Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Eric the Mauve
May 8, 2012

Making you happy for a buck since 199X
The only time I was ever served a warrant it turned out to be for a career criminal with the same first and last name but a different middle name/initial. Someone at the courthouse done hosed up. It's an unusual name (career criminal dude is my second cousin I think but I've never met him) so I guess they were surprised there turned out to be more than one of them in the same county but never bothered to check any of the other identifying information I guess?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

dabs violently
Jul 27, 2013

Konstantin posted:

I remember back when Pokémon cards were incredibly popular, the elementary schools in my town banned them since the older kids were scamming the younger kids. Stuff like trading 50 worthless commons for a $10 rare.

A mate and I used to buy fake cards from the markets when we were 10 or so, trade them for good (real) cards and then sell those. Probably the only successful thing I've done in life.

Collateral Damage
Jun 13, 2009

Eric the Mauve posted:

The only time I was ever served a warrant it turned out to be for a career criminal with the same first and last name but a different middle name/initial. Someone at the courthouse done hosed up. It's an unusual name (career criminal dude is my second cousin I think but I've never met him) so I guess they were surprised there turned out to be more than one of them in the same county but never bothered to check any of the other identifying information I guess?
I guess it means you know who to pass the blame to if you get in trouble with the law. :v:

Guest2553
Aug 3, 2012


I got mixed up with herbalife as a 15 year old when a high school biology teacher had a friend pitch her bullshit to a class I was in. I was in the middle of some mystery illness and there was just enough rudimentary science in the woo that I thought it could help and told my parents about it. Desperate for something to make me better, they bought a few months worth of pills for me. After maybe three months of not feeling any different, sitting through a "seminar" with a culty vibe, and visiting an applied kinesthesiologist (who did some sort of seance while knocking on my arms then said all my organs were shutting down and my blood was turning to poison :wtc:), I noped on outta that.

Being a distributor never came up, so we were only ever out a few hundred bucks. I guess sick kids are just an easy mark. After moving I stopped being sick and a few years later we figured out I had a really uncommon allergy. Oops!

On the topic of schoolyard scams, some groups of older kids in elementary would make up bullshit pog rules to jack people's poo poo. You'd start a game with the standard screed of "spic & span, no poison, no kini-keeps, no blackouts, no elephants, no tiddly-winks, no side-swipes" then on their first move they'd wave their hands and pocket all your stuff while saying "you didn't say no rainbows :smug:"

Guest2553 fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Jan 14, 2018

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

Guest2553 posted:

I got mixed up with herbalife as a 15 year old when a high school biology teacher had a friend pitch her bullshit to a class I was in.

How is that even loving legal?

Man...with these loving MLM's, it's real simple. If anyone ever tries to pitch you this poo poo, ask THEM how much money THEY have made and how long they're been wrapped up in this bullshit. Not only they get crushed just buying overpriced poo poo, they're also taught to buy things they can't afford (like cars, suits, jewelry, etc.) just to give the impression of "success".

My former friend who got into it and vanished down the Amway rabbit hole tried to sell me and I said "give me a call when you even make $10,000 in one year and I'll look at it." I never heard from him again.

BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Jan 14, 2018

Guest2553
Aug 3, 2012


BiggerBoat posted:

How is that even loving legal?

It was probably about as legal as the bullshit pog rules I tried to stealth-edit in :colbert:

It didn't click until years later that it was probably super illegal. It was a minority majority school in a sketchy area so I doubt anyone would have given a gently caress either way. We were probably just a bunch of marks since it was only ever pitched as 'supplements you won't find anywhere else', not 'be ur own boss'. It was also loosely tied into some of the stuff we were learning in biology so it was legit as far as we were concerned.

e. I like that tactic 'tell me when you clear 10k', I'm gonna start using it :v:

Guest2553 fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Jan 14, 2018

Lutha Mahtin
Oct 10, 2010

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

when i was in high school, we often had field trips to college fair days and had college admissions people stop by the school. i only realized years later that a big percentage of them were crummy for-profit schools. i went to a rural school, where the only colleges within a 90 minute drive were community/tech schools, so I've wondered if they targeted us more heavily than other areas. i certainly remember being impressed that there was a school called The Art Institutes where you could study COMPUTER GRAPHICS and the school was in a big city with so much cool stuff to do

