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Every six months or so I run into this guy who asks if I can come with him to a gas station to show them my ID so he can buy a jerry can. Every time I tell him you don't need an ID to buy a jerry can as I have purchased one with cash in recent memory. Then he swears at me and tells me I don't like helping people and blah blah and looks for another victim. The last time I told him I'd go with him if he just told me what his scam was since I see him a couple times a year pulling the same nonsense but he just yelled at me and ran away. What does he really want? There's usually a gas station in sight so I'm pretty sure he's not trying to lure me away to murder me in an alley.
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Mar 26, 2016 04:48
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Maybe he runs away with the gas and you get stiffed with paying? Wierd one.
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Mar 26, 2016 10:40
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Korgan posted:It was almost certainly a foreign call centre, number was blocked and the bloke had an Indian accent. Call centres here try not to hire Indians with obvious accents because they tend to get hung up on immediately thanks to a shitload of people getting calls from Microsoft about viruses, the ATO/criminal record scams, solar panel and energy saver rebates, etc. Every scam call I can remember receiving has been a blocked or overseas number with an Indian person on the other end. I wish they had better job prospects over there so they didn't get suckered into scamming people. Is there any truth to the scammer call centres being advertised as legitimate jobs and then paying people peanuts to read a script until they land a sucker, and then have to hand the phone over to a "supervisor" who is better prepared to lie and threaten and improvise their way into your wallet? No you don't. See, race to the bottom and all, "better job prospects" in India means more skilled jobs in the US have been outsourced for a third the cost. Blame Capitalism.
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Mar 26, 2016 20:00
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Xander77 posted:As a very deep and not at all worn out metaphor, every aspect of most people will do just about anything to avoid starting a physical confrontation, which is something a whole lot of grifts count on, although a frathouse seems like the very worst possible place to try it
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Mar 26, 2016 21:42
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Imaduck posted: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. There's a pretty common scam in Europe (mainly in Spain) where someone in a train carriage will shout, "Someones stolen my wallet!", leading to everyone instinctively putting their hand where their wallet is to check it's still there. For a few unlucky punters it won't be there in a few seconds!
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Mar 26, 2016 21:47
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Couple years ago a perfectly respectable looking guy came up to me with a broken car key telling me how he broke the key in the ignition and then accidentally locked the car. He only needed $2 for the bus to get his spare set from home. I offered to help him break into his car, but he insisted it was too far away. Whatever, it was $2 so I gave it to him. I've since run into him two more times with the same story in the same parking lot. No idea why he's got such an elaborate story for a measly $2. Also can't imagine making much each day. I also had a friend fall for the computer virus popup scam. She told me the next day how she opened the link and filled in her credit card info, but the virus popup was still on her computer. I told her to check her transactions right now and sure enough, there were multiple payments to "google corp" that had maxed out her card. I had no idea that people under 30 fell for these.
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Mar 29, 2016 08:09
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MettleRamiel posted:Couple years ago a perfectly respectable looking guy came up to me with a broken car key telling me how he broke the key in the ignition and then accidentally locked the car. He only needed $2 for the bus to get his spare set from home. I offered to help him break into his car, but he insisted it was too far away. Whatever, it was $2 so I gave it to him. The average time per person on that is probably 30 seconds to a minute or two, tops. I'd guess that as far as "hey can I have 2 bucks for x goes' that story has a very high success rate. I doubt he's trying it literally non-stop, but he can probably run it by 30+ people an hour. Also if someone pulls out a wallet with a huge wad of cash, there's an easy opportunity for a serious pay day.
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Mar 29, 2016 19:28
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Der Luftwaffle posted:My favourite has always been the guys selling X out of the back of their truck, usually AV equipment. Offering ludicrous deals on garbage in expensive boxes with the veil of dubious legality that used to draw people in like flies. Yeah I remember GBS used to have a MLM/scam thread (very interesting) and the AV equipment in the parking lot scam comes up a lot. From what I understand they sell you SUPER poo poo cheap electronics under the guise they are stolen high end electronics.
