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Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

duodenum posted:

Exactly, why is spoofing allowed? Why is it POSSIBLE? If it’s tolerated because it’s profitable, then turn the loving screws.

AT&T probably makes sure senators’ phones and staffers’ phones never have this problem so it never comes up in D.C.

I got a call from some random stranger wanting to know why I called him. I had to explain that the scammers were spoofing my number.

I had a coworker who got a scam call from herself this way.

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bort
Mar 13, 2003

MisterOblivious posted:

You can try replying "Alaye" to txt scammers. It's basically a codeword for "I'm a scammer too, stop wasting our time." "Omo ode" if you want to call them a dumbass.

https://www.legit.ng/1031944-8-insults-yoruba-mothers-use-will-reset-brain.html
Not as good when your iPhone autocorrects to “Slate”

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

duodenum posted:

Exactly, why is spoofing allowed? Why is it POSSIBLE? If it’s tolerated because it’s profitable, then turn the loving screws.

AT&T probably makes sure senators’ phones and staffers’ phones never have this problem so it never comes up in D.C.

It exists because if Foo Corporation has 500 people phoning out, there had to be a standard for sending your caller ID desynced from the 'actual' number, so the caller ID all directs people back to Foo Corporation's main phone number.

The system was not designed for the current world.


The former FBI director got hit by a Jamaican lottery spam call a few years back

https://www.fbi.gov/video-repository/webster-scam-final-021919.mp4/view


and starting in on death threats

quote:

Caller: Hey, I know you are playing around, right? You know what I am going to do? I won’t call you back. I am going to kill you. I am going to kill your husband. I am going to set your house on fire. Because you seem to be playing around and you doesn’t know who am I. So listen. I am not giving you anymore warning. I am just going to send out my guys. And listen. Anytime you put back yourself in Washington, D.C., you will be killed. With a sniper. I know your home. You see, you live at the place where your home at. You live at a very lonely place. And the moment you arrive, I’m gonna put a shot in your head. I am going to burn your house down. I won’t, I don’t play.

which got the FBI super on their rear end about it.

Tunicate fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Mar 18, 2022

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Tunicate posted:

It exists because if Foo Corporation has 500 people phoning out, there had to be a standard for sending your caller ID desynced from the 'actual' number, so the caller ID all directs people back to Foo Corporation's main phone number.

The system was not designed for the current world.


The former FBI director got hit by a Jamaican lottery spam call a few years back

https://www.fbi.gov/video-repository/webster-scam-final-021919.mp4/view


and starting in on death threats

which got the FBI super on their rear end about it.

If you threaten to kill the former head of the FBI it seems like Jamaican a pretty huge mistake.

Thomamelas
Mar 11, 2009

duodenum posted:

Exactly, why is spoofing allowed? Why is it POSSIBLE? If it’s tolerated because it’s profitable, then turn the loving screws.

AT&T probably makes sure senators’ phones and staffers’ phones never have this problem so it never comes up in D.C.

Because when the system was designed, almost zero thought was put into security. And things like voicemail, caller ID, extensions for businesses were all kind of hacks added to a system that wasn't really designed to be that secure to begin with.

Akratic Method
Mar 9, 2013

It's going to pay off eventually--I'm sure of it.

Any day now.

So, for whatever reason I occasionally look in my email spam folder just to see what the latest stupid bullshit is, and I've started seeing something I can't explain at all. I get spam emails that consist of nothing but "click here to unsubscribe from these emails" and the link is a mailto: addressed to a bunch of random email addresses.

I cannot figure out how this benefits anyone enough to reach even the minimal level of effort required to send spam email for it. Has anyone else seen these?

Zamujasa
Oct 27, 2010



Bread Liar

Akratic Method posted:

So, for whatever reason I occasionally look in my email spam folder just to see what the latest stupid bullshit is, and I've started seeing something I can't explain at all. I get spam emails that consist of nothing but "click here to unsubscribe from these emails" and the link is a mailto: addressed to a bunch of random email addresses.

I cannot figure out how this benefits anyone enough to reach even the minimal level of effort required to send spam email for it. Has anyone else seen these?

responding to it will put you in as a confirmed dumbass to then target with more spam

MisterOblivious
Mar 17, 2010

by sebmojo

Eric the Mauve posted:

"oh golly gee there's just no way to stop these obvious bot calls from getting through" unless someone is paying them handsomely to look the other way.

There's something going on here that I have never quite been able to fully understand.

IIRC phone companies pay to dial in to a different company's system which is balanced by calls coming out of that system. (The internet works that way) The scammers/spammers dial out from little-used interchanges, which make the fees balance out or at least shift the payments to be more favorable to the small operator. This is the system that used to make calls to cell phones cost more in the US. This can be abused to collect more money on in-bound calls as well, like for 900 numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_rates


Internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering

Peering is why you can sometimes get a better ping to games using a VPN. Comcast tries to keep as much of it's traffic on its own network to save money and it often uses shittier routing. I'm 11 jumps though the Comcast network to reach Google's California DNS server and 8 jumps through my VPN.

DiabloStarCraft
Oct 12, 2006

What is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?"

CATS. CATS ARE NICE
🐱🐱🐱💀🐱🐱🐱
I worked for BT (a UK telecom company) for a while and was told we legally have to connect calls, otherwise we're editorialising or something, we can 'block' by sending any calls we think are spam to a special voicemail box but the call still connects

Cast_No_Shadow
Jun 8, 2010

The Republic of Luna Equestria is a huge, socially progressive nation, notable for its punitive income tax rates. Its compassionate, cynical population of 714m are ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship government, which ensures that no-one outside the party gets too rich.

That makes sense.

Absolute cracker of unintended consequences, imagine giving someone like Comcast the legal ability to decide what calls you were allowed to recieve.

Sorry the hospital calling about your dad didn't connect, you should have been on the premium plan.

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...
Sorry, we cannot block calls for you from the guy who is clearly jacking it on the other end, that might interfere with their speech when they screech "HNNMGGGGGGHHH"

Yngwie Mangosteen
Aug 23, 2007
Anyone else start getting endless spam texts starting a week or two ago? I'd almost never get them and then suddenly *bam*

Akratic Method
Mar 9, 2013

It's going to pay off eventually--I'm sure of it.

Any day now.

I get tons of spam iMessage, but it's been a very long time since I've seen a spam SMS.

Absurd Alhazred
Mar 27, 2010

by Athanatos

Captain Monkey posted:

Anyone else start getting endless spam texts starting a week or two ago? I'd almost never get them and then suddenly *bam*

Yeah, bunch of ones with I'm assuming images in them, I just delete them without downloading because of malware concerns.

Poldarn
Feb 18, 2011

Local hero turns the tables on scammer, stolen from the Schadenfruede thread:

The Fattest PI posted:

Here's some maybe schad for you:
People all over kajiji trying to sell their car have been getting contacted by a VOIP number who claims to be local to them and is interested in buying the car. Everything seems legit until they ask for a report on the car. It's a carfax kind of thing, but they demand it from a specific website (the site they own). It actually gives you a real report I think but they're just charging like 10x what the real website does, but uses their EXACT results. Of course even if you buy the report the interested buyer flakes so you're left with no car sale and you just donated 50-100 to the scammer. I only became aware of them because they almost got my friend who's struggling for money and trying to sell her car.

I was going through the website trying to pick up info, but it was mostly a premade mockup you can buy, and a lot of the links didn't go anywhere. One thing that did work was their chat-help feature, the little bubble in the bottom right that pops up. I'm not 100% sure how those work whether it's a 3rd party company or if you can just get those messages forwarded to a specific phone number or address or app or whatever. I tested it posing as a rube, and whoever was on the other end was coming off sketchy enough so I didn't feel bad about sending them lemonparty.jpg a bunch of times, randomly throughout the day and night. He'd close the chat and the chat thing would go away completely but that was defeated by just using an incognito window. Sometimes I'd talk a little bit and he'd ask for a screenshot of the receipt for the payment I claimed I was having trouble with. Here's the receipt: lemonparty
Eventually he stopped answering altogether and would just close the chatbox any time I said anything or sent anything. Whatever here's another lemonparty! I like to imagine that this piece of poo poo was getting lemonparty notifications while he was sitting at home or out for dinner or whatever.

At the start of this before any of the lemonparties I looked up the site's registrar and sent them an email through their abuse reporting tool thing, laid out all the evidence that they were using their service for a scam. I just got a reply today thanking me for all the info and the website was taken down.

Bum the Sad
Aug 25, 2002
Hell Gem

Captain Monkey posted:

Anyone else start getting endless spam texts starting a week or two ago? I'd almost never get them and then suddenly *bam*

I’ve started getting spam texts from email addresses in the last week or so. Never happened before.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008
I think the thread would appreciate this, hopefully reposting is ok.

There's a slight possibility my dad was history's first "Lenny"

Long ago my dad was tired, stressed out, infant Pekinduck was screaming, one of those days. He juggles me and grabs the phone and its a prerecorded spam call for a sketchy/fake charity or something. Something like "SAVE THE CHILDREN NOW CALL 1-800-XXX-XXXX" on loop. He nearly goes on a rampage but decides to do something constructive.

He realizes three things:

1. 800 numbers are obviously free for the caller, but in the 80's were extortionately expensive for the receiving party. Something like 25-50 cents just to connect.

2. He called the 800 number and it wasn't a live person, just another recording and a voicemail box. If you called and immediately hung up they got charged 50 cents and would be none the wiser.

3. Even in the 80's prerecorded telemarketing was already illegal. They couldn't run crying to the police or phone company about any telephone shenanigans aimed at them.

At work he had access to a mainframe computer with a handful of unused modems with dedicated phone lines. He wrote a program to have them all constantly dial the 800 number and let 'er rip. After a few weeks the number was disconnected, probably when they got the bill.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

I've been getting spam sent to my phone via Google Drive shares, same way you'd get a notification that someone shared a file with you... Except the title is your typical sex trade spam, complete with emoji usage.

Other thing that happened recently that bypassed Google's spam filter was an invoice sent to me through QuickBooks for around 100 dollars for the purchase of Norton Antivirus. The link in the email went to an actual (bullshit) invoice hosted by Intuit QuickBooks.

So, two kinds of scam sent using legitimate services, one to trigger phone notifications, and the other to bypass spam filters.

Sk8ers4Christ
Mar 10, 2008

Lord, I ask you to watch over me as I pop an ollie off this 50-foot ramp. If I fail, I'll be seeing you.
I got scammed a couple weeks ago, but I'm wondering how the scammer benefitted in this case. I saw a listing on Facebook Marketplace for some furniture I wanted. I contacted the seller, and they told me to go to their website to make the purchase (already a red flag, but I did it anyway). The weird thing was the seller insisted on PayPal, because it was the "most secure" payment method, since they wouldn't be able to see the customer's credit card number (??????). Despite my reservations, I bought the item.

Anyway, no surprise, I never received it. The seller ghosted me when I tried to contact them, and later deleted their website and profile (or blocked me). I filed a claim through PayPal, and I got my money back. I'm not really mad about it, since I knew I was deliberately ignoring my gut feelings, and it wasn't for an amount I couldn't afford to lose (plus I knew I could get it back, if not through PayPal, then through a chargeback with my credit card company). I'm just wondering now what the endgame was here. I'm thinking the scammer just withdrew whatever money they received from their PayPal account and ran, and the refund came from PayPal? If that's the case, I imagine PayPal would lose hundreds and thousands of dollars over this stunt, and it surprises me they would make it so easy for scammers to pull something like this. If the refund came from the scammer's account, then what was the whole point of this in the first place?

I've heard of PayPal scams where the scammer will send a package to a random address near the buyer (usually something cheap like stickers, seeds, etc.), so they can generate a real tracking number, and it will show that the package was delivered when the buyer tries to file a claim. PayPal then closes the case and makes a judgment in the seller's favor. I was half expecting that, but I never received a tracking number or any kind of communication from the scammer after I made the purchase. Also, another weird thing I noticed while I was browsing their website: they were selling all their items for under $100, even brand new dining room sets, sofas, beds, etc. Does that let them avoid detection or something?

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

doctorfrog posted:

I've been getting spam sent to my phone via Google Drive shares, same way you'd get a notification that someone shared a file with you... Except the title is your typical sex trade spam, complete with emoji usage.

Other thing that happened recently that bypassed Google's spam filter was an invoice sent to me through QuickBooks for around 100 dollars for the purchase of Norton Antivirus. The link in the email went to an actual (bullshit) invoice hosted by Intuit QuickBooks.

So, two kinds of scam sent using legitimate services, one to trigger phone notifications, and the other to bypass spam filters.

I've gotten the drive spam as well, on my personal account. I solved this by turning off the Drive notifications altogether.

Silius
Apr 24, 2010

Volmarias posted:

I've gotten the drive spam as well, on my personal account. I solved this by turning off the Drive notifications altogether.

I was looking into this as well but all that does is turn off the notification to the file, the file will still be in your account chilling with all other shared files. I've been getting these for the past 3 days. I've looked into it and can't find any solution.

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

InfectedZero posted:

I was looking into this as well but all that does is turn off the notification to the file, the file will still be in your account chilling with all other shared files. I've been getting these for the past 3 days. I've looked into it and can't find any solution.

Don't look at your shared files unless someone specifically tells you to look for something they shared?

therobit
Aug 19, 2008

I've been tryin' to speak with you for a long time

Sk8ers4Christ posted:

I got scammed a couple weeks ago, but I'm wondering how the scammer benefitted in this case. I saw a listing on Facebook Marketplace for some furniture I wanted. I contacted the seller, and they told me to go to their website to make the purchase (already a red flag, but I did it anyway). The weird thing was the seller insisted on PayPal, because it was the "most secure" payment method, since they wouldn't be able to see the customer's credit card number (??????). Despite my reservations, I bought the item.

Anyway, no surprise, I never received it. The seller ghosted me when I tried to contact them, and later deleted their website and profile (or blocked me). I filed a claim through PayPal, and I got my money back. I'm not really mad about it, since I knew I was deliberately ignoring my gut feelings, and it wasn't for an amount I couldn't afford to lose (plus I knew I could get it back, if not through PayPal, then through a chargeback with my credit card company). I'm just wondering now what the endgame was here. I'm thinking the scammer just withdrew whatever money they received from their PayPal account and ran, and the refund came from PayPal? If that's the case, I imagine PayPal would lose hundreds and thousands of dollars over this stunt, and it surprises me they would make it so easy for scammers to pull something like this. If the refund came from the scammer's account, then what was the whole point of this in the first place?

I've heard of PayPal scams where the scammer will send a package to a random address near the buyer (usually something cheap like stickers, seeds, etc.), so they can generate a real tracking number, and it will show that the package was delivered when the buyer tries to file a claim. PayPal then closes the case and makes a judgment in the seller's favor. I was half expecting that, but I never received a tracking number or any kind of communication from the scammer after I made the purchase. Also, another weird thing I noticed while I was browsing their website: they were selling all their items for under $100, even brand new dining room sets, sofas, beds, etc. Does that let them avoid detection or something?

PayPal doesn’t always refund the customer and if they don’t your bank often won’t do a chargeback because you authorized PayPal to withdraw the money per the terms of the PayPal user agreement. PayPal will do a lot to not pay you if a lot of money is on the line. Cash apps generally are hit or miss with whether they will refund you in case of unauthorized transactions and typically your bank will not be any help of you authorized the app to withdraw funds from your account, which you did if yo signed up for the app. It’s lovely.

JUST MAKING CHILI
Feb 14, 2008
Why do I keep getting robocalled by Medicare rewards, it’s endless! Do I blame Texas’s DPS data breach for putting my info out there?

Sk8ers4Christ
Mar 10, 2008

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

therobit posted:

PayPal doesn’t always refund the customer and if they don’t your bank often won’t do a chargeback because you authorized PayPal to withdraw the money per the terms of the PayPal user agreement. PayPal will do a lot to not pay you if a lot of money is on the line. Cash apps generally are hit or miss with whether they will refund you in case of unauthorized transactions and typically your bank will not be any help of you authorized the app to withdraw funds from your account, which you did if yo signed up for the app. It’s lovely.

Oh drat. That is lovely. Guess I got lucky that Paypal refunded me. Though maybe the trick was I spoke to a live person? I tried to dispute it on the Paypal website, but that wasn't getting anywhere, so I called instead. At first I got an automated system, but I just repeated "live agent" until I finally got an actual person on the line. She immediately agreed it sounded like a scam and just escalated the case for me. Basically it sounded like Paypal would contact the seller instead of the buyer, and since the scammer never responded in my case, it just automatically closed in my favor. Took a couple weeks but it was waaaay easier than trying to navigate a dumb menu that just told me "You already have an open dispute." Ugh.

Actually now that I think about it those phone menus should be considered scams too. I feel like companies/organizations set them up in a way that always leads you to a dead end rather than connect you to a real person that would be able to understand and resolve your issue.

Krime
Jul 30, 2003

Somebody has to do the scoring around here.
A while ago I was getting Spam in my Google calendar. Guess they were in inviting me to events via my email address and the links would show up in my calendar.

Thankfully they stopped.

Eric the Mauve
May 8, 2012

Making you happy for a buck since 199X

Sk8ers4Christ posted:

Actually now that I think about it those phone menus should be considered scams too. I feel like companies/organizations set them up in a way that always leads you to a dead end rather than connect you to a real person that would be able to understand and resolve your issue.

The intent is definitely to discourage customers from getting customer service by making it as difficult as possible (in some cases literally impossible) to speak to a human who both knows how to solve your problem and is empowered to solve your problem. Comcast studied how long it takes and how many prompts it takes before a certain high percentage of callers give up, and designed a system that takes a little longer than that to navigate. That was years ago and doubtless many other companies followed the model (I don't know if Comcast invented it or merely raised it to the state of the art).

Customers don't pay for after-sale service in most cases, thus it's purely a cost center, thus the goal is to keep the cost as low as possible by providing as little service as possible. We employ X humans, only a very few Y of which can do anything more than read scripts and send the customer on another round of Menu Roulette, so we tweak the system until enough callers give up before reaching one that the average call time is Z.

Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Mar 31, 2022

D34THROW
Jan 29, 2012

RETAIL RETAIL LISTEN TO ME BITCH ABOUT RETAIL
:rant:

Sk8ers4Christ posted:

Actually now that I think about it those phone menus should be considered scams too. I feel like companies/organizations set them up in a way that always leads you to a dead end rather than connect you to a real person that would be able to understand and resolve your issue.

oh hey you must be talking about comcast :argh:

efb

If it's something I need an operator for, I'll mash 0 or start cussing at the phone until it hangs up or gets me to a loving person. Incidentally, I haven't had to talk to a live person since I switched away from the Comcast-provided poo poo router - that dropped connection all the loving time -to a Netgear that occasionally drops connection due to a Comcast outage.

D34THROW fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Mar 31, 2022

PhazonLink
Jul 17, 2010
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/29/23001528/verizon-spam-texts-own-number-confirms-statement?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4

huh I wonder if I should worry about this, in a split second of absent mindedness, I did click the link and allow the webpage to load for a split second, but then closed everything and deleted the original message.

lol staying digitally pure and clean is hard.

bort
Mar 13, 2003

I had an interesting one this week. A call comes from the area code/exchange of my cell phone. I don’t pick up, and get a message. A guy with a South Asian accent tells me for a couple minutes about the dirty things he wants to do to my mother. Some of it is clever (he’s gonna pay her $100 after all this but will pay me $25, because I’m her pimp).

Not sure if it’s a dude in a scam call center blowing off steam, or if it is bait for another call that’s coming so I pick up next time. I'm grateful for the variety but he'll be pretty disappointed to find out how long she’s been dead.

peanut
Sep 9, 2007


lol

goatsestretchgoals
Jun 4, 2011

sounds legit, you should give him your bank account info

D34THROW
Jan 29, 2012

RETAIL RETAIL LISTEN TO ME BITCH ABOUT RETAIL
:rant:

bort posted:

he'll be pretty disappointed to find out how long she’s been dead.

Nah, that's why hes interested in the first place.

bort
Mar 13, 2003

D34THROW posted:

Nah, that's why hes interested in the first place.
Why ask me to shave a bunch of ashes? :confused:

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

bort posted:

I had an interesting one this week. A call comes from the area code/exchange of my cell phone. I don’t pick up, and get a message. A guy with a South Asian accent tells me for a couple minutes about the dirty things he wants to do to my mother. Some of it is clever (he’s gonna pay her $100 after all this but will pay me $25, because I’m her pimp).

Not sure if it’s a dude in a scam call center blowing off steam, or if it is bait for another call that’s coming so I pick up next time. I'm grateful for the variety but he'll be pretty disappointed to find out how long she’s been dead.

Reply "don't threaten me with a good time"

D34THROW
Jan 29, 2012

RETAIL RETAIL LISTEN TO ME BITCH ABOUT RETAIL
:rant:

bort posted:

Why ask me to shave a bunch of ashes? :confused:

The top layer gets weird. The underlayer is where it gets really good and he just wanted to cut out the middleman. :quagmire:

bort
Mar 13, 2003

It's definitely a scam. I hadn't spoken with him the day before. 🤔
:nws:
http://www.sndup.net/qfcz

Inceltown
Aug 6, 2019

bort posted:

It's definitely a scam. I hadn't spoken with him the day before. 🤔
:nws:
http://www.sndup.net/qfcz

Brutor Fartknocker
Jun 18, 2013


My old boss tried to recruit me for Amway. Really confused because he's a software dev manager, I know he makes drat good money, but he's out running this scam.

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Eric the Mauve
May 8, 2012

Making you happy for a buck since 199X
Yes but in his software dev job is he HIS OWN BOSS???

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