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Humbug Scoolbus posted:uBlock and Privacy Badger will save your mind. Collateral Damage posted:The best anti-malware software you can install today is an adblocker. Occasionally I get on the internet with my phone that doesn't have an ad blocker. I can't imagine that experience being the norm or anyone ever doing that. I wonder the % of users is that uses these extensions because if it's less than 80% I don't see how the internet even functions let alone provide a pleasurable experience. Dear god, it looks like the TV from Idiocracy without them.
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Aug 22, 2022 22:07
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Professor Shark posted:
It's worse than advertisements. You Tube's weird algorithms eventually lead to a bunch of really harsh, graphic and decidedly non kid friendly shows that LOOK like children's programming with Spiderman and Minecraft or whatever but are really loving dark and violent. I had to remove YT from my kid's computer and put strict controls and monitoring on the channel when he stays with me. Some of this poo poo I saw was incredibly hosed up and gave him nightmares. I'm talking rape, animal cruelty and decapitations here. I'm not sure what the end game for these things are supposed to be, really, but there must be a reason beyond "clicks" I would like to think. Probably this belongs in the tech nightmares thread.
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Aug 23, 2022 01:56
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HopperUK posted:poo poo really? Did that stuff even make it into the Youtube Kids thing? yes
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Aug 23, 2022 03:17
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Zamujasa posted:
Holy poo poo, yes. I'll go to sleep sometimes listening to a Best in Show cast panel or something like that and by the time I wake up it's got some Qanon poo poo locked and loaded.
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Aug 24, 2022 00:52
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I foolishly walked into the "get a home insurance quote online now" scam where all they really do is collect your personal information. You enter in all your poo poo hoping to get an estimate and then when you finish and hit "get quote" it just takes you to a list of 5 other companies, not a dollar amount. Then your phone and email blows up. I should have known and I feel kind of stupid now.
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Sep 3, 2022 17:03
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Eric the Mauve posted:...you don't use an alternate email and burner phone number/someone's number who you don't like for signing up for poo poo? Typically yes. Like I said I honestly don't know why I was so loving stupid this time.
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Sep 3, 2022 17:10
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:I'm sure people have talked about this already, but online job hunting is full of scammy poo poo. I'm currently looking for work and received an unsolicited email (red flag #1), supposedly from a recruiter. Seemed like a job with the exact experience level and skills I'm looking for (red flag #2). I think I posted a little about this too. A lot of those listings are for MLM's and I've learned to spot them. Like you mentioned, the really vague and generic websites are a big red flag. I always wonder (and sometimes ask them) what exactly in my 30 year career of illustration, graphic design and sign making or my bachelor of fine arts degree leads you to believe I'd be great being a salesperson and leading my own team for your "innovative global solutions" company?
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Sep 7, 2022 11:28
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Expounding further on it, the job hunting experience really loving sucks and I can empathize. Just putting your contact info and bio out there (email, # or often even your name and address) is enough to generate a rather big wave of spammy bullshit but you *SIDE NOTE* Speaking of ^^^that^^^, the Unemployment Applications you have to fill out can be equally bad and even worse. At least in FL. They make it a real loving hassle to get in on it. The website is "closed" evenings and weekends, which is ridiculous, so you can only file during the hours you are ostensibly supposed to be looking for work. It also times out a lot and won't save your progress. There's no reason whatsoever I shouldn't be able to claim benefits at 2am on a Thursday or on a Sunday afternoon. I got SO MANY bullshit offers that at one point I decided to just put pins in a map for places I wanted to work, printed out some resumes and cards and drove around to places unannounced - which can still be remarkably effective from a "right place/right time" standpoint and for building up contacts and networking. I've gotten a few jobs, interviews and freelance work doing that. I mean, you can use a separate email and a burner phone but so much of it is like a loving arms race and the con artists ruin all of it. Based on the nibbles I got, apparently I'd be really good at selling life insurance, leading sales seminars becoming a "team leader" that "innovates marketing solutions on a global scale"; whatever that last one means (I't means MLM or Network Marketing) Network Marketing is slightly different from MLM but probably deserves its own thread
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Sep 7, 2022 13:27
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Seems like for the most part if you have to google too deep or do more than a cursory search for an employer wondering what they do and if it's a scam or a cult, the answer is almost always yes.