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Mar 29, 2016 19:54
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:most people will do just about anything to avoid starting a physical confrontation, which is something a whole lot of grifts count on, although a frathouse seems like the very worst possible place to try it Frat parties were a pretty good target for cons, since by definition they're drunk, and not thinking 100% straight. And while fratboys might give someone the bum's rush, they're also not about to take someone out back and smash their hand with a hammer. It was a hell of a lot safer than something like trying to hustle pool. thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Mar 30, 2016 |
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Mar 30, 2016 09:27
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Not sure if this is the past place to ask but I've been getting a poo poo ton of telemarketing spam calls recently on my cell phone (may have accidentally answered one call like a month ago and now the flood gates have opened) Once I realized these same 3 to 5 numbers are bogus I just blacklisted and blocked them but it's still annoying as gently caress and sometimes they poo poo up my voice-mail box with blank 15 second voice-mails. Anyways is there any way to gently caress with these numbers back? Anything I can do to fight back? The ones I've answered seem to be computer run, maybe one was real live person but the rest were just bots. Is there a program out there that will just continuously call these fuckers numbers? Please help shits pissing me off.
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Mar 30, 2016 23:49
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SilkyP posted:Not sure if this is the past place to ask but I've been getting a poo poo ton of telemarketing spam calls recently on my cell phone (may have accidentally answered one call like a month ago and now the flood gates have opened) What did you get if you tried calling any of them back? Usually the numbers are spoofed, so there's a good chance you could be bothering an innocent person whose phone number was stolen for this scam. It happened to my cell once, got a few random people "returning" calls I never made to them.
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Mar 31, 2016 04:35
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SilkyP posted:Not sure if this is the past place to ask but I've been getting a poo poo ton of telemarketing spam calls recently on my cell phone (may have accidentally answered one call like a month ago and now the flood gates have opened) Don't bother. Just use the block feature on your phone. If you get a call from a number you don't recognize, and aren't expecting a call, then just answer the phone but remain silent. It's often a machine looking for active numbers to add to its call list. If you remain silent it will think the line is bad. If you don't hear anything after several seconds then just hang up. Anyone genuinely trying to reach you will usually just keep repeating, "Hello?" thinking it was a bad connection.
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Mar 31, 2016 04:48
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Some are almost never allowed to hang up on you so maybe you can have fun with them or find some soundboards to use if you're really bored
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Mar 31, 2016 04:53
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Mattel (makers of Hot Wheels and Barbie!) fell for the "OVERDUE INVOICE - PLEASE REMIT PAYMENT" scam, to the tune of $3million dollars, which only tells me my beer-money operation for printer cartridges in college was woefully unambitious.
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Mar 31, 2016 19:18
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RandomCheese posted: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. SilkyP posted:Not sure if this is the past place to ask but I've been getting a poo poo ton of telemarketing spam calls recently on my cell phone (may have accidentally answered one call like a month ago and now the flood gates have opened) You can try putting the "disconnected" SIT tones on your voicemail. That helped me for a little while. I report these calls to donotcall.gov. They come and go. I've gotten 3-4 a week before, but I haven't had one in the last few months. Captain Cool fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Mar 31, 2016 |
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Mar 31, 2016 20:38
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Captain Cool posted:If you wait long enough you might get lucky. The US government, with other governments and universities and private companies, took down the original cryptolocker servers and recovered most of the keys: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-leads-multi-national-action-against-gameover-zeus-botnet-and-cryptolocker-ransomware Yeah, I've gotten a few of these calls lately. They show up as something like 512-011-XXXX, and I just let them go straight to voicemail, because that obviously is not a legit number. (For those who aren't familiar with how American Telephone systems work, dialing 0 takes you the operator, so no American telephone number starts with 0.) thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Apr 1, 2016 |
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Apr 1, 2016 10:05
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One time as a teen a slightly disheveled dude came up to me outside a subway station and gave me a sob story how he and his daughter had been stranded in the city and someone had stolen their ids, bank cards and cash, and they needed 10€ for a long distance bus home. He had about 50 cents on him, and I had a few coins in the pocket, so I handed him about 1,50€, figuring that it's at least triple what he has got so far. As I handed the coins, I saw a few of his fingers had been cut (and healed)*. Awshit. Then the dude started berating me for giving him too little, probably hoping to intimidate me into fishing out the wallet and giving him more. I just made my excuses, I said with the 2€ he now had he could get to the police station a few stations away and report what he had to, and then I got the hell away. I saw him a few times during that year, trying the same thing on other people. *Druggie with drug debts.
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Apr 1, 2016 12:16
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Captain Cool posted:If you wait long enough you might get lucky. The US government, with other governments and universities and private companies, took down the original cryptolocker servers and recovered most of the keys: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-leads-multi-national-action-against-gameover-zeus-botnet-and-cryptolocker-ransomware Don't get people's hopes up, that was from 2 years ago. Now instead of one coder running his ransomware scheme, he has other people do it for him "Ransomware As A Service (RAAS) : https://blog.knowbe4.com/cyberheistnews-vol-6-1-first-javascript-only-ransomware-as-a-service-discovered That whole blog is pretty good if you're interested in ransomware at all.
