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Dumb Lowtax posted:3. I just had my entire month's paycheck stolen. I called my work's payroll to ask when it was coming, and they replied that someone had already endorsed it so their bank can't reissue it. I never got a check this month, much less put my signature on one or deposited it. They sent me a fraud application to fill out and told me it could take many, many months for the pay to come through.
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Jul 26, 2019 22:18
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Zereth posted:Pretty sure this is penny wise and dollar stupid again, there's a lot of avenues for fraud that are open for checks that aren't for direct transfers. Some of which even hurt the bank rather than the consumers! “We ran the numbers, and there are enough people who will be too busy working multiple minimum wage jobs to fight us on these fees that we impose at all times and for all things, that we stand to make a profit no matter what. Welp, same thing with check fraud.”
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Jul 31, 2019 15:59
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Midjack posted:Record speed. everyone's a winner, bargains galore
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Aug 20, 2019 02:28
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Commercial cults are like any other cult, using an enticing exterior to draw vulnerable people in, extract labor and money from them while programming them in techniques to entice further victims, and ensure their further compliance through ecstasy, threats, legal action, and wrapping itself in layers and layers of monetary protection they've managed to vacuum out of poor, hopeful, or desperate people. The really successful cults have retarded the laws that would otherwise send them to jail. As the post a few up say, "Betsy DeVos is the Secretary of Education." IMO her efforts to further undermine public schools further helps supply more desperate poor people for her kind to surf atop of. Stitcher had a podcast on this that'll send your blood pressure through the roof: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/stitcher/the-dream
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Aug 22, 2019 02:57
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Describing the mechanism of the religious scam and how it first deceives, extracts, then perpetuates the cycle of deception and extraction would probably qualify. Relating your personal experience and how you discovered it was a scam would qualify. I think that many religious, commercial, and political groups these days that actively recruit members will follow some of the same mental short-circuiting techniques that cults and religions have used forever. Basically you target someone who feels kinda bad, and make them feel real good or ecstatic, then extract money or labor out of 'em. Give them something to be scared of to isolate them within the group and select an outgroup, gradually reveal that they are part of something special, or are themselves about to gain special powers, and that a great doom is just around the corner, followed by some kind of reward. But the main goal of these organizations is to just control a large number of people so that something can be extracted from them. It's all about control IMO. Here's a primer on how to start a cult: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBK5aKOr2Fw
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Aug 28, 2019 21:01
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This is just me, but I'd welcome any analysis of the actual tricks or processes that anything from casinos to corporations to street-level conmen use to get people to do something that they otherwise wouldn't. IMO, casinos and lotteries are scams. You need your mind clouded at least a little to part with your money for these things, even if you "know" you won't win and you just do it for a mild "thrill." Great, now what? What are their mechanisms? How do they manage to avoid being popularly labeled as scams, or how do we as a culture offload the responsibility from them onto their victims? How do they leverage power structures to maintain their dominance, and how much are they like 'legitimate' businesses or religions? What's the truth of what's going on and how can we self-inoculate? I'm interested in stuff like that. I dunno, any good documentaries or anything? Reminds me, I need to find a copy of Randi's Flim-Flam!
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Sep 4, 2019 20:30
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I saw this shortly after my request: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kj8rX_5qmc It's basically about a social media celeb making a buck hawking trash to her fanbase. Nice little modern scam, kinda reminds me of one of those old west medicine shows. Build up an audience with a free show, sell crap, never admit fault until the last dollar is extracted, make a getaway, start a tax-free churchy business or whatever next. I'll admit it's debatable calling casinos "scams" in the same way selling defective makeup is a straight up scam. But I think it's worth looking at them through a scammer's lens, especially since they've bought their legitimacy, aren't going anywhere, and make bank on peoples' vulnerabilities. Part of the mechanism by which they escape scrutiny is that we tend to think of those who get taken advantage of as idiots, as in, "Thank god we're not idiots like they are, I have a system and never spend more than $100, you'd have to be an idiot otherwise." Sure, some of 'em are. And some are vulnerable, the same way a street-level mark might be vulnerable to the message of a cult, business, or hustler. I bet some of the tactics of short-circuiting our self-protections are similar.
