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Reply All did a great two part episode where one of the hosts bonded with one of those guys, and he ended up flying over to India to try to meet the caller and his boss; he ended up discovering some wild things about how these places operate. I think there was a followup a few years later, where he reconnected with the caller and caught up on how he was doing?
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Sep 12, 2021 19:47
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jkk posted:I am in Finland. The calls come from random European numbers (UK, Sweden, Netherlands...not that this means anything, I assume it's possible to fake the numbers) but the callers often have Indian or Eastern European accents. Blockchain dude sounded Polish. Do they speak Finnish or English? I hadn't considered that Euros would be subjected to these same calls. I love the one about how my social security number has been associated with fraud and I need to speak to a federal agent immediately, only to be connected to someone who barely speaks English.
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Sep 12, 2021 20:02
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regulargonzalez posted:Do they speak Finnish or English? I hadn't considered that Euros would be subjected to these same calls. They speak English. I get Finnish language telemarketers too but the most scummy ones just try to sell you a monthly subscription to vitamins/socks/whatever. Edit: Robocalls! I forgot about the loving robocalls, I get those in Finnish sometimes. GB Luxury Hamper fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 12, 2021 20:18
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Scarodactyl posted:Not to mention that if they were willing (or able) to feel empathy for their victims they wouldn't continue in the job. "everyone working for the scammers is literally a sociopath" is quite the take.
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Sep 12, 2021 20:40
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BonHair posted:Spoofing a phone number is only marginally more difficult than spoofing an email domain, with roughly none of the compensating measures. In my experience, the ones calling from Microsoft support with Danish numbers have been exclusively English speaking with Indian accents. I did have one Danish guy pretending to be the police, and he was quite good, but he also did his research and knew my address and stuff. Oh, that's fun. I've only gotten a couple speaking english. There are way, way fewer calls than when I was in North America, presumably because EU regulations keep the telecoms companies somewhat in check.
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Sep 12, 2021 20:41
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Slimy Hog posted:"everyone working for the scammers is literally a sociopath" is quite the take.
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Sep 12, 2021 20:44
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Scarodactyl posted:These people are knowingly manipulating vulnerable people to steal from them. If you're doing that long term I assume that either you don't care about hurting other people or you have to decide that actually it's OK because your victims deserve to be taken advantage of. You're saying you've never met anyone who didn't think about their lovely hourly jobs outside the paycheck they get bi-weekly?
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Sep 12, 2021 20:46
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Scarodactyl posted:These people are knowingly manipulating vulnerable people to steal from them. If you're doing that long term I assume that either you don't care about hurting other people or you have to decide that actually it's OK because your victims deserve to be taken advantage of. The vulnerability of the marks is very much a matter of perspective, as well.
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Sep 12, 2021 20:49
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Scarodactyl posted:These people are knowingly manipulating vulnerable people to steal from them. If you're doing that long term I assume that either you don't care about hurting other people or you have to decide that actually it's OK because your victims deserve to be taken advantage of. If you have a problem with people working a toxic job for an rear end in a top hat so they can feed themselves and their family I have some very bad news about capitalism for you.
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Sep 12, 2021 20:52
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tuyop posted:The vulnerability of the marks is very much a matter of perspective, as well.
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Sep 12, 2021 20:58
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Every sunscreen bottle says you need to reapply after 2 hours - is that because after 2 hours in the sun the sunscreen becomes ineffective, or does it just absorb into your skin and you need to put more on since it's functionally not there anymore?
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Sep 12, 2021 21:14
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Scarodactyl posted:These people are knowingly manipulating vulnerable people to steal from them. If you're doing that long term I assume that either you don't care about hurting other people or you have to decide that actually it's OK because your victims deserve to be taken advantage of. The human brain is amazing at being able to rationalize just about anything. If you a smart go-getter from a poor/middle income country who takes one of these jobs, you might be the the primary source of income for your extended family, maybe you are taking care of aging parents and putting your kids through school. Maybe you're saving up to start a business or to emigrate somewhere. Since 98% of the people will either hang up on you or tell you to gently caress off, you assume the 2% who fall for it are especially fat, dumb, lazy and greedy. If your scam preys on the elderly, then they will be dead soon anyway and the only people being hurt are their spoiled heirs who stand to inherit less money, so then it boils down to your kids vs their kids. I'm not defending anyone or anything, but it is not hard to see why someone would take one of these jobs, how you come to view them as targets and not people, and since you are on some sort of commission, it will be survival of the fittest.
