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I was looking for about a month for a laptop. Then on this one magical day I open kijiji and see a Toshiba Thinkpad T450s with 20gb of ram, 138 ssd and an i5-6300U cpu going fo 500$ (value 2000+).
My first thought was. Okay. Scam alert. But you know. What if?
So I call up this person. And its a girl who got a pc from her bf, but really she wanted a mac so she is selling it.
This straight up blew my mind. I decided, fuck it. Got 500. Ran to her. Ran a systems check on the laptop. Checked for any attempts at opening it up. Checked the harddrive. Checked the ram. Everything is solid.
Long story short. Thank god for apple fangirls!32 -
The other day I got a call from Windows Support about my computer being infected with a virus. I only have a Mac but knowing this was a scam call I played along for 15-20 minutes. Then I finally told the person calling that I don't have any computer running Windows and he got quite angry and wondering "why are you wasting my time?". Told him it was to prevent him from calling and scamming other people. He yelled "fuck off" and hung up. Made my day :)
How do you handle these phone calls?12 -
I just had my first "Microsoft you have a virus on your computer" scam call today and I managed to waste 29 minutes of their time, collect 4 numbers to report and call the guy and asshole in the end.7
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My private Email Account got hacked when I was in school, and they sent out a mail with something along the lines of "hey, you should really use this product to lose weight, it is great" to all of my contacts. Many of them ignored it, some of them called me to inform me about the issue (the worst part was, long after I used 2fa and changed passwords regularly, they still had my name and contact list, so they just made email adresses that looked like mine and continued to send out spam to my contacts). Anyway, one teacher of mine didn't know that this was a scam and was insulted because I regularly sent emails about her losing weight. And as if the whole situaion, which I couldn't do anything about, wasn't bad enough, my parents and I had do have a 1h conversation (which ended up in me explaining how those hacks work, and luckily she understood, but still). Never again. I prefer those fake ms support guys that call me over this every day.7
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~ Freelancer.com Week #1 ~
Project: I need someone to debug an application's code and review it. Budget 30 bucks.
Bid: I am an experienced developer I can probably review it in an hour.
client: Hi, need you to check if app is contains virus [link to scam website]
me: sure, download supposed "social Bitcoin miner" and run some AV tests...8+ positive flags for a Trojan virus.
>Me: It's a Trojan virus mate it's not legitimate😟
>Client: Can you remove the Trojan virus so that the legit not stays?
Me: Umm there is no bot mate it's just a virus 😕 I wouldn't open it outside a sandbox
Client: But here it says Bitcoin faucet bot [links shitty how-to youtube video]
Me: 😒 it's not real dude you are about to get scammed, I can test it in a VM if you. . .
Client: I opened it already, it's working
Me: 😮 r u sure?
Client: yes, can you install VM for further testing?
Me: sure, in your computer?
Client: yes
Me: just download the windows image and text me when it's done
Client: My disc is full! Only 3 gb left
Me: 😑 call me when you clean it
Client: [ offline ]5 -
long && scam && rant?
At my parent's: phone rings..
Me: hi this is XYZ (in German)
He: hi this is ABC from Microsoft tecnical suport (strong Indian accent, sorry toall Indian devs who might feel offended, no intention)
Me: hi... (I'm learning for my exams and don't have a VM with Windows installed currently, so no time to "play")
He: we got some worrying data from your Windows computer. You might have a virus and we need to run a few tests to verfy it. Do you know what that is?
Me: yeah, a scam.
He: sorry, sir I didn't understand you, could you repeat?
Me: yeah, I know what " this" is. It's a scam, and we only deploy Linux here. (lie, we have Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as an iPhone, iPad and Android devices in the house, guess who is "support"...) But good luck with your next call.
He: (kind of friendly) oh. I see. Well have a nice day too.8 -
I’m on video calls very often, but never really bothered if I’m wearing a shirt or tee. Even when the call is with people like CEOs or bosses.
This time though, the friend specifically asked to be in a good shirt, be professional and shit. Till this point all I knew was the friend started a very amazing business of sort and would like me to join too. And the person I’ll be meeting is very busy and impossible to get an appointment.
The buildup is so much for this call that I’m wondering it’s either going to be CIA or scam. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t CIA.
A few minutes into the call, I get a feeling it’s a scam. A few more minutes and I was sure it’s a pyramid scheme.
Now, I can’t call it out because the friend is really into it, almost blindly believes this scheme, and isn’t ready to hear any counter-arguments. So I thought, let’s just get over with this call.
