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I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago"Why did you redeem it?!" Kitboga is a youtube national treasure.
- simlevesque 3y agoIt's a satisfying feeling when good trolling is done for a good purpose.
- dylan604 3y agothere are certain phrases that when i read them, i hear the voice of specific people saying them in specific ways. typically this is movie phrases, but "why did you do that?!?!?!" from one of the scammers is now in my head.
- ncallaway 3y agoFor me, it's not just the voice, but the distortions/clipping that come from the cheap microphone as they're yelling.
- cuddlyogre 3y agoI know so many foreign curse words thanks to him.
- pests 3y agoHis (old?) Google Play system was great. The digit at a specific location indicated to the fake Google Play store how much the redemption was worth.
- kumarvvr 3y agosir sir sir siR sIR SIR SIR SIR SIR
- lapetitejort 3y agoThe twist at the end is wonderful in so many ways. Kitboga, by complete happenstance, directly saves someone from a prolonged scam. Not only that, but he may have inadvertently stumbled upon a new technique to help out victims. Trick the scammers into giving their victims Kitboga's number so he can help them directly. I am excited for his future endeavors.
- chrisjc 3y agoThis situation didn't make any sense to me. Wasn't Kitboga and his team playing the part of the party being scammed? What did this lady have to do with bitcoin receipt/qr-code?
- graywh 3y agothis wasn't the usual "pretend to be a victim" bit
- lapetitejort 3y agoThey are playing the part of the scammed. and the part of the support group helping the scammer. Kitboga got "scammed", says he went to an ATM, deposited money, and got a receipt with a QR code. The code leads to Kitboga's website and telephone service. How an innocent lady got his number isn't clear. Maybe the scammers switched receipts on accident, got frustrated, and told the lady to deal with customer service herself.
- john-radio 3y agoI'm guessing they attempted to outsource the work of dealing with Kit's "customer support" to one of their more malleable blackmail/extortion/scam victims.
- throwawaymaths 3y agoThe scammers for some reason gave the victim kitbogas number. I don't know why. I think kitboga is confused too.
- 3y ago
- whiterock 3y agohilarious.
- dustedcodes 3y agoThis is one of the best paybacks I’ve seen to date. Marvellous, there’s nothing dodgy or nasty about it, just breaking a scammers spirit in the most comical way. Well done!
- flerchin 3y agoIt's really funny, but I can't tell how he funneled in scammers only. Seems just as likely he just has poor people.
- jstanley 3y agoThe only way to receive a gift card for this website is by attempting to scam him.
- phantomwhiskers 3y agoHe only gives scammers the QR code that leads into his gauntlet. Normal people shouldn't be stumbling into this, as it requires a fake QR code from a fake Bitcoin ATM receipt. This also lures the scammers in as they believe they will receive (someone else's) Bitcoin.
- spywaregorilla 3y agobut if you had a sample qr code (or even just the basic url?) you could start trolling innocents, no?
- lapetitejort 3y agoDesign it well and innocents can be identified quickly and directed to real people who can help them out, as what happened in this video at the end.
- dylan604 3y agosure, but you won't be scamming them, so it's all in fun troll spirit. frankly, i've met some asshats in the real world that i wouldn't mind pulling pranks like this on.
- jabroni_salad 3y agoWhat are the stakes? It's a website with weird captchas and a phone robot that puts you on hold, not a landmine.
- 3y ago
- modeless 3y agoIs this one as good as the impossible password game one? It was genius. https://youtu.be/knhQ2f8anT8 https://youtu.be/knhQ2f8anT8
- nogridbag 3y agoThat's definitely one of my favorites. But the video that made me laugh out loud the most was his collab with a cake designer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZpkdrm-zGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZpkdrm-zGA
- Wissenschafter 3y agoI always wonder if Kitboga was influenced by comedian Phil Hendrie. I grew up listening to Phil on the radio and they have very similar styles. Love it, hilarious.
- starik36 3y agoHis first ever show on KFI with the fake station manager was the most confusing time in my life.
- function_seven 3y agoI delivered pizzas back when Phil was on KFI. There were so many late deliveries because I just couldn’t get out of my car until a commercial break. RC Collins, Bud from Ojai, Margaret Gray, Bobbie Dooley, etc. All hilarious.
- kyleee 3y ago“Ted’s of Beverly Hills - We wanna put our meat in your mouth”
- sva_ 3y agoThe call hold line maze was great
- mschuster91 3y agoWhile I prefer Scammer Payback, this is f...ing awesome. A job well done.
