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mostlygray posted:My very social media savvy friend experienced a similar thing. He should have known better. The scammer got lucky and found out that his cousin was a missionary in central Africa (I forget which country, it was years ago) and did the "send money via Western Union or he'll be murdered" deal. He was freaking out about it. This is why you demand they send a severed toe for verification.
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# ? Aug 23, 2018 03:53 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 06:26 |
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mostlygray posted:My very social media savvy friend experienced a similar thing. He should have known better. The scammer got lucky and found out that his cousin was a missionary in central Africa (I forget which country, it was years ago) and did the "send money via Western Union or he'll be murdered" deal. He was freaking out about it. Well I guess it's only fair since missionaries have been scamming people since the dark ages.
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# ? Aug 23, 2018 13:05 |
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Platystemon posted:This is why you demand they send a severed toe for verification. You want a toe? I'll get you a toe by 5 o'clock.
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# ? Aug 23, 2018 16:07 |
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Found out today that my parents have been getting PoAs set up for my grandparents, and rearranging the bank accounts to reflect that. My grandfather is completely on board with this, since it was prompted by him getting scammed out of at least $700, possibly more, and nearly getting his identity stolen. Turns out mom and dad walked in right as the scammer was trying to pressure grandpa into scanning copies of his driver's license and passport; dad yanked the phone line and internet connection to keep that from happening, which was good thinking on his part since grandpa wasn't convinced he was being scammed until his credit card company's fraud department explained that the money he'd been trying to deposit was actually a cash advance from his own credit card. Apparently it managed to get that far because the scammer was telling him that there was a problem with his bank account and money has been deposited wrong, and he had to withdraw it and go deposit it at a different bank. Which meant that grandpa was already primed to distrust the bank employees trying to warn him it was a scam. The only things stopping it from being worse is that one of the banks told him the account he was supposed to deposit to was closed, and his health meant that he got tired quickly and had to go home and rest - which meant that there was time for my parents to walk in during the middle of all this. Grandpa is pretty embarrassed about it, since he's used to being the guy who's financially savvy - and my dad and uncles are shocked for the same reason. I think they all expected that if anyone got caught like that, it'd be my grandmother (whose memory is definitely going).
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# ? Aug 24, 2018 08:22 |
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Guys, I recently got a job at a call center that seemed like a dream come true. As a felon, there aren't very many jobs in offices that I'm able to get so of course I jumped on the chance to randomly call people on the phone and lower the interest rates on their credit cards. At first, everything seemed pretty okay and me and my cousin had a decent time bullshitting for 6 hours a day while perusing the internet. But that was several weeks ago. The job itself is shrouded in mystery and no one will tell me exactly what it is we do, other than "qualify customers to have their interest rates lowered." This is a thing my boss acknowledges can be done for free at the bank by the customers themselves. So I turn to you intelligent people to tell me how legitimate it is to have a third party lower the interest rates on your credit cards. I don't wanna scam old people and if this is basically a scam I need to get the gently caress out of there.
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# ? Aug 26, 2018 15:49 |
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AllNewJonasSalk posted:Guys, I recently got a job at a call center that seemed like a dream come true. As a felon, there aren't very many jobs in offices that I'm able to get so of course I jumped on the chance to randomly call people on the phone and lower the interest rates on their credit cards. Pretty much every call center is a scam
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# ? Aug 26, 2018 15:54 |
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Piell posted:Pretty much every call center is a scam Well in that case I'm lucky enough to be poo poo at selling people things they don't want so have not actually scammed anyone except myself. AllNewJonasSalk fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Aug 26, 2018 |
# ? Aug 26, 2018 16:11 |
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If I had to guess, you’re generating leads for credit card companies. You qualify the customers which are eligible for a lower rate, and feed that to companies who will then try to get them to switch.
