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http://www.transgallaxys.com/~emerald/files/MerchantsOfDeception.pdf I read this a few years ago (probably following a link from here) and found it informative. Its everything you ever wanted to know about how MLMs actually make certain people very rich at the expense of literally everyone else.
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Sep 20, 2016 22:50
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My sister is totally into one of the pharma/health MLMs and is constantly instagramming and facebooking and generally working it. I still don't believe she makes any money, I think she just loves the attention and that she thinks people think she is making money. She got our other sister involved and the new one posted on FB last week how easy it was and she didn't even have to do that much work, leading to a smackdown from sister #1 telling everyone that it was only because she gave sis #2 her best customer: our mom.
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Sep 20, 2016 23:01
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roadhead posted:http://www.transgallaxys.com/~emerald/files/MerchantsOfDeception.pdf This looks really interesting, thanks!
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Sep 20, 2016 23:26
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I do event production and did a national meeting for some MLM group a few months ago. Very telling that the convention center went and added like a hundred signs explaining their "no soliciting" policy before the event started.
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Sep 21, 2016 02:01
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BiggerBoat posted:Over the course of a rather long job search, I've received maybe 10 calls/emails from a company called Primerica. It's loving ridiculous. NO WHERE on my resume, in my job experience or in my skill set is there anything whatsoever to suggest I would be good at sales or slinging life insurance. I'm a freelance illustrator, graphic designer and pre-press specialist. That's all I've ever done. Some dickhead with whom I went to college is a regional VP of loving himself or something for Primerica. Once every few years he hits me up to pitch me on being one of his reps. So far I haven't been as mean to him as I have here, but he still doesn't get that I'm not interested in his pyramid scheme bullshit for losers.
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Sep 21, 2016 02:05
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Captain Bravo posted:Actually, in that case it's the other way around. Marine parts have to be produced to stand up to being in and around water constantly without rusting away, so they're generally made with more zinc. But it's a difference of, like, a few cents either way, so if you produce a billion marine nuts and bolts and can only sell a few million, you just repackage them as normal ones, sell them at the market rate for a normal nut and bolt, and take in a slightly smaller profit. Aircraft parts are a whole different monkey because they're built as lightweight as possible, with lots of aluminum. this is a Bad Post and pisses me off. everything on a boat that can be, is stainless steel. it doesn't rust. Zinc does rust. Salt water will eat away at a galvanized zinc bolt (the kind you find in hardware stores) in a couple years, tops. Stainless is expensive $$. Aircraft parts are $$$$$ because they are entirely serialized. Major components (engine assemblies, wheels) are individually serialized by law, small parts (bolts rivets switches) have to be trackable to manufacturer and lot. Manufacturers usually serialize this stuff anyway so they can figure out what's failing faster than expected. A 12v battery tray with rubber strap costs about $300 because it's serialized for aircraft. In your local auto part shop it'd be $20 tops. This is why airplanes are expensive. Anyway back to catching up, I have six more pages.
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Sep 21, 2016 02:23
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I skipped a couple of pages so apologies if this has been brought up previously. Friend of mine was looking for a rental apartment last year. We're in a housing shortage, and due to various regulation rental apartments are scarce and you normally have to be on a waiting list for 10+ years to get a first hand contract. Second hand contracts are very common though. He puts out an ad on our biggest classifieds site and a few days later he gets contacted by someone offering a nice apartment, decently central, fully furnished. Seller says he's going out of the country for a few years and my friend can rent the place second hand for the duration, but he wants six months rent plus a sizable deposit up front. Paying 1-3 months rent in advance isn't uncommon, but 6 months plus a deposit raised a big red flag. So my friend says he'll get back to the guy and goes to the pub to meet up with me and a few other friends and we dig into the information provided. Obviously, it turns out to be a scam. The apartment had been rented out as an AirBnB, and if my friend had accepted, the "seller" would have disappeared with his money and a few weeks later the actual owners would have returned from their vacation and wondered what the hell my friend was doing in their apartment.