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Sep 12, 2021 21:17
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Scarodactyl posted:These people are knowingly manipulating vulnerable people to steal from them. If you're doing that long term I assume that either you don't care about hurting other people or you have to decide that actually it's OK because your victims deserve to be taken advantage of. It's this 90% of the time. There would be a lot fewer phone scammers if sociopathy was a job requirement.
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Sep 12, 2021 21:20
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Scarodactyl posted:Much like email scams the calls are typically set up to quickly bounce people who are unlikely to give them money. They prey on the subset of people least equipped to identify an obvious scam--think who is going to not notice that a robocaller is a recording or even a cheap computer-generated voice. But maybe they're just stupid and deserve to be hurt for it. I just mean that getting scammed out of $100 for fake antivirus or whatever is kind of a big deal for, say, my grandmother, but she would recover. However, this is a pretty significant amount of cash in like Bangladesh. We would call the grandmother the vulnerable one in that exchange even though she’s relatively unharmed by the whole thing. Of course scamming is bad and it’d be best if nobody chose or had to do it, but that doesn’t immediately mean that all scammers are these incredible cartoon villains like come on.
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Sep 12, 2021 21:29
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Which is what I am saying--I am sure sociopaths would have an easier time of it and are probably overrepresented, but others just have to decide that their victims suck and deserve it and thus they don't need to empathize with them. Basically it's either quit or  I may be a little extra salty about this because my mom died after a decade long struggle with early onset dementia. We were there to protect her but if not she'd have been an ideal victim.
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Sep 12, 2021 21:31
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Badger of Basra posted:Every sunscreen bottle says you need to reapply after 2 hours - is that because after 2 hours in the sun the sunscreen becomes ineffective, or does it just absorb into your skin and you need to put more on since it's functionally not there anymore? Water and sweat will both wash sunscreen off.
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Sep 12, 2021 21:35
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Sunscreen can have a few different mechanisms of action, either reflecting or absorbing UV (or both). Reflective minerals like zinc oxide or titanium dioxide aren't going anywhere chemically speaking, but maybe the organic chemicals that absorb UV could degrade? But I would bet it is mostly just wearing off.
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Sep 12, 2021 21:40
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Scarodactyl posted:Which is what I am saying--I am sure sociopaths would have an easier time of it and are probably overrepresented, but others just have to decide that their victims suck and deserve it and thus they don't need to empathize with them. Basically it's either quit or True, and you could fill in the blank just as easily with 1. Human traffickers 2. Executives at pharma companies pushing opiates 3. People mixing up meth in their bathtubs 4. Ransomware creators 5. War profiteers 6. Folks trolling around the dark web looking for stolen credit cards 7. Tax cheats and the accountants who make it possible 8. Mob boss Of course I can go on, but there are a log of shifty ways you can scam the system and there never seems to be a shortage of people willing to aid and abet the crimes.
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Sep 12, 2021 21:59
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Hmm interesting but have you considered stealing from poor old ladies is good actually I am very smart
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Sep 12, 2021 22:39
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Manager Hoyden posted:Hmm interesting but have you considered stealing from poor old ladies is good actually Some people are trying way too hard to unironically justify this
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Sep 12, 2021 22:45
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When I were ten years old, that's when paw took sick and I had to go to work in the scam mines to keep food on the table Got scam lung by the time I were fifteen but that's life I suppose
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Sep 12, 2021 23:37
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Just FYI scammers aren't going after $100 per mark, they're going for thousands minimum. It's a very clever industry - look up Mark Rober on YouTube, he goes into detail on one sort of scam. My aunt was tricked into wiring literally ~$75000 to some scammers (thankfully, we were able to get that reversed quickly enough that she didn't lose anything).
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Sep 13, 2021 01:37
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I'm still going to blast an airhorn into the phone when they call. To hell with them.