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# ? Aug 26, 2018 16:20 |
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Red Oktober posted:If I had to guess, you’re generating leads for credit card companies. You qualify the customers which are eligible for a lower rate, and feed that to companies who will then try to get them to switch. I don't want to sound naive or like an idiot, and I did a little research that got me thinking along the lines of what you're saying, but they told us specifically that we're not doing that. What I don't understand is what do they gain from keeping us in the dark as to the true nature of what we're doing? The few complaints I read online at the BBB said something along the lines of what you're saying we're probably doing.
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# ? Aug 26, 2018 16:25 |
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Absolutely no idea then. Can’t think off the top of my head of any other reason.
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# ? Aug 26, 2018 16:31 |
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That wasn't to say that you're not right. I think that you're probably a lot closer to the truth of what I'm doing than I am. I just don't understand the need for subterfuge with your own employees. I never had to navigate morality at McDonald's. I instinctively knew I was working for bad people at a bad company while I followed orders and flipped hamburgers all day.
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# ? Aug 26, 2018 16:36 |
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AllNewJonasSalk posted:I just don't understand the need for subterfuge with your own employees. Best case scenario: lovely call center boss doesn't really care what's going on as long as the paychecks clear, and can't be assed to explain the details of the business to a revolving door of employees. Or maybe boss doesn't fully understand themselves and just does whatever the people at the top tell them to do.
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# ? Aug 26, 2018 22:14 |
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They get their phone number lists from illegal database breaches and they don't want you to be able to divulge the name of the company because they're in big trouble with the FTC on account of ignoring the Federal Do Not Call List, among other things.
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# ? Aug 27, 2018 09:28 |
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What if you like could just download the Do Not Call List and use that for business????!! So convenience! There was a typhoon last week and I got some shady txts like "Click here for typhoon evacuation info http://huhuf445.fnfjnff/dndfg.php"
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# ? Aug 27, 2018 11:42 |
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Piell posted:Pretty much every call center is a scam with the important distinction that not all of them are scamming the people they're calling, many of them are scamming the businesses they are making the calls for
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# ? Aug 27, 2018 12:02 |
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Hi hello I would like to ask/know what the thread opinion is on STAR CITIZEN Thanks and namaste
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# ? Aug 27, 2018 19:28 |
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I'm sorry but you will need to Paypal me $1,000 for that info. Don't worry as a bonus I will throw in a sweet super awesome skin for your use in the game.
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# ? Aug 27, 2018 20:16 |
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Trastion posted:I'm sorry but you will need to Paypal me $1,000 for that info. Don't worry as a bonus I will throw in a sweet super awesome skin for your use in the game. Increase the price to $5,000 and throw in a picture of a spaceship and I'm on board.
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# ? Aug 27, 2018 20:23 |
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Trastion posted:I'm sorry but you will need to Paypal me $1,000 for that info. Don't worry as a bonus I will throw in a sweet super awesome skin for your use in the game. Uh, I think you'll find that all skins are earnable in-game (for a large dollar-equivalent). Now, if this was a limited* edition** ship***, I'd be down to drop some pesos on this promise. * "Limited" digital item ** "Edition" to become irrelevant 4 years from now when ship still isn't released *** may or may not be an actual ship
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# ? Aug 27, 2018 20:23 |
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Hi hello I would like to ask/know what the thread opinion is on STAR CITIZEN It's a scam.
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# ? Aug 28, 2018 04:19 |
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hellotoothpaste posted:MY GIRLFRIEND almost got popped by an "I'm in trouble" scam and I'm real glad I had been reading this thread/staying aware of scam tactics for a long while. Caller was pretending to be a friend of a relative in some sort of tight spot and needed money right now. Was trying to get her to send money via the Cash app (like Venmo/Zelle, I hadn't heard of it at all) and while she is empathetic and was starting to believe, fortunately she isn't gullible and feigned dependence on my decision until I got home and the phone rang again. I picked up and we had a different sort of conversation. I got one of these calls a some years back, it was pretty freaky. Never got a money pitch, just a bunch of rapid fire questions about close family members' personal details. A little too rapid fire, fortunately. They opened up with enough details to spin a vague but plausible story about having met my brother at a recent comic con and needing to get in touch with him, which I probably would have given up if he hadn't bounced around to so many other questions in the time it took me to go look up my brother's phone number. Questions about my other siblings, what cars various family members drove, what school they went to, what their pets were named... at which point the alarm bells started really going off, because 1. the guy's story couldn't account for knowing all these family members across the country that don't run in the same circles at all, and 2. gee this guy's questions all really sound like account security questions.
