[HN Gopher] What is a pig butchering scam? (2023)
___________________________________________________________________
What is a pig butchering scam? (2023)
Author : baud147258
Score : 108 points
Date : 2024-03-21 13:50 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| yungporko wrote:
| paywalled
| shaicoleman wrote:
| https://archive.is/BvEqS
| rubenbe wrote:
| The Darknet Diaries podcast recently had an episode on this type
| of scam: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/141/
| bobchadwick wrote:
| As did Search Engine: https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/whos-
| behind-these-scammy-text-.... That episode takes a really dark
| turn.
| gunnarde wrote:
| Came here to say this! Great episode
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Mild spoiler, but I could not find corroboration for the black
| axe human sacrifice claims anywhere on the internet
| cameron_b wrote:
| Last Week Tonight, on this
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg
| nytesky wrote:
| The divorcee with terminal cancer losing 2.8M was soul
| crushing.
| ahi wrote:
| I was vaguely aware of the scam, but didn't realize that most
| of the perpetrators are also victims. Whole thing is very
| depressing.
| acover wrote:
| Are there bank accounts that have a person watching every
| transaction and can call you to ask why you went to a Bitcoin
| ATM? A bank account an elderly person with dementia could use?
| graemep wrote:
| If you have a few million in liquid assets than a private bank
| might do that. Some do (or used to) manual daily reviews of
| balances and manual sweeps to interest bearing accounts so its
| not inconceivable.
|
| For anything less, its too much work.
| nytesky wrote:
| You setup a trust, and you run a main account with automatic
| transfer to their spending account for day to day.
| bradley13 wrote:
| I know someone who, due to ADHD, has trouble paying their bills
| on time, and managing their money. They found a legal service
| that handles their basic finances, and gives them their budget
| for shopping, fun-money, etc.. The service is surprisingly
| reasonable, something well under $100/month.
|
| While not quite what you asked, a service like this would at
| least provide an additional barrier, before someone hands over
| their net worth to a scammer.
|
| The next step after that, often used for elderly people,
| involves a full power of attorney: someone else is completely
| responsible for their finances, and hands them either cash or a
| debit card with a small amount of money that they can use
| however they want. But that is for extreme cases.
| javajosh wrote:
| Sounds like a great service. What is their name?
| bradley13 wrote:
| Probably not applicable to you, it's just a small
| legal/financial/tax services office here in Switzerland.
| Not sure how he found them - maybe they did his taxes, and
| he asked?
| 5040 wrote:
| This sort of service can be useful for gambling addicts too.
| t_mann wrote:
| Sounds like a service that in itself requires a lot of
| careful checking and trust, which kind of defeats the
| purpose. If someone offered me such a service, I'd probably
| assume that it was a scam. Things like 'Regulated by FINMA'
| may mean less than you might assume.
| dcow wrote:
| The thing with a Pig Butchering scam is it's not the drive-by
| gift-card/bitcoin Kitboga variety you're thinking of. Asian
| organized crime groups build entire fake trading platforms and
| convince otherwise well adjusted healthy people to set up their
| own accounts and dabble with investing their own money. The
| platform is fake and the money is gone as soon as you move
| money to it. But you don't know until you try to withdraw.
| kurthr wrote:
| If you're over 80 years old and don't do online banking, but
| are convinced by someone calling "from the FBI" that your
| account is in danger, Wells Fargo will happily try multiple
| times to transfer your life's savings to multiple different
| Bitcoin bank accounts (the first few closed for fraud and funds
| returned) over more than a week and several visits, then open a
| new credit card and transfer the maximum cash advance
| electronically as you read the newly issued password out to
| someone on the phone in their presence, and never mention
| there's a danger in doing this or question your decisions,
| until all your money is gone.
|
| How do I know? If you happen to have been a school teacher for
| 50 of those years, you keep excellent hand written notes of the
| events, that make your relatives sick to their stomachs.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Wells Fargo really is rotten to the core. The other banks at
| least make cursory efforts to prevent this stuff.
| kurthr wrote:
| The only saving grace was that they ended up on the hook
| for the cash advance.
| causi wrote:
| _the scammer seizes the opportunity to strike up a conversation
| and guide the victim toward feeling like they've hit it off with
| a new friend_
|
| Ah, so not something we of the 'tism need worry about. The only
| way I respond to wrong numbers is by blocking them.
| BadHumans wrote:
| I sent a text to wrong number last week and I'm grateful the
| recipient let me know it was a wrong number so I wasn't just
| sitting there waiting for a reply from my friend that was never
| going to come.
| digging wrote:
| Mostly, although autistic folks can also get extremely lonely
| and we all present differently. A few years ago I actually got
| one of these "random wrong number" texts and, although I
| thought it was real and responded, I just didn't engage when
| they tried to keep talking. I did suspect it was a scam at that
| point but even if it hadn't been, I was not interested in
| meeting any random person - statistically we would not likely
| get along!
| 7174n6 wrote:
| There is a move to rename the crime to "financial grooming"
| because the term "pig butchering" is an intentional form of
| victim shaming. Anyone who is still using the term pig butchering
| should be immediately discredited.
| spaceisballer wrote:
| Honestly that makes sense, the main reason the public doesn't
| hear about these things is because victims don't want to speak
| on this. They just got swindled, can you really blame them?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| In almost every scam there is an element of "grey legal
| area", where the victim thinks that they are doing something
| slightly illegal or completely illegal and that's why it is
| going to pay out so well for them. That is to make sure
| victims don't tell police or really anybody. "Hey I was
| putting all my money into this criminal scheme, but instead I
| got scammed, can you help me?"
|
| That is why we have the old saying: "You can't fool an honest
| man"
| digging wrote:
| > In almost every scam there is an element of "grey legal
| area", where the victim thinks that they are doing
| something slightly illegal or completely illegal
|
| That isn't true of pig-butchering scams, or in general.
|
| > That is why we have the old saying: "You can't fool an
| honest man"
|
| The saying is "You can't _cheat_ an honest man ". And it's
| also bullshit. Don't trust old sayings; you can quote me on
| that.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| How are you so sure, and why are you so angry as to rage
| against old sayings? The pig butcher scammers might very
| well tell their victims that the supposed crypto
| investments are not allowed in China, to make them seem
| more lucrative.
| orwin wrote:
| No, that's not how it works.
|
| The most effective way is to get a 'finance' app approved
| on the Apple/Google store (which is easy), then you send
| your victims there after grooming them for multiple
| weeks, then show above average returns, but not
| exceptional ones, so they keep depositing their savings,
| then when they try to withdraw, you make a message like
| 'you have to pay 40% taxes on your total earnings, please
| deposit that much before you can withdraw'.
|
| That's why I think 'pig butchering', despite the negative
| connotation, is accurate. Yes, grooming is part of the
| scam, but it isn't the majority of it.
| digging wrote:
| > How are you so sure?
|
| No, _you 're_ the one who made a claim unsupported by
| TFA, that victims usually believe they're acting
| illegally.
|
| The scammers might very well tell everyone carlosjobim
| put them up to it. You can't just assume something is
| happening because it technically could happen.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I was talking about why victims are many times reluctant
| to talk to the police or others when they've been
| scammed. My comment was not in response to the article,
| but to another comment.
|
| Frankly you seem to be looking for some kind of argument
| where there is none.
| digging wrote:
| It just looks like I'm more upset than I am because of
| how I write.
|
| Your comment claimed that most scam victims believed they
| were doing something illegal; I don't think that's a
| reasonable claim without evidence.
| snapcaster wrote:
| People have to use words understood by others to communicate.
| this is the first time i've ever seen this term and agree it's
| better but don't think it's fair to discredit people using the
| current term
| hyperhello wrote:
| Don't you think that term might be offensive to swinds?
| blowski wrote:
| Seems to me that the name is an extremely vivid explanation of
| what's happening, and might therefore prevent it happening, by
| sticking in people's minds. Better to prevent it happening at
| all than name it to make people feel better about themselves.
| toast0 wrote:
| Financial grooming is a better name anyway. Maybe not the best,
| but I assumed a pig butchering scam had something to do with
| pigs or butchery, like maybe selling other meats as pork or
| pork as other meats, or selling products sourced from pigs as
| vegan.