BigDave
Jul 14, 2009

Taste the High Country

Lutha Mahtin posted:

when i was in high school, we often had field trips to college fair days and had college admissions people stop by the school. i only realized years later that a big percentage of them were crummy for-profit schools. i went to a rural school, where the only colleges within a 90 minute drive were community/tech schools, so I've wondered if they targeted us more heavily than other areas. i certainly remember being impressed that there was a school called The Art Institutes where you could study COMPUTER GRAPHICS and the school was in a big city with so much cool stuff to do

Haha, oh yeah, The Art Institute. Guy I went to high school with got a AA in Computer Graphics from there.

$90,000.

Last I heard he was driving a semi to make his student loan payments.

Absurd Alhazred
Mar 27, 2010

by Athanatos

Lutha Mahtin posted:

when i was in high school, we often had field trips to college fair days and had college admissions people stop by the school. i only realized years later that a big percentage of them were crummy for-profit schools. i went to a rural school, where the only colleges within a 90 minute drive were community/tech schools, so I've wondered if they targeted us more heavily than other areas. i certainly remember being impressed that there was a school called The Art Institutes where you could study COMPUTER GRAPHICS and the school was in a big city with so much cool stuff to do

The real kicker is when you realize how much of a scam all college in the US is. :smith:

Vinny the Shark
Oct 11, 2005

BiggerBoat posted:

My former friend who got into it and vanished down the Amway rabbit hole tried to sell me and I said "give me a call when you even make $10,000 in one year and I'll look at it." I never heard from him again.

Guest2553 posted:

e. I like that tactic 'tell me when you clear 10k', I'm gonna start using it :v:

Just make sure you say "$10k net profit." Some of these MLMs can convince people they're making money by using terms like "sales volume of over $10 thousand!" or "generating downline revenue of thousands of dollars!" or some other vague bullshit. Sure, it won't make much of a difference anyway, but some MLMs actually do give checks out to people as a percentage of how much the distributor purchased and how many people in the distributor's downline purchased. For instance, you and your downline might have bought $2000 worth of merchandise that month, and you get maybe 1% of that- $20 check. Of course, you're still spending hundreds of dollars a month on merchandise just to get that $20 check, and so is everyone below you. My friend I mentioned earlier with Amway/Team showed me a check from the company for $6 and some change. I can't imagine how much he was spending to get that check, not to mention all the seminars and training materials he was buying as well.

Later, he told me he found out it was against the rules of Amway to show prospective distributors paychecks. The official rule stated something about protecting the company from fraud, but it was so obvious the real reason was the company knew drat well about 99% of its' distributors were making less than $10 per month.

tk
Dec 10, 2003

Nap Ghost

BiggerBoat posted:

Man...with these loving MLM's, it's real simple. If anyone ever tries to pitch you this poo poo, ask THEM how much money THEY have made and how long they're been wrapped up in this bullshit.

What’s real simple is lying about how much money you’ve made.

You can even lie to yourself about it by pretending every dollar earned is 100% pure profit.

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

There's a simple rule: your employer pays you money. If you find yourself in a situation where you are paying your employer money then something has gone badly wrong.

Professor Shark
May 22, 2012

Vinny the Shark posted:

Just make sure you say "$10k net profit." Some of these MLMs can convince people they're making money by using terms like "sales volume of over $10 thousand!" or "generating downline revenue of thousands of dollars!" or some other vague bullshit. Sure, it won't make much of a difference anyway, but some MLMs actually do give checks out to people as a percentage of how much the distributor purchased and how many people in the distributor's downline purchased. For instance, you and your downline might have bought $2000 worth of merchandise that month, and you get maybe 1% of that- $20 check. Of course, you're still spending hundreds of dollars a month on merchandise just to get that $20 check, and so is everyone below you. My friend I mentioned earlier with Amway/Team showed me a check from the company for $6 and some change. I can't imagine how much he was spending to get that check, not to mention all the seminars and training materials he was buying as well.