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Sep 9, 2019 06:16
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Stick Insect posted:not being comfortable with the idea is enough, it's your body.
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Oct 16, 2019 16:46
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Here's a broad facebook scam I wasn't aware of, and a little examination of the life of the scammer himself. And either facebook is incapable of controlling such a thing, or they don't care as long as the bucks roll in and user engagement is up. We're in a great age of grift, folks. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-subscription-trap-free-trial-scam-ads-inc quote:The Facebook account rental scheme run by Ads Inc. is by far the largest of its kind ever exposed, and, when compared to recent Federal Trade Commission cases, one of the largest-ever subscription trap operations in the United States. It’s also a reminder of how Facebook’s powerful ad tools have revolutionized scamming, putting average people in the crosshairs of sophisticated black hat marketers looking to rip them off.
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Oct 17, 2019 20:33
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BiggerBoat posted:I can't shake the feeling that almost the entirety of capitalism, and especially banking, is a scam. 
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Nov 1, 2019 17:55
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read that title enough times, and it becomes, "Just Wait 'til We're Doomed." e: I've read a lot of children's books from the public library over the last five years, and a lot of them are as aimed at programming parents, not just kids. They often read something like, "Missy was upset. Dad didn't lose his temper or ask her to calm down. He just sat down next to her and gave her a hug and waited patiently for her to stop crying. And you know what? It worked!" This book reads exactly like that, aimed at establishing a norm of behavior, and coloring the "old" family versus the "new" family, and it's aimed right at both the child and the adult reading the book to the child. It's cult literature. doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Dec 8, 2019 |
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Dec 8, 2019 20:45
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Sweet jesus, dude's illustrating an MLM pyramid on one of the pages:
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Dec 8, 2019 20:52
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Midjack posted:Yes. My expression was mostly at the baldness of the expression, but also at my realization that this book's purpose includes inuring a child against things like seeing the pyramid as a pyramid, or neglect as neglect. (Say to any MLM dude, "That sounds like a pyramid scheme," and see what they say. They'll be ready for that, and maybe even believe their handling of your objection.) Soften's 'em right up as the next generation of suckers. It's dismaying.
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Dec 8, 2019 21:45
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Eric the Mauve posted:yyyyyyup. I feel this depends a lot on whether the device/computer can continue to be used to mine data or obtain something else from the user while they are using. The current situation is that most people will happily give up quite a bit to stream a video or play a game, or have some other amusement. It's a Bonzi scheme. Right now Windows 10 installs apps you didn't ask for automatically, serves ads, and conducts opt-somewhat-out user surveillance. They're not likely to kill the goose by hitting people with fees or lockouts, because people don't feel like their Hulu or whatever comes from Microsoft, and they'll start getting fussy: it'll look like MS is blocking their Hulu. They'll stop thinking of the Microsoft OS device as their feeding trough and next purchase cycle, avoid it. OTOH, Hulu can charge money AND make you watch ads because they serve the content drip feed, and the user knows it. As soon as they think they can make one more dollar for charging a monthly fee than not, though... doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 08:57
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:oh absolutely not. Satan cheats. God doesn’t play dice. Anymore.
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Jan 19, 2020 22:20
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As long as I don't get placed in the Head On ward
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Apr 25, 2020 22:00
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This seems to be a golden age of completely legal scams.
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Nov 9, 2020 18:51
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When I left the Jehovah's Witnesses, I got a little help by reading Combating Cult Mind Control by Steve Hassan. There's a section in there on commercial cults like MLM's and pyramid schemes. The overlap between high-control religions like the one I left (you can call it a cult if you like, and some ex-members scream it) and MLMs was shocking to me then.