|
| Financial grooming has money right in the name. And there's
| other victim grooming patterns, so I wouldn't think 'financial
| grooming scam' is something to do with recombing a president's
| hair.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| It's a literal translation of the original Chinese term. This
| scam has been popular in Asia for years. One can use a
| euphemisms but it doesn't really help the victims. Also the
| term "grooming" has a negative connotation itself since some
| Western media outlets started using it to downplay child gang
| rape. See the British "grooming gangs".
| GJim wrote:
| > Western media outlets started using it to downplay child
| gang rape
|
| What _on Earth_ gives you this ridiculous idea? "Grooming"
| certainly isn't a euphemism. It is an entirely accurate and
| descriptive term.
| splitstud wrote:
| This weird drive to compel the speech of others is the thing
| that needs to be discredited.
| thetoon wrote:
| As I've been told long enough "be strict in what you give, be
| liberal in what you accept". We're all welcome to apply
| (arbitrary) strict rules to what we say, but we ought to live
| with the fact not every does (or, anyway, have the same set
| of rules to start with)
| GJim wrote:
| "Financial grooming" is the term in common use in the UK.
|
| I've never heard of 'pig butchering' which sounds rather victim
| blaming and certainly would not be used as a *descriptive* term
| by UK banks, government or media.
| rprospero wrote:
| I'm also in the UK and I'm not seeing the victim blaming part
| of it. I don't think it's a great term, given that I had no
| idea what it meant until I read the article. Then again, I
| would have assumed "financial grooming" was a service offered
| by a concierge banker to lower my direct debits. Out of the
| two phrases, I do feel that saying "my uncle is being
| butchered" will get law enforcement to act more quickly than
| saying that he's being "groomed".
|
| I'm obviously missing some context or nuance here, since
| you're the second person to identify the connotation. Is it
| the "pig" part?
| 7174n6 wrote:
| This place is ridiculous. How do I get downvoted for trying to
| help the victim from being stigmatized? The term is horrible,
| and there is no legitimate reason to use it.
| seryoiupfurds wrote:
| > There is a move to rename the crime to "financial grooming"
| because the term "pig butchering" is an intentional form of
| victim shaming. Anyone who is still using the term pig
| butchering should be immediately discredited.
|
| Your first sentence was fine, although I disagree that the
| term is _intentional_ victim shaming.
|
| But you came into a forum where people know term A, and went
| on full blast with "anyone who is still using (well known)
| term A instead of term B (that many people didn't even know
| exists) should be immediately discredited."
|
| That's needlessly aggressive and doesn't really help get your
| message across.
| rprospero wrote:
| You're right that this place is ridiculous. However, as I
| mentioned in a cousin comment, I don't see the stigma and you
| haven't done a good job of explaining it.
|
| Is it because the word "pig" implies that the victim hasn't
| kept Kosher and that the scam is god's punishment for that?
| Is there a general consensus that people who are "butchered"
| deserve to be murdered? This stigma was obvious and immediate
| for you, but I'm not picking it up. I don't wish to
| perpetuate the stigma, but you haven't shared what it is.
| saintfire wrote:
| As far as I know the "pig" part is about fattening
| (increasing trust and and thus the payout) them up before
| butchering (scam exit). Really doesn't seem like victim
| shaming. If anything it makes me feel worse for the victim
| because its a long con involving trust and feelings.
| stcroixx wrote:
| Horrible? I can see mildly offensive, but horrible? Why is it
| so bad exactly?
| noodlesUK wrote:
| The thing that I don't understand is why the telecom companies
| that are letting these scammers SMS spam en masse are not being
| cut out of the domestic telecom market. There should be a certain
| percentage of spam reports to legitimate messages that is just
| permadeath for the telco. I'm pretty sure if I tried to use
| twilio to send these kinds of messages I'd get banned, but there
| are sketchy sms/sip companies who go out of their way to enable
| the bad behaviour.
|
| STIR/SHAKEN is a good start, but we need to come down hard on
| this.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Nobody seriously tries to stop spam because they make money off
| it.
|
| If someone tells you that it's impossible to trace the origins
| of spam, ask yourself how they can know whom to bill.
|
| The reality is that it's possible and easy but only when the
| bottom-line is concerned.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| This is why there needs to be regulation with teeth.
|
| It needs to make business sense to prevent spam/scams by
| there being penalties for screwing things up, and incentives
| for doing well. Otherwise you're right, unscrupulous telco
| companies like to make money by charging scammers to send
| messages to customers.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| We need regulation and regulators with a minimum of
| technical skills, common sense and bribery/lobbying being
| adequately punished that it's no longer seen as worth it.
|
| Currently that's not the case, so the excuse of not being
| able to trace the source of the spam is successfully
| preempting regulation as nobody involved has the skills
| and/or financial incentives to ask "hold on, how come you
| know who to bill but not who's originating the spam?".
| ryandrake wrote:
| We need a proactive and inquisitive press that questions
| PR and asks these companies to clarify why they say what
| they say. Our current media simply reports "In a
| statement, Company X said Y" and leaves it at that.
| ianburrell wrote:
| I don't know if the phone providers are making money on
| scams. Phone calls that have gotten so cheap that VoiP calls
| from overseas may not be charged anything. It is also likely
| that the overseas scammers are using US machines to make the
| calls. My guess is that the scammers don't want to pay
| anything since greedy and don't want charges that can be
| traced.
|
| Simpler explanation is that the phone companies don't care
| about the scams because it doesn't affect them. They aren't
| liable, and there is no mechanism to report scams to them,
| and make them spend money investigating.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Calls and texts are of course cheap on a per-unit basis,
| but they're still not _free_. So not only it means that in
| aggregate, telcos will lose maybe 10% of revenue if they do
| fight it, but most importantly that detail actually means
| every bit of traffic has a paper trail associated to it
| (since this traffic must be billed for) and thus all the
| information required to trace the source of the spam _is_
| there, just that everyone (including regulators) are
| financially incentivized to look away and pretend it isn
| 't.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I would pay 10% more for a phone plan some with spam
| blocking. Like, even just as simple as blocking all voip
| phones or foreign numbers.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Yes how easy would it be to auto-detect unusual activity on
| their systems likely to be scammers? How many people ring
| random numbers 24/7 in foreign countries for legitimate
| reasons for example?
| dghughes wrote:
| >STIR/SHAKEN is a good start...
|
| It seems to have done nothing. Even for phones I get more spam
| than ever. Same for my Mom 99% of calls to her landline are
| scammers.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Something has changed. The auto warranty scam calls have
| stopped, which at one point were the majority of scam calls I
| got. Scam calls are most of my calls as well.
|
| Now I get:
|
| - Travel package scams (I believe this is related to
| timeshares, this is most calls I get).
|
| - Medicare/Medicaid scams (a close second by volume)
|
| - Auto accident scams (pitching an insurance payout)
|
| - Home security system scams (free security system!)
| Wistar wrote:
| These days--meaning the last few weeks--I get:
|
| * Home remodeling come-ons. So many. They know my name.
| Often "I'm calling for my Dad's construction company, xxx,
| who is working in your area ..." It's a different company
| name every time.
|
| * Medicare BS.
|
| * "Scare" scams--just lately with no specific reason, just
| words such as, "...your case is urgent and you must call
| our agent Sam at 555-xxx..."
|
| * Tax relief crap.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Oh yeah - the home remodeling ones - I get those
| occasionally.
|
| Also occasionally solar company calls. These appear to
| just be really shady lead generating companies, but the
| solar companies are real (if maybe themselves a little
| shady).
|
| Once in a long time I get the "scare" scams - those are
| usually claiming you owe the IRS a bunch of money.
| derekp7 wrote:
| The scare scam I got a while ago was a "cop" claiming
| that I missed showing up for jury duty that morning. He
| spoke "cop talk" and passed me to another "officer", who
| tried to convince me that since I missed showing up for
| jury duty that a bench warrant was issued which would
| result in me getting arrested if I tried to show up to
| the court house to "post bond". Instead, he recommended
| that I use a remotely located "bond posting" machine they
| have in several locations (he rattled off 3 addresses),
| and I can give him the receipt number and that would
| clear up the warrant. It just so happened that if you
| googled "Bitcoin ATMs", it came up with those 3 locations
| as the first three results.
