4 ms·

Are MLM schemes dead? Nigerian money scams? Slot machines?

• walrus01 4y ago
  Scammers with a well prepared script calling or messaging age 65+ persons pretending to be their grandchild in need of bail money (which of course must be paid from a bitcoin ATM, or in itunes gift cards or similar) seem to be wildly successful these days. I have a theory that some of this is due to large scale data leaks that have peoples' ages in a database field so some scammers are now in possession of name, phone number and ages for millions of elderly americans.
  • moistly 4y ago
    Of course they are. Health details, too, because there have been leaks in healthcare, too, most recently in Oz. Also financial metrics: everyone’s game score was leaked by Equitax IIRC.
• dredmorbius 4y ago
  Are you saying that the principle role envisaged for cryptocurrencies is as some fringe-level scam-the-vulnerable? Because my understanding was that it was initially positioned as a total replacement for fiat currencies. From the abstract to Satoshi's initial white paper (2008): A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. <https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bitcoin/ https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bitcoin/> See similar statements from Chaum and others (<https://web.archive.org/web/20141218034712/http://www.hit.bme.hu/%7Ebuttyan/courses/BMEVIHIM219/2009/Chaum.BlindSigForPayment.1982.PDF https://web.archive.org/web/20141218034712/http://www.hit.bm...>) That latter doesn't seem to be happening any time soon.