The call went on for 3 hours. 3 WHOLE HOURS. I had to be attentive, professional, and not laugh on their face for 3 hours. On top of that, I was feeling hungry AF.
Mr. impossible-to-get-appointment was explaining Robert Kiyosaki’s financial theories - in a completely incorrect manner and interpretation. I tried correcting a couple of times, because I’ve read his books and theories in detail - but this person just went on and on and on for 3 fucking hours.6 -
When I left school I decided to apply for a junior dev role. I received a call back later that day and they tried to sell me access to some course with the promise of a job afterwords. They gave me a website to visit to find more information.
I Googled the company and found that it was as I suspected a scam and that they had been praying on the jobless for sometime.
So, I played around on the site they told me to visit for a while and found a rather simple SQLI. I managed to pull the admin email/password (which they stored as plain text) the email address belonged to a Gmail account.
I tried the password for the Gmail account turns out the account belongs to the person running the scam. I find an email from the hosting account and you guessed it the password was the same.
I pulled the site down and replaced it with a picture of the person running the scam along with his name and the words "I'm a dirty scammer".
Then I sent all the info to the police (he'd been running a few others scams too) not sure what that lead to I didn't hear anything back.1 -
I just got a phone call from "Microsoft" because there are Trojans on my pc. The broken English (and the content of the call) told me that it was scam, but I wanted to have my fun, so I continued the call.
After I told them that I am on my Computer, I was forwarded to an "expert", and now the funny part starts 😁
Scammer: you have your keyboard in front of you??
Me: yes
S: you see the strg, control ctrl button on the bottom left
M: yes *rly?*
S: what button. Is next to it?
M: fn
S: ...
M: ... *XD*
S: and next to it?
M: that's the windows button
S: ok, press that button along with 'r'
M: ok
S: what do you see?
M: *telling him what I see on my GERMAN pc*
S: ok, type 'eventvwr' *spelling it like hell*
I did so. Just while this spelling I could have hit my head on the desk... It was hilarious
He navigates me to the error and warnings and tells me that those are Trojans 😂 and that this is the reason some programs (especially my antivirus software) aren't running properly.
Well I told him that those aren't Trojans and that all my programs are running properly. I don't know if that was the reason, he stopped the call, but I wasn't able to connect to their 'headserver'.
In the end I am sad that I wasn't able to f*ck him up more. Maybe I would have been able to get some more information about their company to kick their *****.
Next time I will be (more) prepared7 -
Last job search experience... It's fresh. I was being recruited by a girl from Aruba. During our 2nd video call she became... let's say "friendly", calling me "hun" and "sugar". Our 3rd conversation in attachment. I checked - the company is legit, she does work for them, it's not a scam. Fun fact - her full name is Jameelah but she doesn't use it at work because it's more suitable for a belly dancer than a professional IT recruiter. Her words, not mine.
9 -
I just saw an ad by a viral marketing agency thisventviral.net that sell a 16GB USB stick with an os image they call Xtra-PC for 29,60.
I immediately noticed that it seemes to be a simple USB boot stick with a Linux distro with a Windows like ui and OpenOffice and other software pre installed.
They guy took out his CD drive bay an claimed that he removed the hard disk. While odd his clames about faster speeds are obviously true because microshaft windows and office are bloated pieces of shit.
So this leaves me in the odd position that a viral marketing scam selling you over priced USB sticks and an image you probably could find for free, also makes people adopt Linux instead of the bloated shit. And that with people that won't notice any of the downsides of using Linux.
Wired position, should I hate them or should I commend them for theire unintended efforts spreading Linux desktops?5 -
Here I am just tryna browse a site and this stupid attempt to trick me into falling for a scam pops up. There is no way to stop the pop up because I can’t tap anything fast enough. Not even restarting the browser because it remembers this as the last URL it had accessed. Looks like I have to uninstall and reinstall chrome. Honestly, if you’re a scammer, what the hell is the point of doing this? What idiot is going to call the number? All it does is annoy you to the point of suspicion. Or maybe there are people stupid enough!?
7 -
Scam call story
Scambot: This is Costco balh blah blah....(I don't even have a Costco where I live). To be put on the 'no call' list please press 2.
Me: 2.
Scambot: Hang up.
A few hours later....
Scambot: this is Costco blah blah blah.... To accept your reward please press 0.
Me: 0.
(Long wait)
Scam person ( In a Indian accent so thick I can't accurately type it out without it sounding racist) : This is (gibberish). Are you between the ages of 18 and 80?
Me: I'm 85.
Scam person: (gibberish) Are you between the ages of 18 and 80?
Me: I'm 85.