|
| Now what really pissed me off is that it took more than
| half an hour to get to the scam part -- they put me on
| hold multiple times, and passed me back and forth between
| the two "cops", with really no information given to me.
| Once it got to the demand for money, I started putting
| them on hold, until I hung up (which he of course warned
| me not to do), and they kept calling back until I blocked
| the number.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| Anecdotally, I tend to agree. I have both UK and US phone
| numbers. The US phone number receives _dramatically_ more
| spam calls than the UK one, despite us not having STIR
| /SHAKEN in the UK yet. I don't know if that's because the US
| people are likely to be juicer targets (richer etc) or
| because of some infrastructure difference that makes it more
| of a hassle to do in the UK.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| I'm certain the "Report Junk" thing on my phone is completely
| ignored, if only because I clicked on it 100 times by accident
| when it was first rolled out (with very poor UI, IMO).
| hocuspocus wrote:
| I get very little SMS spam, and they're usually filtered by
| Google Messages so I don't even notice.
|
| And in this case, pig butchering scammers use Telegram and
| Whatsapp mostly.
| harkinian wrote:
| Yeah, WhatsApp was the first place I saw these scams, and I
| continue to get these messages from "women" on there.
| nytesky wrote:
| The fake apps for the scam are egregious. Come on Apple Store.
|
| Honestly for ACH and wire transfers they should have required
| financial counseling before executing -- I remember that women
| with the "CIA" cash scam was handed a brochure, maybe they should
| sit down with CFP or someone before they can execute.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Your daily reminder that Apple has a walled garden to protect
| you.... from giving anyone else a 30% cut of every payment you
| make.
|
| App that claims to be a trading business? Sure, greenlit no
| problems here. App that is obviously a scam version of
| lastpass? Hell yeah, get on the app store, you pass muster.
|
| A trivial update to an open source app that doesn't even have
| any form of payment and requires nearly no permissions because
| it's not sending your data to fifteen different data brokers?
|
| Hey, hold on there, that sounds sketchy so you will be denied
| breadwinner wrote:
| I have experience with this (but didn't fall for the scam).
|
| The scammer, whom I met on social media, was extremely
| convincing. She claimed to be wealthy. She has pictures with
| celebrities, pictures with her Lamborghini, and so on. She said
| her stepfather is an executive in the Monetary Authority of
| Singapore, which gives him access to information that other
| people cannot have. This information allows her to make currency
| pair trades that bring guaranteed profits. (This would be insider
| trading, technically.) She showed me screenshots of trades where
| she made $250,000 USD to $500,000 USD in a matter of 30 minutes
| (buys and sells in 30 minutes; timing is based on instructions
| from her stepfather). Then she encouraged me to make trades with
| my own money as well.
|
| She asked me to install the Coinbase Wallet app. She asked me to
| press the Browse button in this app, then type seemingly random
| characters into the box. (Part of the scam here is that victims
| may not realize they are actually typing a website URL). The
| website then displays inside the Coinbase Wallet app, and its
| function appears to be part of Coinbase Wallet.
|
| She had me create a demo account, and guided me through the steps
| of making a demo transaction and showed me that I could make a
| significant profit. Then she asked me to make a real account. By
| this point I was suspecting a scam so I did not go through.
|
| All this happened over a period of 3 weeks, so the scammer takes
| her time to "groom" victims. An Asian lady who speaks Mandarin
| and speaks good English with the help of translation apps. I
| never met the lady in person (she claimed to be on the other
| coast of the USA), but I did have a video call with her. She
| claimed to have been using the website for two years (but in
| fact, internet records show this site was only created weeks
| before). I discovered that her phone numbers are Twilio and
| Google Voice VOIP numbers, and her IP address is Azure, which
| probably means she is logged in to an Azure VM from another
| country.
|
| Warning signs: They are always far enough away that you can't
| meet in person, but promises she will be moving to your city
| soon. (Or they are from your city, but currently away on
| business). Wants to switch to WhatsApp or Telegram. They always
| do video call to show that they are a real person. Shows off
| their wealth, mansion-like houses, fancy cars, dining at
| expensive restaurants. Casually mentions investing in crypto as
| their source of wealth. Then wants to show you how to invest in
| crypto yourself.
|
| Edit: Here are some pictures the scammer shared with me. She is
| with celebs (Asian celebs, I don't recognize them), in her new
| Lamborghini at the dealership and so on:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/uRKaE8g
|
| https://imgur.com/a/HV7v1XF
|
| https://imgur.com/a/vDvifL2
|
| https://imgur.com/a/sI01Upb
| TylerE wrote:
| It's much much worse than that. There no "the woman", there was
| "a woman" who was hired to play the part. The rest of the
| operation is call center sweat shop/boiler room. Often the
| people involved are being held against their will.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68444058
| bumby wrote:
| The podcast "Search Engine" recently had an episode about
| this [1]. One aspect that came to light is that while some
| targets will sometimes waste these callers time by playing
| along just to mess with them, they can actually be putting
| these people in harms way.
|
| [1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whos-behind-these-
| scam...
| the_snooze wrote:
| Before pig butchering, Reply All (Search Engine's direct
| forerunner co-hosted by PJ Vogt) investigated tech support
| scams. It's all organized crime too, but this was before
| they realized they can use slaves instead of hired
| operators.
|
| https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/6nh3wk/
| gizmo wrote:
| Why did you go along with this for weeks. Morbid curiosity?
| Blinded by greed?
| breadwinner wrote:
| It was weeks of friendship, nothing to do with investment or
| greed. Only after the friendship is established do they offer
| guidance on wealth making.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Do you just strike up friendships with random people who
| message you?
| rightbyte wrote:
| Come on. It used to be perfectly normal.
| erehweb wrote:
| Curious - what tipped you off to this being a scam? And when
| you were still believing, why did you think she wanted to share
| her "inside knowledge" with you?
| breadwinner wrote:
| I was the wrong demographic for this scam. I am successful in
| the stock market so I would never have fallen for
| questionable investment schemes, especially one involving
| trading on insider knowledge.
| GJim wrote:
| Wait.....
|
| A stranger (out of the goodness of their heart) lets you in on
| their secret technique for making PSMILLIONS, and you didn't
| immediately tell them to bugger off?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea that's what I don't get. I _almost_ can see falling for
| the "Microsoft tech support" and "I am the IRS" and "Your
| nephew needs bail money" scams, as they all sound like
| emergencies and I can see people setting aside common sense
| to handle an emergency. At least until the iTunes Gift Cards
| take the stage. LOL.
|
| But "hello Internet Stranger I know how you can invest and
| make $millions?" LOL how does that make any sense? Put
| yourself in the scammer's shoes: you found a way to double
| your money. Are you really going to tell random people on the
| internet how to do it? Obviously not.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > At least until the iTunes Gift Cards take the stage. LOL.
|
| Yes, I'm amused by those too. In my experience, the IRS has
| always wanted US dollars. But maybe Apple gift cards became
| legal tender without us noticing?
|
| LOL indeed.
| bombcar wrote:
| Scammers target people who will fall for it; immigrants
| are already used to using gift cards for various things
| and reasons, so they are not as likely to immediately
| recognize it as a scam.
|
| Which is why all gift card racks now have the "IRS IS NOT
| ASKING YOU FOR THIS GIFT CARD" signs on them; still not
| good enough.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I guess another, more controversial regulatory path we
| could go down is:
|
| Does the world really need gift cards? Do their few,
| anachronistic legit use cases outweigh the scam use
| cases? I personally believe gift cards are an overall net
| negative, even just considering the amount of plastic and
| packaging wasted on them, but add on the scam aspect, and
| we have to ask: should gift cards even be a thing?
| bombcar wrote:
| If not gift cards, something else.
|
| They're just currently the most effective "give me some
| numbers over the phone and now I have money" currently
| available.
|
| It used to be Western Union, but it would move to
| something else.
|
| Cash, money orders, PayPal, Zelle, any number of things
| have been used and will be used.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You're absolutely right and I can tell you've given this
| topic much more thought than I have. Thanks!
| erehweb wrote:
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gift-card-scam-get-your-
| money-b... says that gift card fraud was c. $200M in
| 2022, and that people have about $20 billion in unspent
| gift cards. Flow vs stock, but it seems like the majority
| of usage is legit. (Though maybe not for particular
| businesses).