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Sep 18, 2022 21:20
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StormDrain posted:What the other guy said. It's capitalizing on cult behavior. Sign up for what exactly, though? If they can't tell you or offer specifics, it's an Amway MLM Direct Marketing bullshit thing. ilmucche posted:I've got a friend who got really into it, changed their life view and stuff. I guess if it makes them happier and fixes relationships or be more effective in daily life then good for them, they're getting value out of it. They got me to go with them to a session and I was pretty uncomfortable, and it's not a good sign when someone trying to get me to come out says "It's not a pyramid scheme" Nah. Not to poo poo on your friend or anything but it'll most likely be short lived. And if they have to say "it's not a pyramid scheme" then that's exactly what it is. Sorry. If it's what I suspect it is, it's filled with "positive thinking", self help go get em inspirational talk and full of people who pretend to like you and tell you YOU CAN DO IT if you just believe in yourself and poo poo, so your friend is drawing off those endorphins. Next thing you know, before you know it, you're friend will find Christ and show up for your weekly gaming session or whatever you do with him wearing a suit and tie and be trying to sign YOU up. All the time. Soon, it will be all he talks about. He'll start lending you books to read. If I'm mistaken, I apologize in advance but I don't think I am and I smell a direct marketing/MLM style scam here where, before long, if you or anyone else in your circle doesn't get on board, he's going to stop hanging out with you because you'll be "dragging him down" and "ruining his dream" if you're not interested. He's also going to start giving you free samples of "concentrated" overpriced products to try out and never poo poo the gently caress up about how shiny it can make your car or whatever. If he's not doing that already. Has he given you any energy drinks, protein bars or car wax to try out?
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Sep 19, 2022 00:29
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ilmucche posted:They want you to sign up for like weekend seminars where you do personal growth workshops and stuff. As you say, it's probably short lived as the high of the intense weekend goes away. bort posted:It's not Amway. You don't have to sell anything. They just want you to sign up for more expensive courses in order to become a more fabulous human being full of cosmic potential and whatnot. Scientology with less subterfuge. Well, there you go. They're selling you tickets to motivational seminars and poo poo so it may as well be Amway or MLM since that's where these companies really make their money and it's all been well documented. Used to be, the real money was selling cassette tapes full of "you can DO IT" poo poo and, if you didn't buy them from your sponsor, you were destined to fail because you didn't purchase "the tools" to succeed in the business. But now that no one listens to CD's or tapes, they do this poo poo and surround you with positive thinking acolytes and trot out examples of success on to the stage telling you to believe in yourself. Sorry your friend is falling victim to it but hopefully he escapes without going bankrupt and just takes away the positive reinforcement poo poo enough to bolster his self confidence in ways that might help him do something useful.
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Sep 20, 2022 00:57
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If you all will excuse me, I'm off to take some mentally challenged kids to the zoo. I was going to take the skinheads bowling (take them bowling) but that was a separate idea from a different band.
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Sep 20, 2022 01:03
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CommonShore posted:I've been getting some new suspicious text message lately - like once per month, maybe. It's always something like "Hey coach Dave do you think my son can start coming to the afternoon class?" from a non-local area code. The first time I responded "Sorry wrong number; check your area code" and then the person started texting me about how being a single mother is hard blah blah blah. It has happened a few times now since summer. I've been getting weird ones like this too with ambiguous content like "we never received the documents" or something similar to along those lines.