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Sep 21, 2016 13:57
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drunk asian neighbor posted:all joking aside though, I too have heard that low-level modelling carries a significant monetary entry barrier, so dude may have actually been somewhat legit. In my experience the music industry works pretty similarly; it's not uncommon for local bands to either meet a sold-tickets quota or pay-to-play at first. Necroquoting to answer this mystery. Models have to pay for their shoots until photographers are willing to shoot them on their own dime. The musician analogy is perfect. A friend of mine plays in a moderately successful local band. When they were starting out, they had to straight up pay for every ticket to their show themselves, and then re-flip them to other people. For the better part of one year, they lost $10-20 per show because they couldn't sell enough tickets to break even. Evidently it was worth it because now promoters pay them just to book a show and make whatever percent of the total ticket sales cut. On a more relevant note, music promoters are among the biggest "legitimate" scam artists, up there with collection agencies and pyramid schemes. Their goal is to make money for the venue, they don't give a poo poo about the band. Their job is to trick a band into playing more shows for less money and a lot of genuinely good musicians get hosed over and swear off the music industry as a result. There's an underground network of bands that post about promoters that gently caress people over on Twitter (so, not really underground) but it's up to the community at large to take out the trash. Venues don't care because they just want to get people in the door.
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Sep 21, 2016 16:13
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The single worst thing to be in the music world is a musician. Anybody who has performed at all can write a drat book about music world bullshit.
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Sep 21, 2016 18:27
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Best scam of all time: WALTER That wasn't her toe. DUDE Whose toe was it, Walter? WALTER How the gently caress should I know? I do know that nothing about it indicates-- DUDE The nail polish, Walter. WALTER Fine, Dude. As if it's impossible to get some nail polish, apply it to someone else's toe-- DUDE Someone else's--where the gently caress are they gonna-- WALTER You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me. DUDE But Walter-- WALTER I'll get you a toe by this afternoon--with nail polish. These loving amateurs. They send us a toe, we're supposed to poo poo our- selves with fear. Jesus Christ. My point is-- DUDE They're gonna kill her, Walter, and then they're gonna kill me-- WALTER Well that's just, that's the stress talking, Dude. So far we have what looks to me like a series of victimless crimes-- DUDE What about the toe? WALTER FORGET ABOUT THE loving TOE!
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Sep 21, 2016 20:32
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My mom is the opposite of the gullible old person stereotype, but to an annoying degree. Because she got hustled several times when she was younger, she is perpetually paranoid she is getting scammed. Last year I was on vacation in Mexico I accidentally butt dialed her and she was extremely  about getting charged exorbitant international rates for receiving a call for two minutes. Similarly, when text messages first started to get popular she didn't have unlimited text messages and was convinced that receiving text messages would gouge her on her phone bill. She's like this with a lot of stuff. Strangely, though at the same time she's very frugal and good at getting ultra cheap vacations via credit card perks and promotions. I would figure she'd make it a point to understand things that aren't a scam or charge or whatever but I guess she's just gotten to the point where she errs on the side of caution for many things. Any sales pitch that is particularly long winded makes her get angry, impatient and paranoid. Drives my wife nuts because while they're both similar in being able to sniff out a scam my wife stays calm and polite while my mom tends to get really whiny and obnoxious.
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Sep 21, 2016 20:42
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Panfilo posted:Last year I was on vacation in Mexico I accidentally butt dialed her and she was extremely She's obviously mistaken but not too far off - if she had been the one in Mexico she would have had to pay exorbitant rates to receive your calls.
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Sep 22, 2016 00:01
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I've been getting a lot of "FedEx" emails saying that my parcel could not be delivered and would I please open this ZIP that has all the shipping details? Who the gently caress falls for that poo poo? I also got a text message telling me my CIBC bank account had suspicious activity on it, and I should go to a dubious-looking .co.uk link to "fix" it. I don't have an account with CIBC and one of the C's stands for "Canadian." How the gently caress do people fall for this garbage?