Scam person: hangs up.6 -
Fucking telecom and their shady ways of providing "service". Don't even need to consider paying for porn sites when my isp comes along with its own, overpriced service to fuck a customer in every way possible.
Probably other providers as well, but for now I'm fucking pissed at them because they already scammed my grandmother twice, when it comes to internet speed, probably because they thought she wouldn't notice either way.
My grandmother's residence can receive up too 200mbps, so she got a plan according to that. Installation of the router was included as a one time fee.
This is where they first scammed her, imo. They installed a router, that can route 100mbps at max. At first I though she got a plan for that speed.
An elder telecom technician, who was investing a completely irrelevant issue, switched it out for one than can handle uo to 1tbps. He had no obligation to do so and he didn't charge anything.
Seriously, probs to that one guy. He openly stated that telecoms pulls off this scam and switched it for free, since they have many of routers lying around anyways (I wonder why 🤔🤔🤔)
Anyways, guy switched out the router and BAMM! from ~80mbps to ~170, iirc.
Fast forward a couple of months I notice internet speed is capped out at 76mpbs. Capped out way to perfectly, to just blame the cable. But obviously the guys over at customer support do exactly that.
Calls telecom: "yeah, your contact only goes up to 100, 76 because of the cable. You need to pay extra to get up to 176".
Excuse me, what the fuck did you just say, shit nugget? We should pay extra for something you contest from us?
Yo, Mister ChromosomOverflow, don't think that relaying the responsibility to another number to call will put you out of the fucking shit you tried to pull off.
Edit: The contract states up to 1000, 200 or 100mpbs download depending on what the cables allow and in case of 200 there's 100mbps upload, but we also get capped out there at 20. I wish these fucker one gang rape per non-received mpbs2 -
Getting oversea calls all of a sudden. If you’re trying to scam me, at least speak the local language and check local time.
Talking to me in a language I don’t understand at stupid o’clock doesn’t help your case...5 -
I think it's a scam that the multinational corporations have pulled off that they've managed to get everyone to call and equate something technical and legally specific, "piracy."
Piracy is the theft and resale of physical goods. Copyright infringement is not piracy. It's a crime(in most countries), for sure, but it isn't piracy. The word "piracy" is emotionally charged, and its use serves the interests of corporate profit, not the interest of the origination of creative works, and certainly not your best interest. It's a deceptive practice. It's a lie.
But "copyright infringement," and "intellectual property," don't grab readers' attention like, "piracy." So, like how DeBeers has indoctrinated the world into thinking that diamonds are valuable, the RIAA, MPAA, and the BSA have indoctrinated the world into buying into the lie that copyright infringement and piracy are the same thing.9 -
Early on in my freelancing career I learned something important. Even with seemingly tame nerdy stuff, sh*t can get real, real quick. This story describes the very start of my career in web development and hopefully will serve as a warning to newbies out there.
A young teen, I had just learned some basics of wordpress, I was confident I could hack together something that worked and looked okay with minimal effort and knowledge. One day I was approached by a guy who wanted a job board board site. Knowing there were already clones out there I figured this would be an easy gig, man was I wrong.
In addition to the fact I didn't know about contracts or the scope creep from hell, I had somehow gotten myself involved with a criminal business front.
These guys operated a scam business to rip off investors. Me and my designer buddy were used to make the business look legit. What they would do is hold job fairs where people are supposed to pay to rent a booth, but instead they would give everyone a booth for free and then lie about what all businesses were coming. They would then show this info, along with the website and marketing materials to investors. They would take the money from the investors and launder it for drugs.
The real story starts the day of one of the worst hangovers I had ever had. I was at a random friends house sleeping for most of the day.
Apparently one of the guys who was operating the scam business was about to strike a deal with one of the investors when something on the website didn't work (it was working as designed). This guy, Manny we'll call him, had been blowing up my phone all morning. I check my voicemails and there are threats on my life; saying I will be sleeping with the fishes, or if they ever find me, they'll fuck me up. Needless to say this really freaked me out, either way I decided to head back to my dorm.
When I come back home, my designer buddy tells me that some guys were in the house looking for stuff. Apparently this guy hired two nerds to "break into my computer and steal the website", fortunately they didn't know what they were doing.
After a while I got another call, Manny wanted to sit down and "talk things out". Being naive I accepted and we met up. The two nerds were there with one of his body guards. He said he wanted to have those two nerds take over the project. While this was going on, his bodyguard flashed his gun at me several times making eye contact. I agreed to, but I still wanted to get paid. I asked about getting paid and he said we never signed a contract and that he owned the host and domain. I was pretty much screwed.