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Do their few, anachronistic legit use cases outweigh
| the scam use cases?
|
| Anachronistic? I still give these as small gifts all the
| time, and every grocery or department store I go in seems
| to have a rack of them at the checkout stand.
| 5040 wrote:
| Often, they won't call them gift cards. They'll use
| things like "verification card." Newly arrived immigrants
| are often hopelessly confused already. They'll fall for
| fake job offers. These "jobs" will eventually require
| them to get gift cards. It can escalate into blackmail.
| The victim will have handed over all sorts of private
| information as part of the job application/interview.
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| You're right of course but the thing is - it's not "Hello,
| how would you like to make millions" - It's "Hello, how are
| you?" followed by a period of building the person's trust.
| And then it's an incidental "Oh btw, did I mention I'm
| involved in this great investment club". At this point a
| gullible person is seeing this other person as their friend
| (or more, a lot of people are lonely). Wouldn't you share
| your investment strategy with your friend?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea I think that also needs to be part of The Talk with
| your elderly relatives, too: Random online people are not
| looking to make friends with you, no matter how friendly
| they seem, they are taking advantage of your loneliness.
| I can see how the conversation could be unpleasant and
| you need to be delicate and respectful when telling it.
| breadwinner wrote:
| They are only a stranger on the first day, right? After weeks
| of chatting, you feel like you know them. They take their
| time, and only into the second or third week do they offer to
| share their wealth making technique.
| bombcar wrote:
| They send you a text "Hey, how's it going? Remember Paris?"
|
| And you reply "new phone who dis" and they apologize and chat
| about unrelated things for weeks becoming your friend.
|
| This is why any text from an unknown number should be "block
| and report as spam".
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >And you reply "new phone who dis" and they apologize and
| chat about unrelated things for weeks becoming your friend.
|
| Or maybe, just maybe, you should rethink how much you
| actually KNOW someone who you've merely been texting with
| for a few weeks.
|
| I wouldn't trust my closest friend giving me advice about
| making money, because his advice was an MLM. I sure as fuck
| am not taking financial advice from someone I have never
| met face to face. Even if they are legitimately letting me
| in on a way to make free money, it's probably unethical at
| best.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup, too long ago for this scam, but the dating scam. Woman
| from Russia, a number of nice email conversations, then she
| wants to come to meet me. I suggest we meet in the EU,
| splitting expenses, and of course that will not work. Push it a
| few more times (absolutely not picking up the option she's
| pushing to "send money to help with my airfare to the US"), and
| _surprise_ , I got ghosted. This scammer/scam-team at least
| seemed to fairly quickly pick up the signs of a non-cooperative
| target.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Everyone with elderly parents needs to at some point sit down and
| have "The Talk" with them about online scams and ideally media
| literacy in general. The scams are getting more sophisticated
| (technically and socially) and the scammers are getting much more
| patient and long-term focused since they can rely on not getting
| shut down. With convincingly articulate LLMs on the horizon, the
| problem is only going to get worse and more accessible to would
| be scammers.
|
| Yes, it's not just the elderly who are victims of these, but a
| lot of people at that age are too trusting of strangers and of
| people who _sound like_ authorities. And let's face it: older
| people have all the wealth in the world anyway so they're more
| likely to be fruitful targets.
| boringg wrote:
| "And let's face it: older people have all the wealth in the
| world anyway so they're more likely to be fruitful targets."
|
| Your comment would have resonated without the unnecessary last
| line that I don't even believe - are they they the ones who
| built all the technology companies in the last two decades?
| kennywinker wrote:
| In a capitalist system, you don't have to build anything to
| have all the wealth.
|
| Statistically I believe op is correct, wealth is more
| concentrated in older demographics, and it has been
| increasing in concentration for quite a while now.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Baby boomers and Silent Generation people hold over 60% of
| the wealth in the United States. Gen X-ers have about 30%.
|
| https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/more-than-half-of-us-
| wealth-...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Baby boomers and Silent Generation people hold over 60%
| of the wealth in the United States. Gen X-ers have about
| 30%.
|
| It would be more significant that the first two groups have
| twice as much aggregate wealth as the last if they didn't
| also have over a time and a half the population. (>30% vs.
| <20%.)
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/296974/us-population-
| sha...
| neilk wrote:
| Millennials hold about 9%.
|
| Fun fact: Mark Zuckerberg personally holds over 1% of that
| 9%.
|
| (That is, he holds ~0.09% of all the wealth of US citizens,
| and happens to fall into the group of Millennials who as a
| group have ~9%. This from rough calculations and googling.
| There's an old reddit post that has about the same numbers.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/nbqfvn/req
| u...)
| johnmaguire wrote:
| https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2020/10/02/wealth-
| inequ...
|
| Data comes from
| https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm
| ryandrake wrote:
| If you were a scammer, and your cold call console had three
| buttons: "20-40 year old", "40-60 year old" and "60-80 year
| old", which one would you push to optimize your chance of
| finding someone with the right combination of wealthy,
| trusting, and lonely? Even ignoring things like cognitive
| decline and loneliness, I'd hit the older button every time,
| despite the fact that yes some wealthy 20-60 year olds do
| exist.
| boringg wrote:
| "And let's face it: older people have all the wealth in the
| world anyway"
|
| My argument is that your comment is incorrect (hint: they
| don't have all the wealth in the world) and your tone.
|
| I don't disagree that they are the best target if you are a
| scammer its how you delivered the comment awfully close to
| blaming the prior generation for all our woes .. i.e.
| doesn't matter anyways because they "have all the wealth in
| the world anyways" flippancy.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Come on. "All the wealth" is obviously a benign
| exaggeration, just like if I were to have said "I do this
| _all_ the time" or "You _always_ do that".
| michaelt wrote:
| You haven't looked at the statistics on this, have you?
|
| Imagine vastly simplified world where people are in full
| time education (with no income and zero net worth) until
| age 20, then they start earning wealth at a constant
| rate. At age 30 they'd have 10 years of savings. At age
| 60 they'd have 40 years of savings, and that's 4x as
| much.
| animex wrote:
| Cognitive decline plays a big role in the susceptibility of
| elderly folks.
|
| An uncle of mine was a notoriously a ruthless businessman in
| his heyday and he fell prey to a gift-card scam where he was
| kept on the phone for 8 hours straight while he did their
| bidding. We were all shocked he fell for this but then realized
| the techniques that they use prey upon individuals with
| inability to deal with stress or trigger anxiety/panic causing
| them to act irrationally.
|
| As I age, I've noticed similar declines in ability to deal with
| multiple tasks, stress, etc.
|
| A better defence is to reduce the attack surface. While, I have
| legal financial control over mom's estate, suffering from
| moderate dementia, I've removed her ability to interact with
| her finances by removing her check book (she had loaned a large
| sum to an acquaintance without informing us), lowering her
| credit card limits, removed access to online banking,
| maintaining a low-balance checking account. All her expenses
| are on autopay. She doesn't even think about her finances
| anymore. Whenever she gets telemarketers, she always says "you
| have to talk to my son". Once in a blue moon she asks me "do I
| have money? I don't even know" -- and I reassure her she
| doesn't have to worry about money.
|
| I've done the same -- 2factor, using disposable credit card
| numbers, maintaining a separate PayPal-linked bank account
| separate from my main account etc, text notifications on all
| transactions etc.
|
| The sophistication and technology being used is also becoming
| problematic in detecting these scenarios even for highly
| aware/technical folk.
| bombcar wrote:
| Setting the phone to not ring for unknown numbers is also
| powerful, but to make it work best you need a way to be able
| to "add" numbers remotely.
|
| I wish it was more intelligent; I'd love to tell it what area
| codes to permit; the advantage of having a phone from half
| way around the country is that I only care about a few area
| codes and the scammers don't know which ones those are.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Sadly, area codes are no longer a meaningful signal of
| anything. My family has three cell phones and one VOIP
| number; and those use four different area codes, hundreds
| of miles apart.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's a signal that a call is a scam - 99.99999% of calls
| to me from the area code of my phone number (and
| surrounding area codes) are worthless scam calls, because
| of https://xkcd.com/1129/
|
| I'd love to ignore all calls from unknown numbers EXCEPT
| the actual area code I reside in, which they don't know.