Later, he told me he found out it was against the rules of Amway to show prospective distributors paychecks. The official rule stated something about protecting the company from fraud, but it was so obvious the real reason was the company knew drat well about 99% of its' distributors were making less than $10 per month.

One of the big things the author of Merchants of Deception stressed was that talking to others ("Cross Streaming" or something?) was 100% against the rules because it contaminated the streams... the way one upstream ran their downstream might be different than how another does it, so it just creates confusion and resentment.

Another way of seeing that would be that they wanted the different sects of their cult to remain clueless and not be able to compare notes. Over the years the author began to realize that some upstreams gave breaks for some things that others didn't, 15% off coupons basically, and it was A Big Deal.

How is the author of MoD doing these days? I tried to look his name up, but all I found was an obituary for someone with his name from 2012...

MightyJoe36
Dec 29, 2013

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

BiggerBoat posted:

My former friend who got into it and vanished down the Amway rabbit hole tried to sell me and I said "give me a call when you even make $10,000 in one year and I'll look at it." I never heard from him again.

Even if he did manage to make $10k in one year is no guarantee that you'll make even close to that much.

Years ago I was listening to some radio talk show and the guy was talking about those "self-made millionaire" books and said something that stuck with me:

"I don't doubt that the guy who wrote that book became a millionaire. What I doubt is that he can teach you to become a millionaire."

Absurd Alhazred
Mar 27, 2010

by Athanatos

Platystemon
Feb 13, 2012

as a person who never leaves my house i've done pretty well for myself.

10¢ per capita or $250 million total? :thunk:

shame on an IGA
Apr 8, 2005

The first interpretation is already a famous bitcoin scam, so yes.

Professor Shark
May 22, 2012


I have so many people on my Facebook that repost these things. I know some of them know that it's fake, but they just can't risk it.

MightyJoe36
Dec 29, 2013

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Professor Shark posted:

I have so many people on my Facebook that repost these things. I know some of them know that it's fake, but they just can't risk it.

You thought the chain emails your Grandma sent you in the 90s died, but they just got re-packaged.

Red Oktober
May 24, 2006

wiggly eyes!



They haven’t even spelt the username properly.

If anything these are more insidious than the FWD:FWD: type, as once the page has enough likes it can be sold to a marketing firm who will change the page to a product they are pushing an have a built in audience of 50000k+.

artichoke
Sep 29, 2003

delirium tremens and caffeine
Gravy Boat 2k
Did anyone ever get physical chain mail, like in your mailbox? I remember a time in elementary school in the early 90s and feeling so overwhelmed with greed after doing the math. I would be so rich! People will just send me dollars in the mail! For only $6!
My dad explained what a scam it was and I think that was my earliest memory of avoiding a temptation like that. They all but disappeared in the advent of the internet to the larger public.

Halser
Aug 24, 2016

artichoke posted:

Did anyone ever get physical chain mail, like in your mailbox? I remember a time in elementary school in the early 90s and feeling so overwhelmed with greed after doing the math. I would be so rich! People will just send me dollars in the mail! For only $6!
My dad explained what a scam it was and I think that was my earliest memory of avoiding a temptation like that. They all but disappeared in the advent of the internet to the larger public.

I've gotta admit that when I read "physical chain mail" I just imagined someone stuffing medieval armor in someone's mailbox.

Red Oktober
May 24, 2006

wiggly eyes!



I remember getting those, some would say send a chocolate bar, some a post card. I received one on Facebook recently:

quote:

Hey - so it's a bit of a book pyramid scheme, probably invented by Amazon, but here it is:

Please copy the post you commented on, and repost to your Facebook page. (Below to easily copy & paste.)

WANTED: Participants for a book-loving social experiment. Comment if you want to participate and I’ll send you details. What do you have to do? Buy your favourite book and send it to a stranger (I’ll send you a name and address.) You will only be sending one book to one person. The number of books you will receive depends on how many participants there are. The books that will show up on your door are the other people’s much loved stories #SaveTheCulture #BookExchange #LongLiveBooks

Send this whole message to the people who comment on your post, putting my info in item #2 and your info in item #3.

2. Send a much-loved book to: XXXX
You can send a new book or, if you have a much-loved book at home, you can mail that. Whichever way works for you, please make sure you send a book!