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Sep 22, 2022 00:08
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I just closed a mortgage loan on my house and have been inundated with URGENT: TIME SENSITIVE junk mail that looks like it's from the mortgage company telling me I'm eligible for a free life insurance policy. I finally called the lender because I got like 10 of these things and they assured me they don't offer life insurance. I don't know what the angle is but I assume it's trying to get me to give personal information and poo poo related to the money. Which is a serious red flag because obviously my lender knows just about anything there is to know about me, as anyone who's gone through that process can attest. loving scammers man.
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Nov 10, 2022 01:16
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Has anyone brought up towing companies yet? The poo poo they get up to is downright criminal, theft and is nothing short of extortion. In the town I grew up in, there was a company near the university that cut deals with business owners to give them kickbacks on the towing fees/fines and the company where you had to go get your car was like a fortified compound. The people that worked there acted like mobsters and would charge you basically whatever they wanted since there seemed to be no set amount on the fines. There was no way for you to prove it or challenge it in cases where there was not a clearly marked sign either and the motherfuckers would tow you anyway even if you were present with your vehicle and before they even hooked it up. OFten, they'll just flat out refuse to release your vehicle unless you pay whatever made up amount they say you owe them, tack on exorbitant "storage fees" and, usually, the cops won't help you either. If you send your kid, a family member or your spouse to go get your car, they won't give it to them Here's a little write up I found https://medium.com/the-random-nerdi...es-29a7094be69a
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Dec 14, 2022 14:05
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FMguru posted:Yep. I seem to remember some connection between the cops and the towing companies too, where the police would ticket the cars, then call BubbaTow and the company would kick back a %, cash of course, to the cop(s) who led them to the car. There were a few parking lots that were notorious in the small college town I was in that liked to tow people's cars who were going to Midnight Movies and we only learned the hard way not to park at Roy Rogers Chicken because the NO PARKING sign was almost intentionally hidden. It was THERE but not clearly marked. The place was closed and there was more than enough room to park so not sure why they gave a poo poo anyway at 12-2 am.
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Dec 15, 2022 02:25
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Volmarias posted:Bears are known for skipping out on their obligations to family and friends. In business, that can kill your relationships, making you "dead" to someone. As an example, if you've heard of a "bear market", it's because the market has shown that it no longer wants to reward investors for their actions, turning from the noble and trustworthy bull to the shifty and untrustworthy bear. Not to mention their rampant thievery of picnic baskets
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Dec 18, 2022 02:19
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cool little video I found about call center scammers https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/beating-scammers-at-their-own-game/6336f88f12f031567b7f0735 I wish it were longer. I could watch a whole documentary on this poo poo
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Dec 22, 2022 12:53
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Professor Shark posted:There is a guy on yt who creates videos messing with scammers and it is painfully funny sometimes thanks to his voice modifiers Kitboga is his YT name if it's the guy I'm thinking of His channel is great
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Dec 22, 2022 13:06
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Not necessarily a scam but I think the 5x sped up disclaimers for audio ads and all that 4 point that no one can read on a TV ad no matter how 4k it is should be loving outlawed. They could save us all a lot of time and just put NOTHING WE JUST SAID IS TRUE gently caress YOU GIVE US MONEY in a 48 point Impact font like a meme and just be done with it. The radio ads in particular are hilarious and sped up so fast at the end that they sound like Alvin the Chipmunk.
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Jan 23, 2023 03:03
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:That’s been around forever, but recently some restaurants have started just adding a tip to all bills, particularly in Miami. Their weak justification there is that many of their customers are foreign and don’t know about how tipping works in the US. This is actually kind of true. We used to get bus loads of Canadian customers when I waited tables and eventually we started adding in 15% because the whole restaurant would fill up and none of the servers would make any money for the next two and a half hours. Often, it was even more frustrating because of the language barrier where many of them spoke French. Not defending the place in Miami or the pay structure of tipping in general but that stuff does happen.