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Feb 5, 2021 22:26
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JnnyThndrs posted:Has nothing to do with tinfoil-hat conspiring theories and CRAPPLE, AMIRITE. Part of the reason everybody whines about Apple poo poo is because all the older Android tablets and old phones don’t get updates at all(or maybe one), and were chucked out or given to toddlers years ago. There's probably a better term for it, but I think of it as a "conspiracy of convenience." It's to Apple's (and others') advantage that web pages and such are overloaded garbage, because it makes devices feel "old." So they do and say nothing about it, even though they could. I don't think Apple is directly responsible in a lawsuit sense, but there's at least some complicity. They have at least some influence over it, and they certainly benefit from it. It's a very convenient condition for them, in terms of pushing customers to newer devices. It also has a negative effect on consumers (costing money and satisfaction), and the environment to have costly devices "age" in this way.
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Feb 10, 2021 21:31
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there's the 40 minute supercut of Vic Berger's Jim Bakker's apocalypse show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw3_5AaWBlY
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Mar 12, 2021 19:00
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Since the pink ribbon blitz of the 90's/00's I haven't trusted feel-good-buy-me products. Cept maybe Newman's Own. E:f doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 20:09 on May 23, 2021 |
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May 23, 2021 19:57
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This is a time of just awful people
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May 23, 2021 21:09
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The poster conning itself
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Jun 9, 2021 20:13
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I don't answer my phone or check my email anymore
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Jun 15, 2021 20:48
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About 15 years ago I wanted to buy a nice travel wood chess set, so I searched ebay. It turned into a grueling education in modern cheap drop-ship grift. Nearly everything I saw was some variation of UNIQUE HANDMADE WOOD WEIGHTED MAGNETIC CHESS SET LOOK!!! NEW!!!!. These listings clotted up every single category so they were completely unavoidable, and they all reused the same 5 photos, with a startlingly wide price range. Now, that's every other store, too. Amazon is ebay is etsy is craigslist is whatever. It sucks, but that's what you get when your culture mostly values getting the cheapest crap at the cheapest price as quickly as possible. doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 17:27
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Ads: gently caress ‘em
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Jun 30, 2021 17:24
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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.
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Mar 29, 2022 05:02
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Blue Moonlight posted:I’m honestly amazed that YouTube Kids doesn’t take an allowlist approach, where certain creators are given carte blanche to upload so long as they stay in line. Way more manageable to maintain a list of not-awful creators than a list of not-awful videos. Let the kids creators all fight with each other for relevancy - it’ll probably end with ⅔ of Disney+ on YouTube for free. YouTube, the advertisers, and the content creators, all knowingly make money off of the viewing choices of small children whose parents don't have the good sense to block or remove the app. It's powered by unsupervised kids and it's gross. We ended up removing the YouTube app since it doesn't provide any meaningfully restrictive parental controls, and either watching YT on a laptop with the kid, or giving them access to a more trustworthy and limited content app, like PBS Kids.
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Aug 23, 2022 04:14
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Amazon turned into eBay years ago, lots of dropship middleman stores, garbage copycat products, and a straight up marketplace for scams. ReviewMeta.com arose as an algorithmic filter for fraudulent reviews, but it has that abandonware feel about it now, so take its results with a grain of salt. I don't buy anything on Amazon that isn't at least coming from their warehouse and has the easiest possible returns.
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Sep 22, 2022 22:58
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"Good evening, this is Art Bell coming to your telephone from east of the mortal plane. In addition to being an award-winning AI app that generates endless hours of new Coast to Coast AM content, tonight, we're going to delve into the mysteries of your bank account. So sit back, relax, and get your most recent statements, as we journey into the unknown."
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Mar 7, 2023 05:48
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EL BROMANCE posted:These people are literally spending ridiculous money on terrible cars just to boot lick a guy who might one day respond to them with a smiley face on Twitter. I was at a playground with my kid a couple years back. Mom calls to her kid, looks about 6 years old "Tesla, come eat your snack." "Tesla, time to go." Tesla operates near where I live.
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Mar 9, 2023 04:00
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