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# ? Aug 28, 2018 05:03 |
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Hi hello I would like to ask/know what the thread opinion is on STAR CITIZEN Just about the only thing I can think of that's scammier than bitcoin. At least with bitcoin, you have a thing that will theoretically be worth what you paid for it or more. Star Citizen doesn't even give you that much, it just gives you the promise of a thing and claims that it'll totally be worth the price when you get it. Also, not sure whether or not it's a cult these days. It might be a cult, but the last time I heard anything about Star Citizen was at least a couple years ago. As far as the "you don't need to know what we do" call center job goes, if whatever's going on there isn't actually illegal, then it's probably at least sketchy as hell and might be one of those things that's only not illegal because the law hasn't caught up yet. People are joking about how all call center jobs are sketchy, but I worked at a call center for a while and they were completely up front at every point that what I and my coworkers would be doing was inbound customer service for a cellphone company. I won't say it wasn't exhausting and soul-crushing to work there, but at no point did my bosses or managers try to be even a little bit vague about what kind of work we were doing.
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# ? Aug 28, 2018 11:18 |
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Wicked Them Beats posted:Increase the price to $5,000 and throw in a picture of a spaceship and I'm on board. Lowtax still not coming through on his promise
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# ? Aug 28, 2018 14:40 |
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Hi hello I would like to ask/know what the thread opinion is on STAR CITIZEN I like to go into SC twitch streams and act like I'm interested in the game then ask if its worth getting into it now or if I 'should wait until the Game of the Year edition is released since those usually come with all the extra dlc or extras'. Even supporters of the game/streamers will agree the game has to actually come out some day before there can be an GotY edition can come out, and its not likely to happen.
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# ? Aug 28, 2018 14:59 |
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It's less a scam and more an overly ambitious project with Molyneux'esque marketing, a terminal case of feature creep, spineless/powerless project managers and a leadership that is resorting to increasingly creative and dubious ways of making money to keep the ship afloat. Had they intended to scam folks from the start, they wouldn't have pissed so much cash away on hiring third party developers and opening new studios. I'm a little out of date though. There was just a free weekend and it sounds like they added a bunch of stuff but the engine can't handle multiplayer. Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Aug 28, 2018 |
# ? Aug 28, 2018 16:43 |
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Fruits of the sea posted:It's less a scam and more an overly ambitious project with Molyneux'esque marketing, a terminal case of feature creep, spineless/powerless project managers and a leadership that is resorting to increasingly creative and dubious ways of making money to keep the ship afloat. Had they intended to scam folks from the start, they wouldn't have pissed so much cash away on hiring third party developers and opening new studios. Maybe they knew they'd look like a scam so they opened the studios and paid the developers just to look like they weren't a scam!
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# ? Aug 28, 2018 16:56 |
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Maybe the scam was to play pretend big idea video game developers for a few years without having any reason to believe they could deliver an actual product?
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# ? Aug 28, 2018 17:18 |
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The scam was Christ Roberts promising a video game when what he really wanted was to pretend to be a Hollywood bigshot. "If I open a mocap studio then Gary Oldman will HAVE to talk to me!"
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# ? Aug 28, 2018 17:39 |
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Whats the scam behind people calling you telling you that you qualify for student loan forgiveness? Saying that because of some shady poo poo navient did I can get my loans forgiven. I have private loans with them so I highly doubt this is possible.