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Jan 27, 2023 13:53
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Discendo Vox posted:Do we have any good effortposts or resources on how current MLM schemes work, how they're regulated and how they're legal? I'm not caught up in any, thank goodness, but I've always been curious about how companies like Amway have stuck around despite...gestures broadly everything. I've got a few posts in this thread on MLM's Honestly, though, just google "MLM scam" and you'll get hundreds of articles and videos on the subject. I don't have a "favorite" one but some of the best stuff I've read is actually testimonials from reddit threads. There's also a really good (and free) book from a former IBO called "Merchants of Deception" that gives a good inside look.
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Mar 6, 2023 13:37
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I hardly ever watch cable/regular TV anymore and am not subjected much to their ads these days but my work has TV's everywhere and it's been pretty wild seeing every single ad with entire paragraphs of fine print that you couldn't read if you tried with the highest 4k high def on the planet in the time it's on screen that I'm pretty sure just say "everything we just said is bullshit and will not be honored SO gently caress YOU" I listen to some radio here and there and they do the same poo poo only with really super sped up disclaimers that say the same thing in order to save on the ad time that explain how "everything we just said is bullshit". I'm sure there's some toothless government FCC regulations somewhere that address these sorts of things and I like to imagine a bunch of lawyers arguing about what's legally legible, how long it needs to be displayed to be readable and what font size constitutes full disclosure but my main takeaway is basically that every single ad anywhere at any time in any medium is a scam that is nothing more than a legal way to lie to you. Along similar lines: ever take a look at the verbiage in a credit card statement, prescription drug print ad or a bank loan because jesus christ. Even if you read it, good luck parsing it.
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Mar 8, 2023 00:44
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Wondering what all the "hey, why haven't you texted me back? How are you?" messages I've been getting lately are all about.
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Mar 14, 2023 22:56
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tinytort posted:Some rear end in a top hat just tried texting me with "the CRA has sent you an Interac transfer for $463.48" and a link. I hear there's an issue with my Netflix payment
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Apr 16, 2023 03:24
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tinytort posted:Oh, I've gotten those too. I don't really get the end game here because all someone has to do is go log into their Netflix account and see if it's, you know, actually loving working. I knew it was a scam but that's what I went and did anyway; just to do it. Am I just supposed to go "Oh, deary me, that doesn't sound right at all. Let me just go get my check book, young man. I'm so terribly sorry about all this. Anyway, it's 0123 3456 7891 0112...What's that? I need to pay in advance now? Why yes, I would like to pay in advance for the next year. I would hate for this to happen again. You need the what now? What is a CVC code? Yes, you'll probably need my social security number too, right. OK then"? pumped up for school posted:Before I had ads blocked I saw a lot of ads on YouTube, and hear a lot of radio ads, to get you out of a timeshare. The cynic on me just thinks corps are buying timeshares so they can resell them to another unsuspecting buyer. Or maybe Airbnb them ? Just curious if I'm off base there. Every now and again I browse/search in Incognito mode where it disables my ad blocker and it's absolutely astonishing how much trash is added to the experience. Then I realize that for probably half the country that this is their normal internet journey. When I try to use Youtube on my phone, it's totally insufferable working my way through ads every 3 minutes. Also, even looking at Yahoo News or anything like that looks like the TV in Idiocracy. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Apr 16, 2023 |
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Apr 16, 2023 19:55
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It's a scam in the sense that they tell people they can totally afford it and don't worry because your home will only increase in value beyond perpetuity or mislead them about the monthly payment that suddenly double inside of a year. The right wing media take is that banks were FORCED to give people these loans by the government and that caused the 2008 housing crash but banks were falling all over themselves to give out these loans knowing (or hoping) that they wouldn't be the last ones holding the bag and basically stole millions by selling the debt. And even then, no one went to jail for it and most of the big banks got saved by tax payers. I'd call it a scam FMguru posted:One of the things about a Reverse Mortgage is that you're betting that won't live past a certain age. If you're 70 years old and you buy an RM and you draw down 10% of the equity in your house every year (for living expenses or to go on cruises or w/e), you'd better hope you die before you're 80 or you'll literally have no place to live. That's my plan
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Apr 28, 2023 23:07
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Not a common scam. Yet. But https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/29/us/ai-scam-calls-kidnapping-cec/index.html ‘Mom, these bad men have me’: She believes scammers cloned her daughter’s voice in a fake kidnapping quote:CNN
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Apr 29, 2023 16:54
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Blue Footed Booby posted:I get routine robo calls and texts for a specific person who I know exists but have never met. I think some info scraper got their wires crossed. Then every scammer who uses that pastebin calls me to offer me lowballs on property I've never been to, but that matches what I can dig up on my doppelganger. You should do a reverse scam and tell them that, yes, you'll sell it and all you want is a $65,000 "good faith" deposit since you've been getting so many offers. Then let them gradually find out that you don't own the home.