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Sep 22, 2016 00:38
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I got a similar one the other day for BMO.  ".nut.cc" is uhh, unique.
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Sep 22, 2016 00:49
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PT6A posted:I've been getting a lot of "FedEx" emails saying that my parcel could not be delivered and would I please open this ZIP that has all the shipping details? Well, in the first case, people who ship a lot of stuff with FedEx. If you spam 15 million people, some of them will fit the profile and then some of those people will have had a problem recently and open the file. Like I said earlier, it almost happened to me when spammers guessed a company I had used and my school's admin had a history of not paying invoices even after I'd submitted them two or three times. I went to open the file in a "what the gently caress is it this time" way because the scenario was just so familiar and they had actually spoofed the email address properly.
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Sep 22, 2016 06:49
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Think of it this way: You get a list of ten million email addresses. Let's say only a tenth of those are good addresses that make it through spam filters. You set up a bot to email them all some variation on "click here for a virus." Of the one million good addresses only one in ten thousand gets infected. That's 100 computers. Let's say that it's a locker and only one in ten of those people opt to pay you $100 to get their computer back. Congrats you just made $1k with a single spam shotgun off a one in a million success rate. It's all a numbers game. Put enough hooks in the water and you'll get a bite and email makes it really ficking cheap on a per attempt basis.
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Sep 22, 2016 07:19
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PT6A posted:I've been getting a lot of "FedEx" emails saying that my parcel could not be delivered and would I please open this ZIP that has all the shipping details? One of our highly qualified and experienced technical support team, last week. He opened an attachment called details.odt.zip and totally shagged his system to the point that it was just quicker to re-image the disks. At least now I have an answer when they ask why our dev environment is totally separate and locked down.
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Sep 22, 2016 07:26
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Sanford posted:One of our highly qualified and experienced technical support team, last week. He opened an attachment called details.odt.zip and totally shagged his system to the point that it was just quicker to re-image the disks. At least now I have an answer when they ask why our dev environment is totally separate and locked down. Is he still working there? I mean I could understand if someone from HR or accounting did that. But if you're working in Tech Support it seems like don't open suspicious attachments should be tech support 101. And are you hiring?
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Sep 22, 2016 08:10
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thrakkorzog posted:Is he still working there? I mean I could understand if someone from HR or accounting did that. But if you're working in Tech Support it seems like don't open suspicious attachments should be tech support 101. And are you hiring? Yeah, he's still there. Young guy, good worker, did something stupid without thinking. Recorded discussion, understanding confirmed, further incidents may result in disciplinary action, etc. We're generally pretty mellow about this kind of thing as long as there's no malice.
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Sep 22, 2016 09:35
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Cyrano4747 posted:Think of it this way: remove
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Sep 22, 2016 11:34
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Sanford posted:One of our highly qualified and experienced technical support team, last week. He opened an attachment called details.odt.zip and totally shagged his system to the point that it was just quicker to re-image the disks. At least now I have an answer when they ask why our dev environment is totally separate and locked down. im the executable code that jumped out of the odt dot zip
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Sep 22, 2016 11:38
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PT6A posted:I've been getting a lot of "FedEx" emails saying that my parcel could not be delivered and would I please open this ZIP that has all the shipping details? My old boss, back when I was in IT He was actually expecting a parcel from FedEx and opened the attachment, which turned out to be some ransomware demanding payment from his credit card in order to decrypt his files. He was actually about to put his drat credit card number in when a colleague told me what was going on, so I ran over and stopped him and reminded him that all of his stuff was on network storage and was fine, and it'd take me maybe 10 minutes to reimage his machine and then he could carry on with his day instead of instantly falling victim to fraud.
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Sep 22, 2016 11:52
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thrakkorzog posted:Is he still working there? I mean I could understand if someone from HR or accounting did that. But if you're working in Tech Support it seems like don't open suspicious attachments should be tech support 101. And are you hiring? Hang him from his toenails.