| Then calls from schools, doctors, etc might actually get
| through.
|
| As it is, those go to voicemail and I get them
| eventually.
| acheron wrote:
| His year is off -- my area code is where I lived in
| 2002-03 and specifically not in 2005, but yeah. I blocked
| all that area code except for a couple specific numbers.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| WideProtect on iOS can get you most of the way there:
| "block all phone numbers in the following area codes
| except those in my contacts book"
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| I regularly get scam calls that spoof my area code.
|
| Hell, my number is even commonly spoofed! Every few
| months, I get a call from someone, then I get to explain
| to them that scammers can spoof phone numbers.
| petsfed wrote:
| I got threatened with violence, while I was watching my
| first born child sleep, hours after her birth, by someone
| who was convinced I'd spent the previous hours repeatedly
| calling his girlfriend.
|
| He was not willing to listen to reason.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| I thought that would work for me, and I got a local
| number before moving across the country. Somehow I'm
| getting spam calls from where I actually live now, and
| not from my phone's area code. No idea how that happens.
| I haven't gotten a single spam call from the area code.
| philistine wrote:
| The US rule that disconnects phone providers without
| authentication for phone numbers isn't active yet.
| petsfed wrote:
| You misunderstand.
|
| I have a Wyoming area code. There are less than a million
| of those in circulation. I haven't lived in Wyoming in
| years, so the odds that a call with a Wyoming area code
| is both a) not already in my contacts and b) legitimate,
| is basically zero. So I let every single (307) call go to
| voicemail, and if they leave a message at all, I listen
| to it (and 99 times out of 100 discover that its a failed
| robocall. That 1 time, its an authentic wrong number, and
| I've called a few back if it sounded like something they
| were expecting to hear back about).
| ryandrake wrote:
| > The sophistication and technology being used is also
| becoming problematic in detecting these scenarios even for
| highly aware/technical folk.
|
| This kind of worries me too, but I think we can still defend
| almost 100% by just following rule #1:
|
| "Do not send money in response to anyone contacting you
| unsolicited, either over the phone, email, SMS, social media,
| etc."
|
| You can get a lot of mileage from just that. There is never a
| case where such contact is not a scam or spam. If it's
| someone you know or already do business with, use rule #2:
| hang up, wait an hour, and call them back using a number you
| know to be correct.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >There is never a case where such contact is not a scam or
| spam.
|
| Bail?
| ryandrake wrote:
| I edited my comment to clarify Rule #2: hang up, wait
| some time, then call back on the known correct number.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| If they're in jail, that's not going to work.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| You can lookup the number of the jail they are supposedly
| in.
|
| There was a scam attempt against me that spoofed the
| caller-id to look like the county sheriff; scammer would
| _not_ agree to me calling them back on that (or any
| other) number for the sheriff.
| AnIrishDuck wrote:
| Um, yes it will?
|
| You pay the court clerk [1]. You either pay in person, or
| possibly online depending on the jurisdiction. If you
| aren't paying in person, you'll need to contact them
| directly anyway, and their contact info should be easy to
| verify. It's not like they're going to be sitting next to
| the detained party on the phone with a bitcoin deposit
| address.
|
| 1. https://legalaidnyc.org/get-help/bail-
| incarceration/what-you...
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Except then your "friend" will say they are traveling and
| they lost their phone (or it was stolen) and they have
| borrowed a phone from a friend, so you don't have a known
| good number to call them back.
|
| In which case still call them back at the number you know
| is good. If they answer, you know the thing was a scam. If
| they don't answer, you don't know. Call known numbers of
| friends and family of the "victim" to find out if they
| really are traveling. This is not definitive, because the
| scammers might have called those people too.
|
| I think the key to these situations is to ask questions of
| the "victim" that only the real person would know the
| answers to. They need to be questions about shared
| experiences that would not have appeared on social media.
| If they try to blow you off like "I'm under too much stress
| to think about such things right now!" hang up.
|
| Also, consider asking your friends to let you know before
| they travel, and arrange with them a pass phrase they can
| say if they contact you for an emergency. Maybe a duress
| pass phrase too such that if they say it, you'll know
| they're in _real_ trouble. Is this a pain? Is it too much
| to ask of many people? Yes and yes. But this is the world
| we 're in now until we decide to start putting scammers in
| prison for long sentences.
| t_mann wrote:
| I've tried to establish simple language codes with close
| relatives to deal with such scenarios, but I don't think
| I could rely on them remembering those. It's just such an
| awfully awkward conversation to be having that I suspect
| most people like to forget about it quickly. Any
| experiences with this or tips?
| michaelmrose wrote:
| As someone trying to initiate new business over the phone
| as an insurance producer this is both reasonable and
| worrisome. As someone who isn't trying to scam anyone it
| concerns me that scams are so pervasive this may continue
| to be incredibly difficult by less legitimate actors.
|
| I'm experiencing difficulties in even contact people who
| have expressed interest because they have expressed a
| broader interest than me eg they expressed an interest in
| foo and are now getting contacted by bar who has a
| relationship with foo but is not in fact foo and the
| contact could have occurred weeks ago.
|
| I could stand up a website and plaster it with verifiable
| information but much of that info like say professional
| license is itself by dint of being public not entirely
| verifiable eg I could put up a website for Sam Spade with
| his license info. For the same reason you are able to
| verify his license number--its public--its not an actual
| verification that you are speaking to the right person.
|
| Perhaps more relevant its easy to just never get to speak
| to the person in the first place because their defenses are
| rightfully up.
|
| I wish there was an easier way to authenticate as legit.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think in this case, it counts as spam rather than a
| scam, which is why I mentioned both.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If you click a link, fill out a web form, send in a
| physical letter, or make a phone call and effectively say
| I want to get info on <product> and the company gives
| your name to an affiliate who is a licensed professional
| to try to sell you <product> I don't think it counts as
| spam either.
|
| I wish your phone had a standardized way to link your
| expressed intent, the nature of the caller, and official
| nature/licensing or professional affiliation and show
| this data on your phone during receipt or during call
| kind of like you can click on an icon and get information
| about the legitimacy of a website.
|
| EG when you express the interest in <product> a singular
| number is created on your end and carried through to
| anyone who is actually acting such request whether it was
| asking someone to fix your cable or sell you life
| insurance and you could then verifiably see beyond caller
| idea and absolutely verifiable and relevant info in order
| to ascertain more data than is available via caller ID
|
| On September 2nd 2005 you told comcast their bad
| equipment was making you consider rage stomping said
| equipment. You are receiving a phone call from agent
| 34534 in the <country> who is officially employed by
| Comcast domain: xfinity.com to handle tech support
| regarding this issue. OR
|
| On December 10th 2012 you requested information re: life
| insurance from <Company>. You are receiving a call from
| <agent> who is a licensed insurance producer license
| #asdfasdf who has been an insurance producer for n years
| and has zero complaints regarding this request.
|
| It would be great if you could even address this request
| online via some standard like canceling it so nobody bugs
| you or attaching metadata
| mindslight wrote:
| If someone fills out a web form looking for quotes, and
| that form pushes them into entering their phone number,
| and you use that number to call them instead of
| responding with an emailed quote, that is most certainly
| spam.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Insofar as I'm aware they literally expected to be
| contacted by a person. The majority haven't provided an
| email nor sufficient information that would allow anyone
| to reasonably provide anything beyond a table of values
| that they may or may not qualify for.
|
| I'd love to collect my own data and converse over email.
| I would be overjoyed in fact but I don't think people
| will put their personal medical history in a web page
| that isn't their doctors and I don't really blame them.
| mindslight wrote:
| My experience is the consumer side of
| home/auto/moving/storage with web pages promising online
| quotes, but are actually just leadgen funnels that hand
| off phone numbers to traditional high-touch sales
| processes. I'm sure the sales reps that receive those
| lists believe the targets actually want to be called, but
| that's obviously a convenient fiction with the way the
| web pages are set up.
|
| I've also gotten spam calls that are similar leadgen
| funnels, where the frontend is obviously robocall spam,
| and then you're transferred to sales reps at what is
| likely a different company who clearly expect to be
| speaking to bona fide interested customers rather than
| perturbed spam victims just looking to mess with them.
