points (which XBox did relatively frequently).

DrBouvenstein
Feb 28, 2007

I think I'm a doctor, but that doesn't make me a doctor. This fancy avatar does.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

I forget which service it was but the point chunk that was labeled "best deal!" actually turned out to cost twice as much per point as any other point chunk.

They never said it was the "best deal" for you.

Xander77
Apr 6, 2009

Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.



I've been told that certain scummy telemarketing job offers work the same way, but this is the first time I've encountered it:

Work for our company, doing customer support for MLM scheme advertising ("Solo ads", sorry if I'm simplifying this needlesly complex bullshit) for two-three months. You're going to work 7 days a week, for 80% of what a regular minimum wage job pays. Once you've passed your probation period, you'll get a cut of our overall sales revenue, and earn approximately 3-4000$ a month.

Which... wouldn't be so surprising, if they weren't looking specifically for someone well educated with exceptional English skills, and didn't make me go through an incredibly elaborate interview process.

Edit - something I always wanted to try:

Someone's running a shell game in front of a crowd. You play, loudly announce that the shell is in the middle (or whatever, doesn't actually matter) and flip the other two cups yourself before the conman can. Both cups are empty, so obviously the ball must be in the middle one. Do people try that? What happens if/when they do?

Xander77 fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Mar 23, 2016

greazeball
Feb 4, 2003



You win the money, everyone stands up and claps and as you walk back to your car a couple of dude's homies jump you and teach you a lesson about messing with crooks.

Inspector 34
Mar 9, 2009

DOES NOT RESPECT THE RUN

BUT THEY WILL
How do these MLM schemes actually work? Is there much variation between whatever major groups there are? I think my mom and stepdad got conned into joining one of these things for some weird kind of aerosol skin cream. I remember they got boxes and boxes of the stuff and they seemed to think it worked amazingly well, but they never seemed to be able to move any of it. My dad was at least polite enough not to tell me they were being scammed, but having dealt with a couple pushy MLM types in my adult years, now I wonder if them pushing the stuff on him and my stepmom contributed to the huge falling out they had right around that same time.

I got into a conversation at a bar with a couple who were into Amway and they were just so enamored with the douche who recruited them and how they never have to work for a boss again and yadda yadda yadda. What was really confusing to me was they didn't actually try to sell me any products, they just went straight into selling themselves and how if I signed up under them we would all be rich within a year. Aren't they supposed to be shilling crappy consumer goods or something before they move into screwing over other idiots?

Ham Equity
Apr 16, 2013

i hosted a great goon meet and all i got was this lousy avatar
Grimey Drawer

Xander77 posted:

Someone's running a shell game in front of a crowd. You play, loudly announce that the shell is in the middle (or whatever, doesn't actually matter) and flip the other two cups yourself before conman can. Both cups are empty, so obviously the ball must be in the middle one. Do people try that? What happens if/when they do?
Probably getting beat up on the way to their car. I've definitely seen that done on TV or in a movie before (only instance I could find was Growing Pains season 7 episode 15, but I think I saw it somewhere else).

kaschei
Oct 25, 2005

You win your girl's necklace back, but they steal your act and tour the world under your name.

https://youtu.be/l-O5IHVhWj0

Shell game isn't always run with zero winners. You might even turn up 2 balls. After all, if you guess correctly they just have to reveal the other ball.

Lutha Mahtin
Oct 10, 2010

Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!

Thanatosian posted:

There are legit reasons to do this. It allows you to give out "points" instead of cash as freebies, and allows you to have sales on points (which XBox did relatively frequently).

The most legit reason to do it is to confuse the consumer. Once a person converts real money into funbux, they don't think of it the same way they do an equivalent amount of real money, and they have a harder time keeping straight the actual value of products and/or their balance. And fake currencies aren't needed to put stuff on sale: you see iTunes cards on sale all the time.

There are some games I refuse to buy IAP in because of how stupid their funbux currency system is. I'm not going to give you money if every time I check the gem store I would end up having $4 left over after I buy the one thing I want. Looking at you, Path of Exile :catstare:

Absurd Alhazred
Mar 27, 2010

by Athanatos
The real scam is paying real money to get fake in-game money. In-game money should be gotten by grinding low-level monsters, as God intended.