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Sep 22, 2016 11:57
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Speaking of ransomware, this is relevant. https://www.cnet.com/news/computer-killing-usbs-are-popping-up-in-australian-mailboxes/ Don't put strange candy in your mouth, and don't put strange USB sticks in your computer.
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Sep 22, 2016 13:52
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Collateral Damage posted:Speaking of ransomware, this is relevant. What about putting strange USB sticks in my mouth though?
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Sep 22, 2016 18:27
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Maw posted:What about putting strange USB sticks in my mouth though? Make sure just to take a small lick. Crypto lockers have a ferric taste while spyware comes with a tinge of sulphur
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Sep 22, 2016 21:26
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Maw posted:What about putting strange USB sticks in my mouth though? I'm afraid you are hopelessly contaminated. Please report to the nearest medical booth so your brain can be wiped and updated from your most recent backupm
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Sep 22, 2016 23:42
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:Make sure just to take a small lick. Crypto lockers have a ferric taste while spyware comes with a tinge of sulphur What if it tastes like hobo pee?
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Sep 23, 2016 02:55
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grack posted:What if it tastes like hobo pee? Usually indicates a trojan.
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Sep 23, 2016 04:23
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:Usually indicates a trojan. What if it tastes like a Trojan?
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Sep 23, 2016 16:41
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Trasson posted:What if it tastes like a Trojan? I knew your mother could identify brands by taste, but I didn't know she taught you too.
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Sep 23, 2016 16:57
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drat
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Sep 23, 2016 21:29
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Captain Monkey posted:I knew your mother could identify brands by taste, but I didn't know she taught you too. 
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Sep 23, 2016 22:06
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Captain Monkey posted:I knew your mother could identify brands by taste, but I didn't know she taught you too. Nicely played, sir.
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Sep 24, 2016 22:56
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Collateral Damage posted:Don't put strange candy in your mouth, and don't put strange USB sticks in your computer. Wouldn't this be a really inefficient way of scamming people, since each "attempt" costs you the money necessary to buy the USB stick. I guess it has the benefit over e-mail that if someone does pick it up they're likely to use it, so putting it on a sidewalk or something is effectively the same as e-mailing it to everyone who walks by, though there's also the chance that someone might kick it into the street/grass or something and ruin any chances of it succeeding.
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Sep 25, 2016 00:45
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I randomly started to read this thread a while back, and read about the one where people calling saying there's a problem with your taxes and you're gonna be sued or whatever if you don't pay up or give them info, and then a few days later I got a call like that. A second of panic, then I remembered and just hung up. Thanks, thread!
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Sep 25, 2016 00:51
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Ytlaya posted:Wouldn't this be a really inefficient way of scamming people, since each "attempt" costs you the money necessary to buy the USB stick. USB sticks are cheap and it can be a good way to target a specific business. Just drop a handful in the parking lot of the company you want to gently caress up or get in their system.
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Sep 25, 2016 01:05
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Atticus_1354 posted:USB sticks are cheap and it can be a good way to target a specific business. Just drop a handful in the parking lot of the company you want to gently caress up or get in their system. Isn't this theorised to be how stuxnet got onto the airgapped network?
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Sep 25, 2016 01:44
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Atticus_1354 posted:USB sticks are cheap and it can be a good way to target a specific business. Just drop a handful in the parking lot of the company you want to gently caress up or get in their system. I've seen some DEFCON talks where people who get paid to test vulnerabilities do just that. Apparently the sticks are often picked up and used in the office computer.
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Sep 25, 2016 02:00
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Ytlaya posted:Wouldn't this be a really inefficient way of scamming people, since each "attempt" costs you the money necessary to buy the USB stick. This is (probably) how Stuxnet became a thing. $20 in lovely USB drives is a pretty low buy in if someone uses one to jump the air gap at a reasonably important target. Efb but this is why superglue in the USB port is a thing.
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Sep 25, 2016 05:20
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