- IngvarLynn 3y agoIt could've been funny, but every second of this video reminds me of my own experiences of dealing with the government services.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoI love one of the top comments on the video: > I love how Kit has evolved over the years to find out the best way of making scammers go crazy is to treat them basically the same way Comcast treats their customers.
- joedevon 3y agohahahahaha
- vsviridov 3y agoIMO this is way better than what the other scambaiter Pierogi did recently. I'm refering to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUHFpfVPUYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUHFpfVPUYc In the beginning it seems okay, have a bunch of people pretend to be victims and waste scammers time, but later on with starting to deploy malware and zero-days, spying on people with their web cam... Just because scammers break the law doesn't mean we have to stoop to their level. Overall left a bad taste in my mouth. It had a strong smell of "ends justify the means" mentality and this is know to turn to s*t every time.
- 3seashells 3y agoWhy use people? All it takes Is chatgpt?
- hrdwdmrbl 3y agoNo sympathy for those scum. If it was your low-income parents being scammed of their life savings, you wouldn’t either. No one is stopping these criminals. There is no legal system to pursue them. They operate largely outside of any repercussions. No sympathy for those scum.
- nyanpasu64 3y agoMeanwhile YouTube's first video recommendation is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s23XR8JMKtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s23XR8JMKtA where Kitboga himself installs malware on a scammer's machine.
- houli 3y agoThat's not what happens. He runs his own fake ransomware on his own virtual machine while they are remotely viewing it.
- chairhairair 3y agoImagine thinking surveillance is inherently evil. Not everything is a slippery slope, it turns out. It’s ok to go outside with your eyes open still.
- 3y ago
- spywaregorilla 3y agoHow many nuts are in this picture is the dystopia I fear
- dylan604 3y agois the rodent male or female or gender fluid?
- oktwtf 3y agoClassic scambaiting, reminds me of 419 Eater.
- binarymax 3y agoIs this the guy who got a scammer to carve a wooden keyboard? Legendary
- oktwtf 3y ago419 Eater was a place to show-off, coordinate, discuss tactics, etc. Topic: Scambaiting I believe it's origins were going directly after the scammers behind an advance-fee scam, a.k.a. the "Nigerian prince scam". 419 is in reference to some criminal code.
- at-fates-hands 3y agoYou are correct: The name 419 comes from "419 fraud", another name for advance fee fraud, and itself derived from the relevant section of the Nigerian criminal code.
- klyrs 3y agohttps://www.419eater.com/html/john_boko.htm https://www.419eater.com/html/john_boko.htm This looks like the "scambaiter" actually scammed an artist into making some pretty sweet art under the guise of a scolarship. Am I missing something, or is this actual fraud?
- yorwba 3y agoIf you read all the way to the end: >> I was also able to discover the name and contact details of John's artist and managed to contact him to confirm he had indeed been paid for his work, although he wouldn't tell me how much he was paid! But yeah, John got scammed.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoThe "do not redeem" video is the Kitboga's gift to humanity. Scamming old people out of their retirement is the worst thing someone can do. I have no empathy for those scammers.
- SirMaster 3y agoI thought a lot of them don't even know they are running scams, and that is all coming down from the top. They are barely paid phone workers just doing scripts and doing what they are told just so they can feed their families.
- packetslave 3y ago"doing what they are told" is not an excuse if what you're being told to do is evil.
- SirMaster 3y agoIf they aren't smart enough to know better though. I guess it's their fault for not being smarter, but how can you say they are evil people if they don't know that what they are doing is wrong? I've watched some of these scammer videos and there are people working for tech support scams who think they are actually helping customers when in reality they are actually selling fake products and services for their employer, but they don't know or understand that they are fake.
- reidjs 3y agoThat is the sad reality of this. Most the scammers would probably prefer to work a legitimate job, but circumstances have forced them into this. I don’t think most of them willingly choose to rip off people, but given the choice between stealing from a stranger, painlessly, or having their children starve, we’d all make the same choice. That doesn’t make it OK, but that is probably how they justify stealing other people’s money.
- 29athrowaway 3y ago
- nerdo 3y agoWhat a 1960's psych experiment would look like in 2023. Submitting to the authority of the QR code/877 number instead of white lab coat.