B33rChiller
Aug 18, 2011




The air horn followed by "This is your captain speaking" always got a chuckle out of me and a handful of my friends. We all worked on cruise ships when that scam was running. It would usually be met with some variation of "gently caress you! I'm on my days off!" or "How much are you going to pay me?"<hangs up and laughs>.They were really barking up the wrong tree with us.

goatsestretchgoals
Jun 4, 2011

Inspector 34 posted:

How do these MLM schemes actually work? Is there much variation between whatever major groups there are? I think my mom and stepdad got conned into joining one of these things for some weird kind of aerosol skin cream. I remember they got boxes and boxes of the stuff and they seemed to think it worked amazingly well, but they never seemed to be able to move any of it. My dad was at least polite enough not to tell me they were being scammed, but having dealt with a couple pushy MLM types in my adult years, now I wonder if them pushing the stuff on him and my stepmom contributed to the huge falling out they had right around that same time.

I got into a conversation at a bar with a couple who were into Amway and they were just so enamored with the douche who recruited them and how they never have to work for a boss again and yadda yadda yadda. What was really confusing to me was they didn't actually try to sell me any products, they just went straight into selling themselves and how if I signed up under them we would all be rich within a year. Aren't they supposed to be shilling crappy consumer goods or something before they move into screwing over other idiots?

It's almost the shell game from above. All the marks scurry around selling lovely off brand poo poo to friends, family, and gullible people on the street. Real money is selling conference tickets.

thrakkorzog
Nov 16, 2007

Xander77 posted:

I've been told that certain scummy telemarketing job offers work the same way, but this is the first time I've encountered it:

Work for our company, doing customer support for MLM scheme advertising ("Solo ads", sorry if I'm simplifying this needlesly complex bullshit) for two-three months. You're going to work 7 days a week, for 80% of what a regular minimum wage job pays. Once you've passed your probation period, you'll get a cut of our overall sales revenue, and earn approximately 3-4000$ a month.

Which... wouldn't be so surprising, if they weren't looking specifically for someone well educated with exceptional English skills, and didn't make me go through an incredibly elaborate interview process.

Edit - something I always wanted to try:

Someone's running a shell game in front of a crowd. You play, loudly announce that the shell is in the middle (or whatever, doesn't actually matter) and flip the other two cups yourself before conman can. Both cups are empty, so obviously the ball must be in the middle one. Do people try that? What happens if/when they do?

You know back in my college days, me and some buddies would walk into frat parties, claim we were a magic act, and then set up a 3 card Monte table. I was the shill, a basic nerdy guy, who won more often than I lost, playing 3 card monte. And occasionally drunken fratboys kicked my rear end out for not being one of them. We still cleared around $600 a weekend.

Xander77
Apr 6, 2009

Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.



bitcoin bastard posted:

It's almost the shell game from above. All the marks scurry around selling lovely off brand poo poo to friends, family, and gullible people on the street. Real money is selling conference tickets.
As a very deep and not at all worn out metaphor, every aspect of American capitalism is "like a shell game" where you direct peoples attention to a distraction, then pocket their money just when they think they have a chance to win. In other ways, I don't really see the similarity.


thrakkorzog posted:

You know back in my college days, me and some buddies would walk into frat parties, claim we were a magic act, and then set up a 3 card Monte table. I was the shill, a basic nerdy guy, who won more often than I lost, playing 3 card monte. And occasionally drunken fratboys kicked my rear end out for not being one of them. We still cleared around $600 a weekend.
Good for you? Not actually familiar with the game (one of the reasons I never tried the idea above, besides natural timidity, is that street-cons like that aren't very popular in Israel), but what would you do / have done if someone tried the trick above? Seems like exactly the sort of semi-clever thing a bunch of drunken frat boys would pull?

Xander77 fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Mar 23, 2016

JiimyPopAli
Oct 5, 2009

Kopijeger posted:

If he really was that affable and interesting, he could probably make a decent living being a legitimate tourist guide. Seems like a waste.