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Sep 13, 2021 02:43
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I guess I just don't answer my phone so I never deal with those kinds of people? It sounds like an unbelievably horrible job. Like sometimes I need to call the credit card company over a declined charge because it's from some random country or whatever, and I always make sure to be extremely positive and understanding, and really direct and efficient to make the call as short as possible, and thank them profusely at the end. I think I heard somewhere that calls get reviewed somehow, and I feel this vague responsibility to try to make the call center people's lives less lovely if there's any chance at all that I can. I mean do those people (the call center scam people) have metrics? If I somehow got on the phone with one of them I'd try to say "no thanks" and hang up as soon as I realized what was going on. I'm assuming it's worse for them if they get a long rambling call that doesn't end in a sale than an immediate hangup, right? Then again I guess I can't imagine trying to waste a scammer's time regardless of the situation. Those stories or videos about people stringing along a scammer are really unpleasant, I think there's a fundamental mental disconnect, like I can't understand the mindset of that at all.
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Sep 13, 2021 03:31
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If I lived in a country like Nigeria or India I would literally not feel bad for one second about scamming some old lady in a wealthy nation like America. Chances are my parents died at like 40 or something in order to enable her to live to 80. Globally speaking it is pretty loving funny to watch Americans pretend like anyone in their country could be considered an actual victim by someone in the developing world that America has enslaved and ravaged and enacted genocide upon. It's like most Americans somehow just choose to completely ignore what their country did and continues to do to the rest of the world. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Sep 13, 2021 04:13
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Mafic Rhyolite posted:If I lived in a country like Nigeria or India I would literally not feel bad for one second about scamming some old lady in a wealthy nation like America. Chances are my parents died at like 40 or something in order to enable her to live to 80. I'm Australian. They can eat my arsehole.
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Sep 13, 2021 04:37
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zachol posted:I guess I just don't answer my phone so I never deal with those kinds of people? It sounds like an unbelievably horrible job. They usually get a percentage of the amount scammed. Scambaiters waste scammers time because being on the phone with them for 3 hours means they aren’t scamming someone else.
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Sep 13, 2021 04:40
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The wealth of Australia comes from the same colonial history as America, they're just not the ones currently running the world. That scammer on the phone is not particularly concerned about any of this stuff in actuality, he's just trying not to starve to death or get murdered for being poor.
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Sep 13, 2021 04:40
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Mafic Rhyolite posted:If I lived in a country like Nigeria or India I would literally not feel bad for one second about scamming some old lady in a wealthy nation like America. Chances are my parents died at like 40 or something in order to enable her to live to 80. A lot of these guys are working in modern cities, are pretty sharp and many have degrees or some sort of education. They aren’t starving they just want to make a quick buck. They’re literally stealing the retirement funds from the elderly.
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Sep 13, 2021 04:42
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Living in a modern city doesn't mean you won't get murdered for being poor, the threat of homelessness is the same as the threat of death for people who don't have families that can put them up somewhere, even in most wealthy nations.
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Sep 13, 2021 04:44
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Mafic Rhyolite posted:The wealth of Australia comes from the same colonial history as America, they're just not the ones currently running the world. Oh, forgot to edit in 1: Neither America nor Australia had anything to do with British colonialism in India. 2: A little old lady in either country is not responsible for the legacy of colonialism, nor deserves to be victimised for it. 3: e: forget it, no point being *that* mean. It was funnier in my head. Hyperlynx fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Sep 13, 2021 |
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Sep 13, 2021 04:45
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Yeah I remember being a middle school edgelord who had just learned about how america is bad, I remember dismissing poverty in the first world as deserved or unserious or whatever. Then I grew up and learned that while it was a different beast than the poverty in the rest of the world, it was still genuinely horrible, and just as avoidable as global poverty.
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Sep 13, 2021 04:46
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Hyperlynx posted:Oh, forgot to edit in 1: Colonialism and the legacy of white supremacy in global politics is very much the driving factor for the creation of both of those countries as they are today, and they certainly do nothing to make up for their crimes against humanity across the world. 2: Personal responsibility of some old lady in a wealthy nation has nothing to do with how impoverished people feel about scamming someone in a nation that benefits from enslaving them through systems of modern globalization. 3: <3
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Sep 13, 2021 04:48
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alnilam posted:Yeah I remember being a middle school edgelord who had just learned about how america is bad, I remember dismissing poverty in the first world as deserved or unserious or whatever. I literally said in that post that the threat of death for being poor exists in most wealthy nations as well, dunno whose posts you're responding to?