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Apr 1, 2016 14:06
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JiimyPopAli posted:Don't get people's hopes up, that was from 2 years ago. Now instead of one coder running his ransomware scheme, he has other people do it for him "Ransomware As A Service (RAAS) : https://blog.knowbe4.com/cyberheistnews-vol-6-1-first-javascript-only-ransomware-as-a-service-discovered
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Apr 1, 2016 16:16
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Arctic Bunny posted:One time as a teen a slightly disheveled dude came up to me outside a subway station and gave me a sob story how he and his daughter had been stranded in the city and someone had stolen their ids, bank cards and cash, and they needed 10€ for a long distance bus home. He had about 50 cents on him, and I had a few coins in the pocket, so I handed him about 1,50€, figuring that it's at least triple what he has got so far. A few years living in Europe is one of the few times that made me appreciate my military training. Not in a macho way; I'm a weenie that does paperwork all day, so as fun as playing GI Joe and firing a rifle was it was generally useless to my day to day job. But I got really good at staring blankedly at people who had a perceived authority over me while saying "that's not my problem." Which probably saved me at least a few hundred Euros when people tried this strongarm intimidation scam. So many scams rely on folks not wanting to get into a confrontation (this goes triple for a nonresident who already feels vulnerable under a legal system that isn't their own). Thing is, a scammer has nothing to gain and a lot to lose from actually starting a confrontation, so they'll almost always back down. Don't feel scared to call bullshit on what you feel in the back of your brain is bullshit. My favorite one was an older woman who walked straight up to me at a German public rest stop and started begging in German. I ignored her and walked towards my car, a Honda that a German wouldn't be caught dead driving. She switched to English and continued the scam. I stared at her blankly, she moved to French before I finally just got in my car, locked the door and drove off. I kinda wonder how many languages she'd have tried to con me in if I'd stuck around; I was actually pretty impressed. Edit: I should note that it wasn't 'begging' per se so much as the standard "my car is broken down, please give me money to get a taxi despite the pay phone twenty meters away" scam that was so rampant at rest stops that we were briefed about it beforehand. Wild T fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Apr 1, 2016 |
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Apr 1, 2016 17:20
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Arctic Bunny posted:One time as a teen a slightly disheveled dude came up to me outside a subway station and gave me a sob story how he and his daughter had been stranded in the city and someone had stolen their ids, bank cards and cash, and they needed 10€ for a long distance bus home. He had about 50 cents on him, and I had a few coins in the pocket, so I handed him about 1,50€, figuring that it's at least triple what he has got so far. Quickest way to weed these out is just offer to buy them the item they claim to need. I like to help people out but also hate getting scammed so, if they seem to really need help, I'll say "I'm not carrying any cash but I can buy you the (gas, bus ticket, food, diapers, etc.)" Nine times out of ten they pass which tells you how often they really need help and how often it's a con. Off the subject, but I love caper/con men/double cross movies (House of Games, Matchstick Men, Oceans Eleven, Hard Eight, The Sting, etc.). Can anyone recommend some good con man/scam movies?
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Apr 1, 2016 21:04
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BiggerBoat posted:Off the subject, but I love caper/con men/double cross movies (House of Games, Matchstick Men, Oceans Eleven, Hard Eight, The Sting, etc.). Can anyone recommend some good con man/scam movies?
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Apr 1, 2016 21:37
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BiggerBoat posted:Off the subject, but I love caper/con men/double cross movies (House of Games, Matchstick Men, Oceans Eleven, Hard Eight, The Sting, etc.). Can anyone recommend some good con man/scam movies? Big Deal at Dodge City. It's been a long time and it's a slow burner (and I may have had a fever), but it fits the bill.
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Apr 2, 2016 00:10
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A Fish Called Wanda, if you don't mind a heavy dose of comedy.
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Apr 2, 2016 00:59
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The Japanese movie "Game" would also fit the bill.
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Apr 2, 2016 05:56
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BiggerBoat posted:Quickest way to weed these out is just offer to buy them the item they claim to need. I like to help people out but also hate getting scammed so, if they seem to really need help, I'll say "I'm not carrying any cash but I can buy you the (gas, bus ticket, food, diapers, etc.)" Nine times out of ten they pass which tells you how often they really need help and how often it's a con. I only did this once because I didn't have any money and wasn't about to go to the ATM with this dude in the middle of the night, he was asking me for gas money so i offered to buy him like 10 dollars in gas on my card. He accepted it and seemed genuinely grateful. I guess I caught the only one that wasn't a scam with that. Usually when people come up to me I just give them spare change in my pocket.