On the subject of scams requiring extreme naivety on part of the victim, in Rome some dude attempted to pull the following scam on me:


The thing about this is that you would have to be extremely naive and credulous to fall for it. In my case, he saw fit to ask me for the way to Piazza del Popolo. From an obvious non-Italian like me. In English. While brandishing a road map and being in view of at least two obvious landmarks (the Aurelian walls with the Porta Pinciana and the Villa Borghese park). And for some reason he wore sunglasses even though it was cloudy. This made it difficult to read his expression, but he did seem surprised when I laughed derisively at him and walked on.

This happened on the street to a friend of mine in Toronto, Canada. Not downtown in the touristy area, but in the middle of a middle-of-the-road neighbourhood. Maybe these guys go on vacation and take their crappy clothes with them? Or they open up branch offices.

All of these scams work because you really can't underestimate the power of greed.

Fruits of the sea
Dec 1, 2010

Since we're talking about MLM schemes: I have a regular customer at my workplace who's tried to sell me on some Matcha tea thing for a while. He's genuinely a nice guy, so I had a long conversation with him about these MLMs a while ago.

It turns out he's "diversified" by participating in 7 different MLMs simultaneously, and uses them to cross promote and recruit fellow suckers who are already invested in one scheme. Pretty smart actually, in theory, he doesn't have to waste any time actually selling the lovely products.

The MLM he then tried to sell me on was a pretty basic pyramid scheme pretending to be a social media marketing tool. Each member had to pay $50 each month to "buy in" to the program. In return, they are guaranteed three downlines, and a small percentage of their monthly buy in (and a percentage of their downlines and so on). There's no pressure to recruit new members this way. The catch however is that half of those monthly $50 dollars are banked and can never be cashed out. That's $600 a year down the drain. Add to this the fact that my customer admitted it took a long time to get those three downlines and it becomes clear that getting an actual return on investment can take a very, very long time. And who knows how long the MLM will stay afloat.

He of course pays for three buy ins ($150) every month.

Lutha Mahtin
Oct 10, 2010

Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!

I had a white van speaker guy try his scam on me once. I always giggle when I think about it, because before he was even halfway finished with his pitch I got so loving excited that holy poo poo this might be a white van speaker scam guy! After he was done with his pitch I just had to lean around the gas pump and see if it was a white van, which it was. Looking back on it, I might not have concealed my excitement very well and gave away that I was hip to the scam, because the guy didn't sell me very hard at all. I told him I already had a speaker system, a nice one, and he just kind of gave up. I always regret that I didn't think of something I could say to try and gently caress with him. I started trying to come up with some reason to say I was going to call the cops, but I was too excited to think up a way to question him about his "extra" speakers, and partially I chickened out with just never having dealt with this kind of scammer before.

blackguy32
Oct 1, 2005

Say, do you know how to do the walk?
I remember not liking the microsoft points much because the numbers always felt off to me. Like I think it was $10 to buy 800 MS points. Ultimately it made it seem like stuff you were buying was actually cheaper than it really was.


But I did somehow get scammed through xbox live once. Somehow someone got ahold of my credit card information through xbox live and bought a bunch of Fifa cards and poo poo with it. Had to call Microsoft and my bank and I eventually got a refund.

thrakkorzog
Nov 16, 2007

Xander77 posted:

As a very deep and not at all worn out metaphor, every aspect of American capitalism is "like a shell game" where you direct peoples attention to a distraction, then pocket their money just when they think they have a chance to win. In other ways, I don't really see the similarity.
Good for you? Not actually familiar with the game (one of the reasons I never tried the idea above, besides natural timidity, is that street-cons like that aren't very popular in Israel), but what would you do / have done if someone tried the trick above? Seems like exactly the sort of semi-clever thing a bunch of drunken frat boys would pull?

Do you mean flipping over all the shells at once? Never seen that happen

There was a reason why we set up shop at Frat parties. It was a 3 way split, 1/3 to the dealer who could pocket the red ladies, 1/3 for me I would, go in as a shill, look like I was winning a lot of money and make some blindingly obvious mistakes, then the fratboys kicked me out, because I was supernerdy and obviously wasn't one of them, then I became the getaway driver.