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Sep 13, 2021 04:50
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Mafic Rhyolite posted:1: Colonialism and the legacy of white supremacy in global politics is very much the driving factor for the creation of both of those countries as they are today, and they certainly do nothing to make up for their crimes against humanity across the world. The victims can be poc op
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Sep 13, 2021 05:07
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Will it become trendy to start hating chinese supremacy when china's GDP overtakes americas?
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Sep 13, 2021 05:08
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Manager Hoyden posted:When I were ten years old, that's when paw took sick and I had to go to work in the scam mines to keep food on the table Well done Sir! Mafic Rhyolite posted:If I lived in a country like Nigeria or India I would literally not feel bad for one second about scamming some old lady in a wealthy nation like America. Chances are my parents died at like 40 or something in order to enable her to live to 80. I couldn't disagree more. Sure, we have already established how a Nigerian or an Indian would be drawn to such a job and since its unlikely they have ever been to Europe or North America they would have an unrealistic view of Europeans and Americans. But where you totally go off the rails is you forget who the victims of the scams are. They are not the rich and educated. They are not the people who are chartering private jets to take them from their ski chalet in Aspen to their beach resort in the Caribbean. I work in banking and I see first hand who the victims are and they are NOT the people who benefit from the crimes America or Europe has committed. I used to work at a small credit union and one of our members was an immigrant from Senegal who had a menial job at a hospital. On the side he was a drummer and on weekends he and his brother and friends would go all over New England doing various gigs. I have so many stories. He was kind of happy-go-lucky and full of life and because I helped him get approved for a small loan he then trusted me for everything. He was super naïve and trusting. Different story that gives perspective, he needed transportation to carry his drums and friends to their concerts and some fast talking salesman talked him into a new Chevy Aveo. Bear in mind he is 6'5" and his brother is 6'2". I don't even know how he even fit in the thing, say nothing about drums. We somehow made the numbers work for a trade so he could get out of that into a used Blazer. Anyway, I came back from my lunch break one day and a voicemail from the guy wondering if might have done something wrong and he wanted to run it by me. He told me someone called him and told him that he won a scholarship and all he had to do was pass along his checking account number and routing number so they could deposit the scholarship money. As soon as he told me that we immediately shut down his account, moved everything to a new one, ordered new cards, helped him set up his direct deposit, etc. Later that afternoon I got a call from a Montreal phone number where they were attempting to verify his old account. So, yeah, lets assume he banked at a huge megabank instead of a little credit union and he couldn't get through to someone he knew on a first name basis who immediately shut everything down and he had his savings wiped out, is he an "actual" victim in your opinion?
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Sep 13, 2021 05:09
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Mafic Rhyolite posted:The wealth of Australia. Modern Australian wealth comes from being china's diploma mill, coal mine, mineral toybox and export proxy op
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Sep 13, 2021 05:12
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Uhh in that second paragraph I'm referring to the people in India or Nigeria not considering him an actual victim, rather than sincey dumb rich guy that they can make a living off of. I don't think most people who get scammed personally deserve it, but I think the concept of deserving things isn't particularly useful in this context.
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Sep 13, 2021 05:12
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Methanar posted:Modern Australian wealth comes from being china's diploma mill, coal mine and mineral toybox op The rich people in China using globalization to enrich themselves are no less deserving of the guillotine than the rich people in any other country. China's history isn't really one of global colonialism, the powerful in China utilize other mechanisms of capitalism and military power to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor. It's no better or worse, but it has nothing to do with the current state of countries like India and Nigeria so I don't get why you keep bringing it up.* *I actually do get why you keep bringing it up, it's because the incel lifestyle you subject yourself to has made you into a creepy white supremacist over the years and you've chronicled it across at least four boards on this site. Mafic Rhyolite fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Sep 13, 2021 |
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Sep 13, 2021 05:17
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