|
| In general I've got to question the impedance mismatch of
| turning a web form into a phone call regardless of
| whether it's necessary. To me they're much different head
| spaces, and just because evening/night me is
| preliminarily looking into a topic doesn't necessarily
| mean that daytime me wanted to add it to the in-process
| run queue. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of your
| rejection is based on this dynamic where people wanted
| the interaction/information at the time they requested
| it, but not later when you're interrupting them doing
| something else.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. I think the process of buying
| some products is inherently difficult because the space
| is very fragmented and there really isn't a lot of
| incentive to streamline the process.
| rightbyte wrote:
| There is a risk associated with not wireing money never
| ever. Your brother could very well need 100usd for gas to
| some strangers phone wallet, since he lost his phone and
| wallet, etc. If he is in some foreign nation not sending
| money could very well make him end up on the streets.
|
| I would have been screwed like two times in my life if I
| couldn't solve stuff like this.
|
| I think the limit should just be how much you send.
| wolpoli wrote:
| > I have legal financial control over mom's estate
|
| A note to anyone in Canada reading this: This would be
| considered a bare trust and it would have to be declared to
| the CRA, starting this year.
| infinite8s wrote:
| And it requires a different return that needs to be filed a
| month earlier.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| What I worry about is that some jerk with a model of my voice
| has been helping my parents through this process for the last
| couple of years.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| > We were all shocked he fell for this but then realized the
| techniques that they use prey upon individuals with inability
| to deal with stress or trigger anxiety/panic causing them to
| act irrationally.
|
| It's a good thing politicians and politcal propaganda outlets
| don't make use of this. :/
| mindslight wrote:
| Good luck getting them to listen and take you seriously rather
| than engaging the standard ego defense of "I would never fall
| for that".
|
| And in general "don't give out money or information to anyone
| calling on the phone" is good advice, but thinking it's a
| complete solution is a bit fanciful. I'll admit to personally
| finding myself on the receiving end of a call from $bank, and
| in a moment of weakness having supplied various bits of low-
| stakes personal information for their "verification". I had
| called them earlier and was expecting a response, but it could
| have just as easily been a scam calling at the perfect time.
| After the mental gears started turning and I realized how
| little I actually knew about the incoming call and how the
| requests were escalating, I stopped the conversation and asked
| where I could call _them_ back. The point is it took a
| realization on my part, because these banks utilize highly
| deficient security procedures that make people comfortable with
| insecure behavior (starting with the use of effectively public
| information for "identity verification"), and the scammers
| only need a very tiny sliver of success rate to make it
| profitable.
|
| Also many of these scams are legitimate-business adjacent
| (medicare billing, medicare advantage, save money on
| electricity/tv, political campaigns, etc). Old people just want
| someone to talk to, effect their own fading agency, and really
| do believe the spiel of a friendly sounding person promising to
| help them. The potential damage there is lower than accounts
| being drained, but the continuum makes it hard to draw an
| absolute line when the "helpful" quasi-scammers blow right
| through it.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I had "The Talk" with my parents, 82 and 79 respectively. They
| were surprised to learn about it, but they seemed to basically
| get it. They nodded. I said "what happens if you get a text
| message from your bank with a link to a webpage?" and they said
| "never click the link, go to the bank website and look for an
| alert, then call up the bank if I can't find it there". And so
| on.
|
| Great, that's that worry taken care of.
|
| Not even one month later my mom spent an hour on the phone with
| a scammer before my dad finally got suspicious and made her
| hang up. I still have no idea what all they had her do, and she
| doesn't remember either. We had to basically treat it as a
| successful identify theft and potential intrusion into her
| device, even though she didn't actually give them any money,
| thankfully.
|
| So, I don't know if The Talk actually does it. For her, it was
| the fact that there was another person on the line (people
| wouldn't lie to you, obviously) and that this person was
| telling her they'd get in trouble if she didn't go through
| these steps with them. The scammers are cynical experts,
| they're way more sophisticated than the median elderly person
| they're fucking with.
|
| This all made me very scared for them, because I don't even
| know if this single incident will be enough to make them
| sufficiently canny.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea it's not perfect but it's at least one step. Sadly, older
| people maybe just grew up in a more trusting US society, and
| are therefore more trusting themselves. If someone calls them
| up and says "hi, I'm Jim, from the County courthouse, and I
| wanted to discuss a matter with you," heck they might by
| default believe him! It sounds ludicrous to you or I but
| their minds are from a different era. "Telephone calls are an
| expensive, special thing" their 1950s mind thinks, "surely he
| wouldn't call unless it was a real thing and important!"
|
| I don't even answer the phone to begin with. Everything goes
| to voicemail. If it's important, they will leave a message,
| and I can determine later whether they are to be believed.
| vundercind wrote:
| > Sadly, older people maybe just grew up in a more trusting
| US society, and are therefore more trusting themselves
|
| > It sounds ludicrous to you or I but their minds are from
| a different era. "Telephone calls are an expensive, special
| thing" their 1950s mind thinks
|
| This is the key--grew up in a world where people often
| weren't around their phone to answer it immediately (the
| older ones, maybe a world in which not everyone even had a
| phone!) and it cost money to make long distance calls, so
| mass-call scams had trouble being profitable.
|
| I mean, hell, that's only not been the state of things for
| a relatively short time. I was still paying connection and
| per-minute fees for long distance calls until at least the
| mid '00s.
|
| I think it's seriously worth considering whether we _need_
| some more cost-friction on long distance connections. That
| 'd be a pretty elegant way to curb this, since nobody seems
| willing to just force the telecoms to fix it directly.
| jmull wrote:
| I've got to say, this is pretty cringy and more than a
| little naive.
|
| Of course there are old people falling for scams --
| dementia is a lot more prevalent and they tend to have
| retirement accounts -- but younger people are vulnerable
| too.
|
| Pig butchering often has a crypto component, a scam that
| appeals much more to younger people. I googled for
| demographics on this and came up with this:
|
| https://www.globalantiscam.org/post/statistics-of-crypto-
| rom...
|
| Looks like everybody needs "the talk".
| suzzer99 wrote:
| My Dad is the most paranoid online person in the world, and
| still almost fell for a scam. He won't even open an online
| banking account because he assumes that means he can't get
| hacked.
|
| But then he got an email from my mom (they're divorced but
| still friends) that was so obviously a hack, not addressing him
| by name, and asking him to "help me purchases some stuffs on
| Amazon," and he was about to go through with it. I got the same
| email, and almost didn't contact my dad because I thought no
| way he'd fall for it. But he was just about to offer to help
| her buy some "stuffs" on Amazon.
|
| I'm not sure there's anything you can do, including the talk,
| to stop this.
| swatcoder wrote:
| > a lot of people at that age are too trusting of strangers and
| of people who sound like authorities
|
| Barely yesterday, and probably again tomorrow, throngs of
| people in their twenties and thirties were borrowing money to
| buy digital tulips whenever some dude on Twitter posted a graph
| with a line going up and a stock photo of a Lamborghini.
|
| The threat of being scammed is not age-specific, although the
| ways people are approached and coached by scammers are
| sometimes different.
|
| > and let's face it: older people have all the wealth in the
| world
|
| I know this is just a popular and divisive trope that pits one
| bunch of struggling people against another, but you must know
| different "older people' than I do if it rings true for you.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The best scammers are those who convince their victims that
| they also are scammers.
| neilk wrote:
| For my aging relatives I have set up code words to be used for
| actual emergencies, in case I'm impersonated over text.
| t_mann wrote:
| How did you approach this, and how successful do you think it
| was? Do you have any tips?
| dylan604 wrote:
| > With convincingly articulate LLMs on the horizon, the problem
| is only going to get worse and more accessible to would be
| scammers.
|
| Eventually, maybe we can just run any email, text, or even
| phone calls through our own LLM driven assistant that detects
| and notifies about the scam.
| dhosek wrote:
| My 80+-year-old mother, being 80+ years old, still has a
| landline, which she still answers when there's an unfamiliar
| number. However, she's also alert enough that she apparently
| enjoys toying with the scammers. She got a call from someone
| who addressed her as "grandma" and said that he needed money
| because he was stuck overseas. "O[?]?" she asked using the name
| of my son who was in kindergarten at the time. "Yes!" the
| scammer asked. "Why aren't you at your kindergarten?" she
| asked. The scammer hung up.