We also had a fratboy looking guy who was our muscle, and kept the frats from chasing us down. He got 1/3 of the cut, even though we really only needed his services once.

thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Mar 25, 2016

Wild T
Dec 15, 2008

The point I'm trying to make is that the only way to come out on top is to kick the Air Force in the nuts, beart it savagely with a weight and take a dump on it's face.
A fun one I ran into in Germany happened after my wife got a virus on our desktop (she clicked one of those fake play-button popup ads while streaming some TV show off of a shady site). It basically locks everything out at startup and displays a screen covered with German text that my very poor translation skills deciphered as roughly "This is Some Official German Agency, we've confirmed that this computer has been used to access child pornography. Visit this website (how? lol) and input your credit card to pay a €500 to unlock your computer."

I googled around a bit on my phone and found out it's pretty widespread, with various threats about illegal activity on that computer always pointing a site to give CC info to pay a 'fine.' It's pretty heavy as far as scams go; I've heard of folks calling as the police about random charges but kiddie porn is about the worst allegation you can throw at someone and I wonder if that ups their success rate. I just had to do a system restore and clear the thing, along with upgrading my antivirus.

DrBouvenstein
Feb 28, 2007

I think I'm a doctor, but that doesn't make me a doctor. This fancy avatar does.
Yeah, sounds like a variant on Ransomware. Some of the "lighter" ones just infect you with a lot of those pop-ups and fake warnings and poo poo, making just regular tasks nigh impossible and are troublesome to remove.

The nastier versions, like Cryptolocker, encrypt your file system. Very nasty, and they only fix is to have a recent backup (offsite, or at least on an external drive that is either unplugged or that Cryptolocker can't get to) to restore to.

cumshitter
Sep 27, 2005

by Fluffdaddy
Luckily I've never had to do it, but I thought I had heard that the encryption unlock key was stored on an infected computer's hard drive and that it could be accessed through safe mode?

Gym Leader Barack
Oct 31, 2005

Grimey Drawer

cumshitter posted:

Luckily I've never had to do it, but I thought I had heard that the encryption unlock key was stored on an infected computer's hard drive and that it could be accessed through safe mode?

There have been a couple of variants that stored the key locally and some AV companies were able to decrypt the user files from this, but a lot of ransomware infections store their keys on external servers so there's no way (without massive computing power and several years processing time) to get that info without paying. There was one recently that spread out and infected a heap of machines but their hosting service got wind of what they were doing and shut down all their accounts, leaving those who got hit with no way of recovering their files at all due to the place that hosted their decryption keys no longer existing.

I've had some success retrieving data by running deleted file recovery tools after the infection as most of them will make an encrypted copy of the file and then delete the original so if you're lucky the files you need still exist on the drive but have just bee removed from the filesystem table. Wouldn't be surprised to see newer variants run a defrag after the infection to prevent this limited recovery method.

Ransomware authors are without doubt some of the worst human beings to grace the face of this planet.

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Imaduck
Apr 16, 2007

the magnetorotational instability turns me on
I was riding the BART in San Francisco once and saw some guys doing a shell game. However, they were making it really easy, weren't charging their customers, and would award you a dollar if you picked the right shell. The only catch was, they wanted you to "show them some money" so that they knew you weren't homeless or something like that, because it'd be horrible to give money to someone who doesn't have any, or something.

I saw a few seemingly random people win their dollars. They came to me, I picked the right one, and then they asked me to show them my money. I said "no," they insisted, and I told them to get the gently caress out of there. They quickly hopped off the train at the next stop. (I'm not really intimidating, I think they just didn't want to attract too much attention)

I assume they were just trying to find out where your wallet was, so someone else could find an easy mark to pickpocket? Or maybe later in the scam, if they stayed around long enough, they'd ask you to bet on it? It did seem like they were legitimately giving out money, but they were just $1 bills so it wasn't like it was costing them much.

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