This is where the story should end, but I wasn't a very smart guy back then. I gave up the site but I created a back door into it. Every week or so, they would get "hacked". Because the two nerds didn't know what to do, they ended up coming back to me for help. This is when I finally got paid. Totally not worth it. -
I was wondering if there are "employees" in scam call centers, who genuinely don‘t know that they are scamming the people who they call.
Maybe they get minimal information or are lied to and don‘t care enough to question it.
So I‘ve tried to google it. I‘m bad at googling and couldn‘t find anything. All the results were how to avoid or to spot scammers and similar things.
I tried searching in German and in English and I also tried Duckduckgo. No luck.
Then I asked ChatGPT and it basically said that it could be very well true and gave some examples and referenced some articles.
Of course I know that ChatGPT can‘t be trusted because all of it could be hallucinated.
So I asked for references. It gave me just one link, which lead me to a 404.
Maybe you can help me out on this topic?
The reason that I want to know is because I get a lot of those scam calls for years now and I started to mess around with the scammers.
But if they don‘t know, then maybe I should try to convince them that they are working for a scam "company".6 -
Proctorio. That's the rant.
But seriously. I thought I could get out of college without running into it. But nope! Now I'm being subject to having my data sent to a company who's CEO posts private support chat logs on reddit to call a concerned student a liar. What a joke.
College is a scam1 -
Why do all my scammers on telegram say on telegram that they're currently chatting on business account and if you can add them on private? Is it so that they can see more info about you since you have them in your contact list and see how willing / naive you are? I always play the game along and did once added it to my WhatsApp. Maybe that's the reason why I had two human phone calls by scammers now. They labeled you as "easy" and now send the heavy weight scammers to you I guess. Recently, I got a call from PayPal, automated, and they said some suspicious thing was going on at my account and that they want to verify a big purchase. I do have my card attached - so, who knows. Sounded realistic but already was sus ofc. I had to press one to talk to someone. I did, why not. So then I got some Indian or do on the line saying bought iPhone blablabla and I was like. Yeah sure.. I wanted to play the game along to find out what the scam was - but his English had such huge accent that I've just hung up the phone.
It's impossible to find out how scam works, they always notice at a certain point I'm scamming them.
But because of going far into these games, I think I'm on some easy list and that's the reason I've encounter so many. So just playing the game along isn't without consequences.
I've teached my scammer using a translator I had just now how to properly scam dutch people. Don't be that formal, that word is outdated and also, dutch people can't speak Dutch at all. So if quality of dutch has a certain level you know they want smth from you. If AI did beat us in one thing it's languages I guess. It can even speak Gen z and formal and informal14 -
Anybody notice spam is just getting worse and worse? Fucking scum bags spamming me every year about conferences for my current company. I also get a bunch of scum bag spam on my home addresses. One account is practically brand new. I made the mistake of contacting robin hood trading on this account and now I get stupid scam spam on there.
I want to stay professional on the pro emails, but I just want to scream and call them of a bunch scum bags.
If someone wanted to do humanity a favor it would be depopulating spammers from the Earth. This would lower frustration levels on the planet immediately. Scammers and spammers are all the same.2 -
I heard a lot about phone scammers, every time I go to bank website I read message that they will call me and steal my money. I couldn’t wait to get my scam call.
Finally someone called me poorly pretending to be bank employee.
Scammer: We detected suspicious activity on your account, did you transfer xxxx amount of money to company yyyy ?
Me: Yeees ( waiting excited for more action )
Scammer: ….. thank you …… hang up
Next time I will try donkey sound. -
What I own a car?!?! Where can I claim it?
Oh wait, it's probably another scam call...
The amount of detail in this one is pretty amazing though... Most just call and hang-up.
1 -
Just an idea...
Fuck scam calls and texts. I feel like wrapping their phone cords around their necks and beating them with the handset.
So short story long, I'm looking at developing a website that has a list of websites and endpoints for text and call subscriptions. The stupider the better. Enter the annoying phone number or email address, subscribe them to every damn service on the list, and let the fun begin.
Has anyone got any such websites they'd like included?6 -
Recently I made a dumb mistake :(
I have applied for credit card online and they have call me and asked me for info and send some messages which I need to forward someone that contain codes.
After that they ask for some docs, salary slips and bank statement etc. I got stuck for some tax forms.
So one day they just called that its ok if you can't submit your tax docs , we can make verification through debit card, I thought the call was genuine and I am in cc process, I shared my pin. and wohaaaa. my balance was deducted :( Thats was indeed a scam call.7
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