3. Give the people who comment on your social media post my address (in a private message, of course): XXXXX

So they’re still around, just in a slightly different form.

teh winnar!
Apr 16, 2003
This Friday, I had a likely scammer try to get my info, using a job offer email as their cover.

"My name is [Scammerina Scamlady] and I am Account Manager at [Company]. I came across your resume and wanted to reach out to you about this role with our client E-trade in [local area] they are currently looking for two Branch Services Customer Service Representative (Call Center).
If you are interested in the position below, please attach a MS Word with the questions below answered, please send to [scammer at fuckface dot com]"

The first few questions were simple enough, asking about experience, but I noticed that there were some typographical errors in the intro and the questions.

"12. What is your commute to Bolingbrook, IL look like?" (Note that the local area I live in is on the west coast)

Then came the kickers of:

"13. First Advantage requires vendors to provide Last 4 digits of candidates SS# (Please provide)
14. First Advantage requires vendors to provide Last Month and Day of Birth (Please provide)"

Keep in mind that this is the initial contact email asking for my SSN and Date of Birth... excuse me, my Last Date of Birth. Apparently they're only concerned with this body, and not any of my previous reincarnations.

My reply, just in case they weren't a scammer, was a matter of fact "I do not give this information out in email. I would be willing to provide it at the time of hire, however." to the personal info questions, and a longer response to the commute question of "Assuming you actually mean Bolingbrook, that’s a 2300-mile trip, certainly not a “commute.” You would have to be willing to pay airfare, lodging, and car rentals to and from. However, assuming instead that you mean [local area], that is a short and easy (15-60 minutes depending upon traffic) commute for me."

Yesterday morning in the early AM, I get a call from Scammerina, where she is evasive about the request for personal info, stating that it's "required to make an ID Number" over and over again. When I finally tell her that if she absolutely needs a SSN and DoB, she can enter 000-00-0000 and 1 January 1900, she got belligerent and gave up on me.

While I understand someplace needing that info for a background check, this kind of poo poo needs to be in physical writing and maybe after an initial interview, certainly not first contact.

teh winnar! fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Jan 16, 2018

peanut
Sep 9, 2007


Last 4 digits of SSN is one of PayPal's password retrieval steps. They could screw some people seriously if they accessed their PayPal accounts.

Lutha Mahtin
Oct 10, 2010

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

If you give out your name, date of birth, and last 4 digits of SSN, it's not super hard to guess the first 6 SSN digits. The Social Security Administration gives out the available numbers to state governments, and they do this by giving out full chunks of the first six digits of numbers to particular states at particular times. So, for example, let's say that Indiana is running out of their assigned numbers, so they ask for some more and the SSA gives them say 123-45-XXXX through 123-94-XXXX. After this, there will be a point in the future when 500,000 babies born in Indiana will have these numbers. Researchers have figured out that a lot of states have done this in non-randomized ways, so if you can figure out about when a state used a certain allocation of numbers, it gives an attacker a pretty small pool of numbers from which to guess.

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.
I seriously suspect that within the next 5-10 years all of our SS #'s will be compromised and the government will scramble to fix it, if they're not already. That genie is out of the bottle and it's only a matter of loving time to my eyes. Only thing keeping people secure at this stage of the game is that hardly anyone has any loving money or net worth that would make someone even bother to go through the trouble of stealing it.

I'm not even kidding.

Haifisch
Nov 13, 2010

Objection! I object! That was... objectionable!



Taco Defender

Red Oktober posted:

I remember getting those, some would say send a chocolate bar, some a post card. I received one on Facebook recently:


So they’re still around, just in a slightly different form.
The funny thing is that non-scam free(aside the cost of shipping) book swap sites are a thing. Hell, some neighborhoods still have "leave a book take a book" boxes.

But none of them say they're "a bit of a book pyramid scheme, probably invented by Amazon", so why would you use them instead of this weird scheme? :downs:

Ham Equity
Apr 16, 2013

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

BiggerBoat posted:

I seriously suspect that within the next 5-10 years all of our SS #'s will be compromised and the government will scramble to fix it, if they're not already. That genie is out of the bottle and it's only a matter of loving time to my eyes. Only thing keeping people secure at this stage of the game is that hardly anyone has any loving money or net worth that would make someone even bother to go through the trouble of stealing it.