|
| I learned about the above story when I sat down to have the
| "the talk" with her.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Father fell prey to one of these scams. He asked me about crypto
| trading and mining so I talked him through it. He then mentioned
| he was doing it through a company whose name was big in the forex
| world.
|
| I got confused because the forex company wasn't involved in
| crypto so I asked him for the site nor was anything he said
| related to trading or mining.
|
| Going to the site, i immediately knew it was a scam. I asked him
| how he got a hold of this and some chinese woman had cold texted
| him. He's a senior so of course boomers are ripe for the pick
| since he lived alone. Ended up buying $10k worth of crypto to
| send to this scam site.
|
| When he tried to withdraw they sent h some nonsense email about
| tax withholding from the WTO and subsequently "froze" his account
| until he deposited 75% more.
|
| The worst part of the ordeal was how defensive he got with me
| about it. He was more concerned with the nonsensical scenario of
| him losing his PoA than losing $10k to an otherwise obvious scam.
|
| I showed him some of the fun culturally insulting things I've
| said to indian and Chinese scammers who cold text.
|
| Dad ended up getting a part time job to occupy himself and have
| some people to talk to. Haven't heard about him day trading or
| mining crypto either. I said if he wants to get into day trading
| to do it through some US based company you've heard before and if
| he wants to mine crypto, then I'll help him find hardware to do
| it.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > I said if he wants to get into day trading to do it through
| some US based company you've heard before and if he wants to
| mine crypto, then I'll help him find hardware to do it.
|
| I like that you didn't tell him to stop doing these things
| entirely (even though that might arguably be for his best) but
| instead you told him you would help him do these things if he
| wants to do them.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| It's his money to lose. Id rather he be day trading and
| losing money with a slight chance he might get lucky than
| playing slot machines which are a guaranteed to lose money.
|
| Crypto mining is a passive activity so no harm there
| ct0 wrote:
| My company has phishing tests regularly. There needs to be a
| subscription service to test your elderly and disabled loved ones
| on their ability to discern a scam from non-scam.
| badcppdev wrote:
| Perhaps it needs to be like vaccines and immune systems... pay
| someone to scam your elderly relatives for small amounts of
| money so they learn.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| I've encountered this so many times, and it always follows a
| similar pattern. I tell them to fuck off in Chinese and call it a
| day.
| FabHK wrote:
| Remember though that many of the people manning the chats are
| trafficked victims themselves.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| That makes no difference.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| I get a lot of scammers on my IG account messaging me. Typically
| they're the profiles of young women. A lot of the time, I
| verbally insult them or ask how the cat fishing is going. My
| favorite is telling them to stand in front of a mirror with the
| current date written on a piece of paper. Since they're all ESL,
| they fail this hard.
|
| But one time, I decided to see how far I could take it.
|
| Had a scammer message and follow me on IG. I went ahead with it.
| We kept it going for about a month which escalated to sending
| pretty scandalous pictures.
|
| The scammer asked to me my d*ck. Full disclosure, I'm a pretty
| average 5.5 inches. Instead of sending a real picture of mine, I
| found one online of some guy who had a massive slong held next to
| what looked like a 7/11 big gulp cup for comparison.
|
| I sent the pic to him and immediately the scammer reveals himself
| and threatens to reveal my messages and pic to my other followers
| on IG unless I send him some Bitcoin.
|
| I chuckle and say, "go for it". Now my friends all know me really
| well and wouldn't be phased by this. My buddies I went to school
| with know my size because of the sports teams I played on with
| them and they thought it was the funniest thing in the world.
|
| The girls all immediately began talking amongst themselves and I
| started getting hit on by acquantances that followed me.
|
| Was probably one of the funniest stunts I've ever done.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Wait, wait, wait... the scammer actually made good on his
| threat to send the Big Gulp Schlong picture to all your
| friends? LOL I never knew what they did when you called their
| bluff. That's amazing!
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Yup he did. This was a year or so ago and it was the funniest
| thing I've ever done.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Holy shit, I want to do this so bad now. Maybe I'll start
| answering those "Hot Asian MILFs In Your Area Want To Sex
| You" ads. LOLOLOL. Sadly they're probably just OF ads and
| not scams though.
| notShabu wrote:
| An insight that allowed me to get past mental blockers to
| bargaining (guilt, awkwardness, etc...) was the thought "I am a
| person, just like you, not some animal to be milked"
|
| This allows the price to be sought in a non-adversarial way since
| it makes building a connection and understanding of the local
| situation a part of the communication.
|
| Much of the awkwardness comes from not really understanding how
| the local market and local way of life works while also basically
| being royalty from an economic perspective. This out-of-touchness
| creates a principal agent problem where the "foreign" other is
| distrusted but also relied on for "truth".
|
| The negative experience doesn't come from the literal economic
| damage of being scammed but being treated (or programmed) like a
| pig let to slaughter.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I like to string scammers along for fun, if I have spare time.
|
| These "pig butchering" scams provide hilarious possibilities.
|
| They like to send their photo pretty early (always an attractive
| Asian lady), so I try and beat them to the punch and send my own
| photo (of course, also a photo of an Asian lady). Curiously, this
| doesn't deter them! My wife finds this particularly hilarious.
|
| One time, I had 2 people randomly texting me at the same time,
| using the same name - Jenny. I started sending them screenshots
| of each other's conversations, which kind of annoyed them. "Which
| Jenny is this? Do you know the other Jenny?" lol
|
| A list of things which also doesn't seem to deter them or make
| them think they might be being toyed with:
|
| - Claiming to work for the FBI (in an anti-scammer unit)
|
| - Being homeless
|
| - Claiming to be Peter Frampton
|
| - Claiming to be Bill Clinton
| muttled wrote:
| I'd be surprised, given the technical savviness and polish of
| these scams, if they weren't using LLM's that are scripted such
| that the bot isn't "aware" it's a scam.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I don't think they are. They don't immediately reply all the
| time. And like I say - they get annoyed sometimes and tell me
| to fuck off once they figure out I'm toying with them.
| Muromec wrote:
| The real way they do it is by offering a nice job in IT to
| somebody with a passable written English (read Indian), then
| traffic them to Shan states in Myanmar and beat them into
| doing it. Apparently it scales better and is more predictable
| than LLM.
| sp332 wrote:
| Also the Philippines https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
| asia-68562643
| gryn wrote:
| > Apparently it scales better and is more predictable than
| LLM.
|
| there's something in this sentence that hit different.
| harkinian wrote:
| These scams have been going on since before LLMs were
| passable in English convo, and I'll bet they're still using
| whatever human labor they had.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| LLMs (either online services--which also risk getting cut off
| --or the hardware to run them locally) are probably a lot
| more expensive than trafficked workers.
| lukan wrote:
| I think most of them are largely automated at this point, with
| the human scammers overlooking lot's of fishing gear. Only
| writing in some situations themself.
|
| Telegram is full of them, often they are so blunt, that you
| wonder why so stupid. But I saw people react and fall for them
| in group chats (where other people could intervene), so
| apparently it works with private chat. And they use all kinds
| of pictures (not just asian) and try to adapt them to the local
| groups at times. But the general theme: sucessful and happy.
| Making the victim wannabe just like his new friend.
|
| Some people are really desperate for success, so they ignore
| all warnings and go for it.
|
| Seriously messing with them would require LLMs at this point,
| to automate it as well.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > But I saw people react and fall for them in group chats
|
| Are you sure they were not co-scammers though or the same
| scammer? Seems like scamming 101 to make victims fomo.
| harkinian wrote:
| If I had two of these at once, I'd copy/paste the messages from
| one to the other and vice versa - make them talk to each other.
| sp332 wrote:
| Last week, hundreds of kidnapped people were freed from a scam
| center in the Philippines where they were forced to carry out
| pig butchering scams. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
| asia-68562643
| CollinEMac wrote:
| You very well may have been talking to victims of a fraud
| factory.
| khazhoux wrote:
| What does this mean?
| CollinEMac wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud_factory
|
| Scammers aren't always acting on their own free will.