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May 2, 2023 23:01
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Rabite posted:Scam? Maybe MLM but I think a person I recently met it is trying to set me up possibly bartering or reselling consumables like toothpaste and soap from Amway. Sounds like somebody has a bunch of unsold product that they've ordered in order to raise up their "PV" every month. People are so obsessed with that PV number, since that determines their "level" and how much of a rebate check they receive, but they're so god damned brainwashed that they'll actually buy stuff for themselves that costs them 10 times as much just to get that number up. This is why sometimes when they try and recruit, they'll show someone a check for like $1500 to show them how easy it is to make money ("I got this working just 2 hours a week!"), but without telling you that they bought $7000 worth of overpriced crap that's now sitting unsold in a filled up garage.
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May 10, 2023 11:35
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Sorry, yeah, "PV" stands for "personal volume", a number Amway uses to calculate "sales". Sales are usually just what distributors purchase themselves. They use the number instead of an actual dollar amount I presume to camouflage the total money being spent and distract disassociate from it.
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May 11, 2023 12:44
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FMguru posted:I thought the whole point of Tony Robbins (etc.) seminars was to teach and inspire you to be confident and take charge of your life, i.e. the sort of person who doesn't need to attend seminars and pep rallies to feel motivated enough to accomplish their life goals? Kind of, but it's still more about collecting money than the benefits of cognitive therapeutic thinking. It's more along the lines of MLM Think Positive Mantras that convince people to hand over their life savings than anything altruistic or meaningful. Tony Robbins is a sham.
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Jul 23, 2023 20:29
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MightyJoe36 posted:That, and the illicit thrill of buying something that may or may not be "hot." You just know you're getting a good deal. Only thing I ever knowingly bought "hot" was a PS2 that my coworker was selling near christmas time when they were hard to get. It worked out fine.
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Sep 13, 2023 22:00
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beats for junkies posted:I got an email telling me that I had a new google voice message for a number I haven't paid attention to in years. The message was nothing (literally 30 seconds of silence), but I decided to scroll through the history and found these two Can you post the audio?
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Oct 7, 2023 00:38
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I went to listen to a podcast on my phone this morning and got one of those McAfee "scanning device/THREAT FOUND!" popups which I've never experienced on that device before.
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Nov 18, 2023 16:50
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I've been getting a lot of "problem processing your payment" emails from Amazon, a pest control company and comcast, even though when I check the account all is fine. Well, not a LOT, but considerably more than ZERO, which is what I used to get.
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Dec 25, 2023 17:25
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:Several years back, there was a period of time when a good (happily married) friend of mine was receiving emails for some other guy's online dating account. My friend tried multiple times to cancel the account and/or notify the other person but nothing ever worked. I don't remember how he resolved the issue except that he may have just opened up a new email account. Did he get laid?
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Dec 30, 2023 17:55
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Professor Shark posted:ChatGPT write me a script where a goon shows up for his wrong-email-guys account and meets the woman of his dreams While carrying a printer 4 miles to meet her at a Starbucks
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Dec 30, 2023 20:50
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Been receiving a lot of fake invoices and receipts lately for things I didn't buy and services I don't have
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Mar 21, 2024 12:30
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