I'm not even kidding.
Dude, the Equifax leak essentially had the SS# of every adult who isn't off the grid.

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

BiggerBoat posted:

I seriously suspect that within the next 5-10 years all of our SS #'s will be compromised and the government will scramble to fix it, if they're not already. That genie is out of the bottle and it's only a matter of loving time to my eyes. Only thing keeping people secure at this stage of the game is that hardly anyone has any loving money or net worth that would make someone even bother to go through the trouble of stealing it.

I'm not even kidding.

It blows my loving mind that Steam, Blizzard, and tons of bullshit F2P MMOs offer two factor authentication to make sure your level 80 wizard with the epic Eye of Poopsocking doesn't get stolen by the Russian Mafia, yet SSNs and credit checks are just a thing.

I literally have better protections available for my PBUG inventory than my loving credit score.

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



Cyrano4747 posted:

It blows my loving mind that Steam, Blizzard, and tons of bullshit F2P MMOs offer two factor authentication to make sure your level 80 wizard with the epic Eye of Poopsocking doesn't get stolen by the Russian Mafia, yet SSNs and credit checks are just a thing.

I literally have better protections available for my PBUG inventory than my loving credit score.

Well sure, you can quit a video game if you're unhappy. Can't quit Experia though, so why should they try?

Tyler Durden did nothing wrong.

shame on an IGA
Apr 8, 2005

I can't believe no defense contractor has managed to sell a single state government on a very very expensive system that lets me register a public key with the DMV when I renew my license

BigDave
Jul 14, 2009

Taste the High Country

BiggerBoat posted:

I seriously suspect that within the next 5-10 years all of our SS #'s will be compromised and the government will scramble to fix it, if they're not already. That genie is out of the bottle and it's only a matter of loving time to my eyes. Only thing keeping people secure at this stage of the game is that hardly anyone has any loving money or net worth that would make someone even bother to go through the trouble of stealing it.

I'm not even kidding.

Meh, if they steal my identity it'll probably lose them money.

Lutha Mahtin
Oct 10, 2010

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

BigDave posted:

Meh, if they steal my identity it'll probably lose them money.

https://themoth.org/stories/a-dish-best-served-cold

Don Gato
Apr 28, 2013

Actually a bipedal cat.
Grimey Drawer

BiggerBoat posted:

I seriously suspect that within the next 5-10 years all of our SS #'s will be compromised and the government will scramble to fix it, if they're not already. That genie is out of the bottle and it's only a matter of loving time to my eyes. Only thing keeping people secure at this stage of the game is that hardly anyone has any loving money or net worth that would make someone even bother to go through the trouble of stealing it.

I'm not even kidding.

I've already had all my information compromised twice in two massive data leaks over the past couple of years (OPM leak and the Experian leak), I'm just hoping there is some new, more secure ID system before the next leak inevitably hits.

cakesmith handyman
Jul 22, 2007

Pip-Pip old chap! Last one in is a rotten egg what what.

There won't be.

bongwizzard
May 19, 2005

Then one day I meet a man,
He came to me and said,
"Hard work good and hard work fine,
but first take care of head"
Grimey Drawer
My Social Security number has never felt particularly secure, I used to work as a freelance stage hand and would fill out about two dozen different W9s every year, all of which just went into some dudes backpack and then eventually to whatever payroll service that employer was using. Same thing with credit card numbers, like every waiter I have ever handed a card to could've just copied all that poo poo down, so I have never felt particularly paranoid about someone getting ahold of it.

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.
Are things like Lifelock and ID protection services generally scams?

AlbieQuirky
Oct 9, 2012

Just me and my 🌊dragon🐉 hanging out

BiggerBoat posted:

Are things like Lifelock and ID protection services generally scams?

Not necessarily intentional scams, but ineffective and a waste of money. You can monitor your credit for free.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Fil5000
Jun 23, 2003

HOLD ON GUYS I'M POSTING ABOUT INTERNET ROBOTS
Was it the lifelock CEO who put his social security number on the side of a truck to prove how good the product was?

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply