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Foxfire_
Nov 8, 2010

Pharmaskittle posted:

man if 911 calls ME, I'm heading for the hills
I don't know how it shows up on call id, but reverse-911 is totally a thing. About half the time (tsunami, bomb threat, bulldozer attack, ...), heading for the hills is the correct response

Foxfire_ fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Apr 24, 2021

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BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

Eric the Mauve posted:

There was a reddit thread a few years ago that I can't find now (deleted maybe?) that claimed to detail how like 80% of the thousands of little MLMs out there are owned by an entity which is owned by an entity which after you trace it through a dozen spaghetti loops turn out to really be owned by, you guessed it, the Amway people.

I don't think it had any smoking-gun evidence in support of the claim, but I sure as poo poo could believe it.


therobit posted:

If recruiting other people is any significant component of how you make money, it's an MLM scam.

Near as I can tell, this entire country is an MLM scam.

nonathlon
Jul 9, 2004
And yet, somehow, now it's my fault ...

hyperhazard posted:

(I'm sure there's some interesting research into the difference between MLMs aimed at women and ones aimed at men. The stereotype is the housewife or army wife selling makeup to her church buddies, but men are absolutely sucked in as well. But instead of the Boss Babe narrative, they get "Retire by 40! Invest in your future!" and a huge metal dick pyramid in an expensive city.)

It would be real interesting. I suspect the male side hustles have the veneer of respectability, and are a lot less examined while being just as crooked.

(Had a friend some years ago who was a smart, nice, hard working guy ... but completely wedded to the idea that he had to make a fortune, go big, etc. and so existed on a constant diet of self improvement seminars, books about being your own boss, schemes for passive income, and people telling him he was a failure for "only" having a high earning job, owning a house and supporting his family.)

Guest2553
Aug 3, 2012


Pharmaskittle posted:

man if 911 calls ME, I'm heading for the hills

Don't have kids, but if you do get used to this happening a couple times after they call to see what would happen or cry into the receiver because TV time is over.

ps,

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



I mean, I guess you'd know how to handle meat.

Cloks
Feb 1, 2013

by Azathoth
given the quality of Moe's i don't see any issue here

Tubgoat
Jun 30, 2013

by sebmojo

BiggerBoat posted:

Near as I can tell, this entire country is an MLM scam.

Tubgoat posted:

There is no scam but Capitalism, and Amerikkka is its prophet, death be upon both.

Collateral Damage
Jun 13, 2009

Moe's Southwest Grill and Mortuary.

nonathlon
Jul 9, 2004
And yet, somehow, now it's my fault ...

Guest2553 posted:

Don't have kids, but if you do get used to this happening a couple times after they call to see what would happen or cry into the receiver because TV time is over.

ps,


Moes doesn't have a great opinion of their own food

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...
I don't see the problem if the food is to die for :drac:

therobit
Aug 19, 2008

I've been tryin' to speak with you for a long time
Maybe they need someone good with a knife to prepare the long pork special.

Fil5000
Jun 23, 2003

HOLD ON GUYS I'M POSTING ABOUT INTERNET ROBOTS

Guest2553 posted:

Don't have kids, but if you do get used to this happening a couple times after they call to see what would happen or cry into the receiver because TV time is over.

ps,


"maybe you can help us work out where this meat is from"

nonathlon
Jul 9, 2004
And yet, somehow, now it's my fault ...

Fil5000 posted:

"maybe you can help us work out where this meat is from"

Clint Sternjaw shrugged. "You're forgetting - I don't work here anymore". He turned to leave the room.

The chief of police slammed the door shut in anger. "Not so fast Sternjaw! Think you got a choice in this? We could crush you like a bug." He threw a slimy plastic bag down on his desk.

"Now, is this calamari or pigs anus? You got 24 hours to find out, or I'm calling the boys in Internal Affairs."

JacquelineDempsey
Aug 6, 2008

Women's Circuit Bender Union Local 34



TheParadigm posted:

Thats what i was afraid of.

I remember there was an old story post/archive from a homeless goon that started a thread to just socialize; and they ran into an 'insurance license/scam' thing that sounded incredibly similiar.

I was wondering if anyone happened to remember which one? I lost the bookmark sadly.

I wanna say that was 50s Girl Groupon/Unexpected Road? They had an e/n thread, and as I recall we were all "yay!", rooting for them because they got a job, then it slowly veered into "oh. Oh no" territory.

I think that thread got goldmined once Road got a real legit job and an apartment. Sorry I don't have a link!

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

nonathlon posted:

Clint Sternjaw shrugged. "You're forgetting - I don't work here anymore". He turned to leave the room.

The chief of police slammed the door shut in anger. "Not so fast Sternjaw! Think you got a choice in this? We could crush you like a bug." He threw a slimy plastic bag down on his desk.

"Now, is this calamari or pigs anus? You got 24 hours to find out, or I'm calling the boys in Internal Affairs."

"Send it to your brownnosers in internal affairs and have them take a deep sniff," Clint Sternjaw yelled over his shoulder. "If the smell's familiar, they'll know it's pig anus."

uranium grass
Jan 15, 2005

JacquelineDempsey posted:

I wanna say that was 50s Girl Groupon/Unexpected Road? They had an e/n thread, and as I recall we were all "yay!", rooting for them because they got a job, then it slowly veered into "oh. Oh no" territory.

I think that thread got goldmined once Road got a real legit job and an apartment. Sorry I don't have a link!

Unfortunately they have been having a rough go and have a current GBS thread.

Shellception
Oct 12, 2016

"I'm made up of the memories of my parents and my grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the colour of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think"
So I recently rejoined my old workplace after almost two years of unemployment, and the (really nice) young cleaning lady who comes in every day has started pitching Tupperware products to us. Now I don't blame her, she's underpaid as all hell, she became a mom recently and is probably trying to make some money on the side as she works her normal hours.

But tbh, her sales pitch made some red flags go off in my brain. She offers the products on an insistent manner (and my two co-workers are extremely polite and will listen to her every time); she gave a sales pitch the first day, then asked us if we'd thought about it the next day, then she offered to bring us a catalog. Even though we tried to decline, as nobody here is really interested in cookware, today she said she's bringing the catalog as soon as the next office over gives it back to her, so we can see all the things she sells. All this while insisting she's not making any money on this, that she wants to do us all a favour. Which is kind of absurd, nobody does (nor should do) all that work for free.

I didn't really associate Tupperware with MLM, but I guess they are, and now I feel kinda bad for this girl :sigh:.

RenegadeStyle1
Jun 7, 2005

Baby Come Back
Oh yeah it definitely is an MLM. I had a neighbor a few years ago get my roommate into it. She paid for the starting package (cant remember the price) and promptly sold 0.

Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute
Tupperware was like the suburban MLM back in the day. It was to the point my family used the phrase "Tupperware party" to refer to any kind of MLM mass sales pitch.

Konstantin
Jun 20, 2005
And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
They actually had a valuable product at one point, as they were the first to sell plastic resealable food containers. Of course, now that you can buy them anywhere there is no reason to stick with the direct selling model, other than to get money from the marks independent distributors.

Pocket Billiards
Aug 29, 2007
.

Sydin posted:

Tupperware was like the suburban MLM back in the day. It was to the point my family used the phrase "Tupperware party" to refer to any kind of MLM mass sales pitch.

Definitely, that and Amway.

The quality of the storage containers is second to none. My family has piles of the stuff that's been in constant use since the 1980s.

I haven't encountered anyone doing Tupperware parties in like 20 years, Norwex seems to be much more popular at the moment.

Shellception
Oct 12, 2016

"I'm made up of the memories of my parents and my grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the colour of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think"
Funny, I knew the product (we also have some plastic ones that are older than I am) but not that they were predatory. They were popular here too - the spanish pronunciation, "Tupper" even became synonymous with the item's name. One less brand to shop, I guess.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008
I got a scam call with a somewhat realistic virtual person. It was a guy with a Texas accent asking for money to support your local pigs. I tried responding with the middle suggested amount, 45 dollars. Robo-tex actually gasped, stuttered and went on a guilt trip asking for more. If the responses weren't painfully slow I could imagine believing it was a real guy.

So I looked it up, its a PAC that spent 98% on "administrative costs", 2% on some Trump billboards last election. Completely legal as PACs have no rules in the USA

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/16/us/police-super-pac-political-group-invs/index.html

Yngwie Mangosteen
Aug 23, 2007
When I was much younger and desperately between jobs I worked at a ‘call center’ that ended up being scam calling people for a ‘police charity’ with similar numbers (if you see people with the 100/200/300 ribbon stickers on the back of their car for police/fire that’s them)

I worked there for one day - the guy in charge said to play up my usually faint Texan accent and to speak slowly and authoritatively as if we were sheriffs ourselves. I have never felt more disgusting walking out of a day of work than I have at that place. And they had a (likely illegal) ‘must work 2 weeks or you forfeit your pay’ thing going on that I was too skeeved out to fight or care about.

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

Captain Monkey posted:

When I was much younger and desperately between jobs I worked at a ‘call center’ that ended up being scam calling people for a ‘police charity’ with similar numbers (if you see people with the 100/200/300 ribbon stickers on the back of their car for police/fire that’s them)

I worked there for one day - the guy in charge said to play up my usually faint Texan accent and to speak slowly and authoritatively as if we were sheriffs ourselves. I have never felt more disgusting walking out of a day of work than I have at that place. And they had a (likely illegal) ‘must work 2 weeks or you forfeit your pay’ thing going on that I was too skeeved out to fight or care about.


is this praxis?

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

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

Tunicate posted:

is this praxis?

Praxis would be spending your time on the call letting people know exactly who they were, what they were doing, and how the recipient should try to never give money to people who just call over the phone, while somehow evading detection by the boss.

Zero One
Dec 30, 2004

HAIL TO THE VICTORS!
I work in fraud prevention for a major bank. We had a new one the other day: a client was contacted over Facebook by someone claiming to be a casting agent for "The Property Brothers" TV show. They would put her on the show and renovate her house... if she sent them $45,000.