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Apr 2, 2016 06:43
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RenegadeStyle1 posted:I only did this once because I didn't have any money and wasn't about to go to the ATM with this dude in the middle of the night, he was asking me for gas money so i offered to buy him like 10 dollars in gas on my card. He accepted it and seemed genuinely grateful. I guess I caught the only one that wasn't a scam with that. Usually when people come up to me I just give them spare change in my pocket. If they're already parked at the gas pump they probably do just want gas.
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Apr 2, 2016 06:56
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bitcoin bastard posted:If they're already parked at the gas pump they probably do just want gas. If they're coming up to you with a gas can, they probably don't.
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Apr 2, 2016 08:39
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BiggerBoat posted:Off the subject, but I love caper/con men/double cross movies (House of Games, Matchstick Men, Oceans Eleven, Hard Eight, The Sting, etc.). Can anyone recommend some good con man/scam movies? The Game is an excellent movie.
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Apr 2, 2016 16:02
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I think I've only encountered one scam so far (that I'm aware of). Some guy outside a Cheesecake Factory in Chicago was passing out "free" physical copies of The Onion, and if you accepted he'd push a postcard on you that was also "free" but came with a suggested donation. How is this scam supposed to play out? He just gave me the Onion, which I accepted because I was a dumb midwestern tourist, and when he told me I also had to take the postcard I just said no and he sulked off dejected. I just read the Onion while waiting for my table at the restaurant. He was still outside when we were done and pestered me about it until we got a taxi.
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Apr 2, 2016 17:17
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Deified Data posted:I think I've only encountered one scam so far (that I'm aware of). That's not really a scam. The local paper where I live did the same thing. They had a booth at our farmer's market and the guy handed me a free copy of (yesterday's) newspaper and I was like "sure". Then he wanted me to subscribe. I think it's supposed to play on your guilt for accepting a free item so really more of a (cheesy) sales tactic than a scam. He looked dejected and upset when I said no too. The local paper sucks rear end and is dying on the vine.
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Apr 2, 2016 18:15
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I guess I just assumed because the guy looked homeless and the only thing he was "selling" were random postcards. Could have been legit. I felt bad for a fraction of a second before the guy started getting obnoxious about it. This was 8 at night in a sprinkling of freezing rain too, which seems like a weird place for a legit operation to sell their wares.
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Apr 2, 2016 18:45
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The Onion is already free unless they've changed something. It's a scam.
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Apr 2, 2016 19:05
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Deified Data posted:I think I've only encountered one scam so far (that I'm aware of). The donation is worth more than the card. Many people are guilted into paying it. With those who do, he makes a profit. It's like the squeegee guys on street corners or selling shamrocks or whatever.
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Apr 2, 2016 19:29
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Lareine posted:The Onion is already free unless they've changed something. It's a scam. Yeah, it was free but it was apparently being offered alongside a postcard that had a "suggested donation" attached to it. It didn't occur to the guy that some people might want one but not the other I guess.
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Apr 2, 2016 19:35
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Walking out of a dollar store today, some guy pulls up in a minivan and asks me if I want to buy a flat screen TV.
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Apr 2, 2016 20:19
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grack posted:Walking out of a dollar store today, some guy pulls up in a minivan and asks me if I want to buy a flat screen TV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5HOt0ZOcYk
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Apr 2, 2016 20:26
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grack posted:Walking out of a dollar store today, some guy pulls up in a minivan and asks me if I want to buy a flat screen TV. I hope you said "Yes please!" 
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Apr 2, 2016 21:03
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I go suckered into buying some prayer beads once, but the lady was like a hundred years old and didn't seem to understand/hear English very well. I had no idea what she was going on about so I just gave her $5 and she kissed my hand and walked away. I have also twice had Hispanic dudes approach me at gas stations and ask me to break a $100 bill for them so they could buy gas. Both times it was legit but I assume I am going to get burned at some point.
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Apr 2, 2016 22:13
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bitcoin bastard posted:If they're already parked at the gas pump they probably do just want gas. Often very untrue. I had a junky buddy who made a couple hundred bucks a week this way. Eventually, he'd have to switch parts of town, but our city was big enough. cheerfullydrab posted:If they're coming up to you with a gas can, they probably don't. The only time I've ever panhandled was when I really needed gas, and Is walked up to the station with my emergency can. I asked one man, and he seemed happy to help, but he made sure to prepay inside with a card. --------- As always YMMV
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Apr 2, 2016 23:39
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