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# ? Aug 28, 2018 21:34 |
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What happened to the star citizen thread? I was reading the gbs one but I don't see it anymore.
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# ? Aug 28, 2018 21:43 |
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Crowdfunded boondoggles have their own subforum now: https://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=212
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# ? Aug 28, 2018 21:51 |
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Maybe the scam was to play pretend big idea video game developers for a few years without having any reason to believe they could deliver an actual product? nah, the guy behind the game, chris roberts, made the beloved wing commander series. he's a legit game developer with name recognition, and he practically invented the space fighter sim genre. for people who nerd out about those kind of games he's a rock star his problem is this: Wicked Them Beats posted:The scam was Christ Roberts promising a video game when what he really wanted was to pretend to be a Hollywood bigshot. he really is is a game developer with dreams of being a hollywood bigshot. he directed a movie based on his game series that was released in 1999. it was bad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR26_xbXIQ4 star citizen is an attempt to make the biggest, bestest space game ever. he promised everything under the sun would be in his omnigame and because of his reputation, people believed him. the project didn't start as a scam, but it arguably is one now because roberts let his fantasies dictate the scale of his project to the point that it is completely unbuildable as promised
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# ? Aug 28, 2018 23:26 |
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He promised a game where you could live in a sci-fi space world, and be a cool dude there. This appealed to sad people, who were duly separated from their money.
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# ? Aug 29, 2018 04:10 |
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So, they can meet all project goals by opening a Star Wars Galaxies server and pocketing the difference
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# ? Aug 29, 2018 04:30 |
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People believed the guy who promised the moon during the development of Freelancer and thought this time he could make the game he promised without Microsoft interfering. Only it turns out there's a reason why Microsoft kicked him off of Freelancer and it wasn't just because they were greedy and wanted to recoup their investment.
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# ? Aug 29, 2018 05:14 |
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Freelancer endes up being a nice, enjoyable game tho, so lol at him/them
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# ? Aug 29, 2018 09:55 |
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luxury handset posted:nah, the guy behind the game, chris roberts, made the beloved wing commander series. he's a legit game developer with name recognition, and he practically invented the space fighter sim genre. for people who nerd out about those kind of games he's a rock star It's not just bad, it's all-time bad movies levels of bad. Really, really bad. And aside from being in space with characters having the same names as the games and having cat-like antagonists called Kilrathi it has nothing in common with the video games. Like, it goes out of it's way to break canon in as many ways as possible. And it's bad. One of those 'no redeeming qualities' bad movies.
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# ? Aug 29, 2018 23:45 |
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Holyshoot posted:Whats the scam behind people calling you telling you that you qualify for student loan forgiveness? Saying that because of some shady poo poo navient did I can get my loans forgiven. I have private loans with them so I highly doubt this is possible.
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# ? Sep 1, 2018 11:30 |
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Hi hello I would like to ask/know what the thread opinion is on STAR CITIZEN I think it started as an earnest attempt to make a game, and probably still is on some level, but Chris Roberts isn't very good at schedule and budget, and when they realized they could make nine-figures by selling people pictures of spaceships the business plan evolved. As always the smart move with crowd-funded games is to just buy it when it see a general release, if and when that happens and if the game turns out to be any good. They'll probably slap a "1.0" on whatever they've got once the fanbase has eroded enough and the money dries up but I wouldn't count on it being any good.
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# ? Sep 1, 2018 12:49 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 06:26 |
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The Moon Monster posted:I think it started as an earnest attempt to make a game, and probably still is on some level, but Chris Roberts isn't very good at schedule and budget, and when they realized they could make nine-figures by selling people pictures of spaceships the business plan evolved. On top of schedule and budget Chris also don't know how version numbers work so they're on v2.3 or somewhere thereabouts.
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# ? Sep 1, 2018 16:48 |