- TacticalCoder 3y agoI love Kitboda's videos. The one thing that strikes me all the time is how arrogant, smug, full of themselves these scammers always sound. They do profoundly believe they're oh-so-intelligent and don't hesitate to make fun of the old people they (think they) are speaking to. Despicable scum of this earth. Thanks to Kitboga for fighting the good fight and it's great to see banks and crypto-exchanges immediately freezing the accounts reported by Kitboga.
- williamcotton 3y agoArrogant and smug to one, a confident man to another!
- netsharc 3y agoIn regards to the arrogance... I imagine they have to be like that in order to be able to sleep at night, they justify the scamming by saying (mostly to themselves) things like the West stole from the developing countries, so this is them stealing back, and they have to believe the victims deserve it so they can, I repeat, sleep at night. Another justification might be "Look at this stupid moron, I won't feel bad stealing from them because someone would inevitably do, since they're so dumb!", i.e. they have to believe the victims are dumb in order to convince themselves of the previous sentence. Maybe it's a chicken and egg issue though, maybe only scumbag jerkoffs are attracted to this kind of scam-call-center work. Then again maybe most humans are easily manipulable that they go into such a call-center being a decent person and enter into a Stanford Prison Experiment situation...
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agoThey scam many many people all day every day, why wouldn't they get arrogant about it? your explanation seems overly complicated.
- jwilber 3y agoI think they’re speculating about the sort of person who is drawn to that sort of job, how they justify that line of work, etc.
- wnevets 3y agoScammers vs Impossible Password Game [1] is also great to watch. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knhQ2f8anT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knhQ2f8anT8
- nonrandomstring 3y agoPut the fire out! You murdered the chicken!! Unbelievable. I almost laughed up a lung.
- quux 3y agoAmazing
- no_time 3y agoThis is staged right? Right??
- Havoc 3y agoProbably just selected for the ones that played along
- theogravity 3y agoI've seen over 100 of Kit's videos and they are definitely not staged and it's all improv'd from Kit's side.
- no_time 3y agoI was thinking about the scammer’s side. If a password creation dialog asks for the daily Wordle answer and it doesn’t trigger a red flag, the predator isn’t smarter than the prey at all apparently.
- gnyman 3y agoWhile intelligence plays a part, even smart people will ignore obvious red flags if they think they are winning.
- CursedUrn 3y agoSo this is real? I always presumed the person he's talking to in these videos was just a friend/colleague playing the part. Some of the stuff he does to them seems like it would violate international hacking laws or something.
- lupire 3y agoThere are no "international hacking laws". That's why all these scammers operate with impunity.
- lupire 3y ago[flagged]
- gnicholas 3y agoCan someone explain how the scammers are pulled in in the first place? That is, what's the 'funnel' for this? I get that this is amusing and a good way to waste scammers' time, but where did he originally find the scammers?
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoThey have public phone numbers they send out in spam email campaigns.
- iris2004 3y ago> Can someone explain how the scammers are pulled in in the first place? That is, what's the 'funnel' for this? Viewers send in spam emails. They also look for ads on Facebook and other Ad networks that pretend to be virus pop-ups or bank alerts. After they engage with a scammer, they trick the scammer into thinking the victim has lodged money in a bitcoin ATM. However the receipt is fake and funnels them to the Gauntlet (the endless phone system and verification process).
- abetusk 3y agoSo, I'm not sure but I think what's going on is that a scammer calls and asks the "victim" (in this case, Kitboga) to transfer funds into one of their Bitcoin wallet addresses. This can be done via a Bitcoin ATM which will then print out a receipt which the scammer asks the victim for a picture of (see [0]). As Kitboga says, the scam normally has to end at this point because the scammer can easily verify whether the receipt is fake or not. So, instead, Kitboga and his team created a fake receipt that takes the scammer to the web and call center labyrinth, promising them they can redeem the Bitcoin at the end. Third party Bitcoin management entities are kind of common now, I guess, so this doesn't raise any big red flags? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWzz3NeDz3E&t=150s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWzz3NeDz3E&t=150s
- KallDrexx 3y agoWhy would victims be calling in on the scammer's behalf then? I would assume that would only happen if a real victim somehow has a receipt that ties into Kitboga's fake system right?
- BillSaysThis 3y agoThis. Is. Awesome!
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoYou are all laughing, but I was just presented with an impossible captcha trying to login into my OpenAI account, that I pay $20/month for. To solve the captcha, I need to click the puzzle 80 (!) times, and if I make a mistake, I should start everything anew. That's totally not funny. Had to cancel the subscription. Anyway, Phind is faster and better quality.