And she did. :(

EL BROMANCE
Jun 10, 2006

COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬



Ouch. It’s not far off from the truth, as you do indeed pay to be on those shows.

nonathlon
Jul 9, 2004
And yet, somehow, now it's my fault ...

EL BROMANCE posted:

Ouch. It’s not far off from the truth, as you do indeed pay to be on those shows.

Wait. You do?

Because I recollect reading about a UK show where they cleaned up your house, redecorated, etc. and one of the contestants straight up stated she only submitted her place because her flatmates were pigs and it was one way to clear all their junk up.

bird with big dick
Oct 21, 2015

Sounds like you’re passing up a great deal on a quality kitchen storage system OP maybe give this a little more thought before you decline.

Zero One
Dec 30, 2004

HAIL TO THE VICTORS!

nonathlon posted:

Wait. You do?

Because I recollect reading about a UK show where they cleaned up your house, redecorated, etc. and one of the contestants straight up stated she only submitted her place because her flatmates were pigs and it was one way to clear all their junk up.

Apparently for Property Brothers you do (I've never seen the show).

From Wikipedia

quote:


The buyers own the property and pay for the remodeling, but the show is able to provide about $20,000 to $25,000 worth of cash and furnishings.[13][12] The brothers do not charge for their services.[12] The total budget presented is for the three or four rooms featured on the show; the rest of the renovations are done off-camera on a separate budget and timeline.


But they probably don't ask for it up front over Facebook.

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

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

Zero One posted:

Apparently for Property Brothers you do (I've never seen the show).

From Wikipedia

But they probably don't ask for it up front over Facebook.

Next you'll tell me that the kindergarten teacher + body artist couple don't really have a million dollar budget!

Atticus_1354
Dec 10, 2006

barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark

Volmarias posted:

Next you'll tell me that the kindergarten teacher + body artist couple don't really have a million dollar budget!

But the marine biologist who had a $6 million houseboat custom built must be real.

Collateral Damage
Jun 13, 2009

I had someone attempt to steal my Steam account yesterday. They had hijacked a friend's account and messaged me asking if I could vote for their friend's CSGO team in some popularity contest and linked me to "puncharena dot com".

It was suspicious right from the start because my friend is Australian and the scammer didn't lead with "hey oval office", but I figured I'd at least check the site out to see where the scam was. The site asks you to sign in with Steam, but instead of taking you to Steam to log in it presents a floating frame disguised to look like a browser window complete with the "correct" steam URL in the location bar.

I tried entering some bogus username and password to see if it was simply recording the credentials but it rejected them so it probably forwarded the credentials to Steam in the background, and if I had entered working credentials it would have forwarded the 2FA request as well.

On the upside this method means the scammer only gets logged in once and can't change your password or email address as that requires using the 2FA again, so my friend could simply change his password and force-logout the scammer.

Fruits of the sea
Dec 1, 2010

If you follow the Steam thread in /games, the past year has been a constant parade of goon accounts getting compromised through that scam :v:

Jeza
Feb 13, 2011

The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.
Permanently appear offline is praxis. I always have like 2-3 new adds every time I log into Steam and without fail its a bunch of Russian/Chinese/Whatever fakeaccounts trying to add me so they can steal my CS:GO skins which I probably should have sold off already.

Collateral Damage
Jun 13, 2009

Jokes on them I have nothing of value in my Steam inventory.

e: Also didn't they add a cooldown period so you can't trade/sell items within x days of logging in from a new device or something, specifically to combat scammers stealing accounts and selling everything?

CoolCab
Apr 17, 2005

glem

Collateral Damage posted:

Jokes on them I have nothing of value in my Steam inventory.

e: Also didn't they add a cooldown period so you can't trade/sell items within x days of logging in from a new device or something, specifically to combat scammers stealing accounts and selling everything?

yes, they added feature after feature to make it more difficult, it hasn't made it impossible. so long as steam accounts have actual, cashable value in the form of in game items they'll still have this problem.

TheParadigm
Dec 10, 2009

Jeza posted:

Permanently appear offline is praxis. I always have like 2-3 new adds every time I log into Steam and without fail its a bunch of Russian/Chinese/Whatever fakeaccounts trying to add me so they can steal my CS:GO skins which I probably should have sold off already.

There's a setting to turn your inventory private iirc.

Profile-edit->privacy settings-> Inventory to friends only or private.

Even as a casual not-caring about inventory person I'd still occasionally get randos after that orange box thing or whatever until I turned it off.

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Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute
Never had my steam account compromised but I did have some Russian guy (or gal, who knows) take over my War Thunder account for a bit. Funny thing is I had eagles (the premium currency) and a bunch of premium planes so I would have figured they'd have just sold my account or something, but no the instead appear to have just used it to play the game: specifically they grinded out a ton of the Japanese plane tree. In the end dealing with support to get my account back was more hassle than anything that person did with my account.

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