| vundercind wrote:
| Is making a scammer less-productive, so possibly saving
| some number of vulnerable people from losing their
| ability to support themselves in retirement, ethical if
| that scammer may (may!) not themselves benefiting from
| the scam, and may be beaten or otherwise punished for
| poor performance?
|
| ... my god, might we even have a moral obligation to
| _help them_ make their numbers?
| barfbagginus wrote:
| This practice is called scam baiting, and there are communities
| you can join, like 419 eater. You can improve your techniques
| there.
|
| But be careful with scambaiting.
|
| 1. Scammers can have networks, with connections that are more
| violent and capable than a given scammer. They might be capable
| of hitting you with a drive by, doxing, swatting, or hiring
| local muscle to visit you. The risk of this is kind of
| 'expensive' escalation low but not zero - especially if you're
| causing real problems for an operation
|
| 2. Many scam agents are victims coerced into scamming by their
| bosses. This makes it unethical to bait them unless you have
| the power and intent to liberate them - which almost no scam
| baiters do
|
| 3. Many scam agents have bots for dealing with repetitive
| objections or harassment attempts. It doesn't cost them
| anything to string "vigilantes" along with low effort bot
| responses, occasionally dropping the payload URL, hoping you
| will make a mistake
|
| 4. Some scambaiting activities are illegal and could make you
| liable for legal penalties - things like verbally harassing
| scammers, hacking scammers back to surveil their operations,
| threatening to have scammers beaten or murdered, etc.
|
| Remember that the agents that you're talking to are softies,
| with a little power, but they're working under the supervision
| - and often the coercion - of hardened criminals in many cases.
| Scambaiting should not be done just for fun. It should be done
| with some form of desire to help liberate the victims enslaved
| by these operations.
|
| I have personally chosen to stop most of my own scambaiting
| operations until I find a new form of scambaiting that can
| actually help victimized scammers.
|
| The only kind of scam baiting that I do now is teaching python
| and open source contributions on GitHub, with the hope that
| teaching a valuable skill can help a scammer escape the cycle
| of crime and extortion. If a potential scammer is willing to
| learn Python with me and start making open source
| contributions, I don't really care what else they are doing.
| But of course this approach has a downside - I could be
| teaching valuable programming skills to a person who will just
| use them to automate their scamming operation.
| wizerdrobe wrote:
| In what jurisdiction would I be liable for verbally harassing
| a scammer?
|
| I ask because worked for a cybersecurity firm and we would,
| on occasion, and mostly the "teh lulz" screw with phone
| scams. Our legal had nothing to say on that front.
| host0 wrote:
| "Hello, I'm calling from the Microsoft regarding an issue
| with your computer" "Sure, lets talk about the difference
| between a module and a package"
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _But of course this approach has a downside - I could be
| teaching valuable programming skills to a person who will
| just use them to automate their scamming operation._
|
| Exactly; I'm sure that in many cases the people who taught
| them English had similar hopes.
| ben_w wrote:
| I used to get dodgy calls. Still do on my UK number. Back when
| I was still in the habit of actually picking up, if I got such
| a call I would advise the other party to join a trade union,
| which generally resulted in _them_ hanging up instantly.
| Jun8 wrote:
| Does anyone have a good explanation;anation why a photo of an
| _Asian_ woman is used in almost all cases, as opposed to, say,
| German looking or Indian woman. Is it because they are deemed
| to be the most attractive for the target victim demographic?
| manquer wrote:
| Well they are victims too , they are held in prison like
| compounds and forced to work 16 hours a day and physically
| abused . They don't have a choice but to talk to you .
|
| Everyone you engage you are making it worse for the person on
| the otherside
| deathanatos wrote:
| Jim Browning did a thing on these:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu-Y1h9rTUs
|
| The second half of the scam -- the cryptocurrency theft. The one
| I've seen recently is variations on any of the terms "ChatGPT MEV
| arbitrage ETH slippage bot"; in essence, the author claims to
| have used ChatGPT to write a bot that _waves hands_ does
| something something with arbitrage and makes tons of money. The
| explanation is technobabble, and the claims are often like "earn
| returns of $2k/day", which is of course solidly into the "way too
| good to be true" territory. The "smart" contract just steals your
| money, it's that simple.
|
| I have been seeing these _all_ over my YouTube sponsored videos.
| I.e., _the scammers are running these as ads_. I 've reported
| them as I see them, but thus far, YouTube has taken down exactly
| none of them, AFAICT. (In fact, my entire report history is 0%
| removed, despite every entry being a rather crystal clear ToS
| violation since I'd otherwise have been too lazy to go through
| the flow for it.) As I write this, both ad slots on the homepage
| are this scam.
| pornel wrote:
| Instagram is also full of these scam ads, and they remove maybe
| 1 in 20 I report. Many of them are obviously fake or hacked
| accounts, e.g. having "Nail Salon" as the business type on
| their profile, but their posts are promising $$$ if you have an
| account on Binance.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I wonder when banks start offering delayed payment options,
| similar to vaults having timed locks.
|
| You can transfer that 100k to the Very Reliable Businessman, but
| it'll require you to accept the transfer now and confirm it 2-3
| business days later before it activates.
|
| I'd really want one of those on my accounts when I get older,
| preferably with a limit closer to 1k.
| Muromec wrote:
| Just give your second factor to your children once you get
| older, they will also be more aware of scams
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The problem is, the people being scammed are convinced what
| they are doing is necessary. When our system prevents a grandma
| from buying $500 of iTunes gift cards at Target because it is
| clearly a scam, they will call our customer support help line
| and beg us to help them "get their niece out of jail" or
| whatever bullshit has been fed to them. We literally have to
| fight them to help them not be scammed.
|
| By the time you are sending someone money, you "trust" them.
| robrenaud wrote:
| Is there a sustainable business for a company that monetizes
| defenses against pig butchering?
|
| If you could make a honey pot LLM that engages the scammers,
| costing them time and learning their patterns, even misleading
| the scammers and figuring out their crypto wallets, could that be
| a profitable endeavor?
| lazyeye wrote:
| Cambodian slave labor
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-08-17/crypto...
| harkinian wrote:
| Doesn't help how even a legitimate investing platform often won't
| let you withdraw money immediately.
| not2b wrote:
| John Oliver did an excellent explainer about how pig butchering
| works.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg
|
| (apologies if the YouTube link has geographic restrictions, don't
| know if it does)
| circa wrote:
| Came to post this too. It was a great piece on it. I'm glad
| more people are becoming aware of them. They're starting to get
| out of control.
| not2b wrote:
| One thing I didn't understand before his piece was how often
| the person who is trying to defraud you is being coerced to
| do it, sometimes in slavery-like conditions.
| projektfu wrote:
| I had one of these working on me for a while, years ago. It took
| me a while to catch on but then I also am not quick to send money
| to someone. The scammer reached out from a public forum (language
| learning app) and then traded WhatsApp numbers. At first I
| thought it was just an eccentric person, but then I realized
| their goal was to get me to "invest" with their "rich uncle".
|
| At this point I hadn't heard about this specific scam, as most
| scams are kind of low effort and quick to screen people for
| susceptibility. This one surprised me in that they were very good
| at acting like someone they claimed to be. Google Translate has
| gotten to the point where people can carry on a conversation in
| their own language and talk to someone in English without
| sounding too odd.
|
| Before I blocked the scammer I took a closer look at "her"
| WhatsApp profile. She was a business account. Big red flag, I
| wish I had noticed that before. Still, if no money changes hands
| it's free entertainment? I also learned by paper trading on Forex
| that I suck at it and shouldn't play that game.
|
| Crypto scammers also sometimes try to play the long game, and I
| think they are based in different countries from the pig
| butchers. I met one through the same platform and saw through it
| right away, but noticed that they were working as a pitchman for
| another scammer.
| ametrau wrote:
| There's something missing from all these discussions. The country
| where the caller is located.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| PJ Vagt (from Reply All) has a FANTASTIC episode about this. Give
| it a listen, it's one of the most interesting podcasts I've heard
| since the golden days of Reply All.
|
| https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/whos-behind-these-scammy-text-...
| FireInsight wrote:
| Reply All is still my comfort podcast for short walks. Nothing
| has yet reclaimed the throne of being my most listened from it.
| Search Engine carries the torch somewhat, and is really good
| for it's scope, wjch obviously differs from the scope of Reply
| All.
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