- dave1010uk 3y agoWhat OS and browser are you using? Give me a couple of minutes and I'll get ChatGPT to write aa script that does it for you.
- gryn 3y agoI don't know if you're being satiric about it but I found your reply hilarious. maybe the captcha was made with chatGPT to begin with. AIs creating jobs for AIs to keep (server) employment at 100%
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoThen they will brick my Windows laptop and throw me in jail for Illegal Captcha Circumvention and Resisting Verification!
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
- michael_vo 3y agoThere should be a software product that protects our elderly by watching their bank accounts and listens to their phone calls. It’s so clearly a scam.
- HappyTortoise 3y agoTbf the bank thing is already a thing in a very limited capacity, but at some point the scammers figure out a bypass. The phone call thing is interesting but I wouldn't want an AI having all of my phone calls and it'll be hard to convince people to use it since everyone thinks they won't be scammed - better spend that time educating about scams instead. It'll also be much easier to bypass than the bank detection thing as a scammer can easily get access to the product.
- michael_vo 3y agoI always always never blame the people getting scammed and instead focus on system failures. The fact that phone calls cannot be verified. Why can’t we design a system that can eye ball scan you before you call and verify that you really work for Microsoft. Or verify that I’m pinging off USA cell towers. For example with the robocall issue the ftc actually implemented system solutions. Why don’t we put it on the ftc to also fix this issue?!
- hiatus 3y agoIf you're worried about elderly parents spending all of their money and they are accepting of your help, there's a few things you can do. Freeze their credit. Open a new bank account that will be their spending money, transfer money into it on a schedule. Set up regular bills on autopay so they get out of the habit of mailing checks (lots of mail gets sent to elderly ppl making it seem like it's gov and a response is required). Set up MDM on their phones and computers. Get them a low limit credit card. You don't have to do it all. Credit freeze, MDM, and bill pay are probably the biggest and easiest to get consent to.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rossdavidh 3y agoCan these people actually be this stupid? I am having a hard time believing it. I would expect scammers to be more aware of the possibility of deceitful behavior by others. Incredible if true, but hard to believe...
- marginalia_nu 3y agoThis is basically what surfing the web with a bad IP reputation is like. Captcha upon captcha. It's also basically what dealing with a fin tech startup is like, especially in the crypto adjacent space. Getting a hold of a person is basically impossible.
- shortrounddev2 3y agoIf they were that smart, they would have real jobs
- pixl97 3y agoEh, I do support work and work with a lot of large multinationals... being smart is not required it seems. And those are people with legit job titles.
- themagician 3y agoIt depends. A lot of these scammers are extremely desperate. Some are forced into it. For others it's just an office job like any other. Some firms actually do both legitimate support/customer service work and scamming side by side. I've called legit companies support lines before and the person picking up starts off doing some scam and them I'm like, "I thought this was Brand X," and they switch, "Oh yes, sorry about that. What was your order number?" That's how bad it's gotten.
- corbezzoli 3y ago> Some are forced into it. Judging by the calls I hear, I don’t give them that benefit at all. They sound pretty happy to scam the elderly. Maybe as a first-responder that could work, but if you’re talking to an elderly and convincing them to hand over hundreds or thousands of dollars, you do not have my sympathy.
- Ancalagon 3y agoNot much sympathy for these scammers but I do wonder how desperate some of them have to be to waste so much time on a couple hundred bitcoin max.
- jnsaff2 3y agoZeke Faux’s book Number go up has a couple of chapters on scammers who are actually themselves victims of human trafficking in Cambodia. Some of the scammers in the original video sound Nigerian to me, not sure what the situation is there.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoSunk costs can be pretty real with these things. It's something scammers use quite often too.
- DeRock 3y ago“A couple hundred bitcoin” is worth around $7,000,000 USD
- mhitza 3y agoScamming people is a multibillion $/year "market". Aside from Kitboga, there's another channel Scammer Payback that dismantle (sometimes, most of the time disrupt) these large call centers that exist only to scam people.
- wnevets 3y ago> but I do wonder how desperate some of them have to be to waste so much time on a couple hundred bitcoin max. Its part of the same reason so many fall for scams in the first place. They start spending the money (or whatever the reward is) before they have it and ignore any red flags to the contrary.
- abledon 3y agoThe next version of this maze in say, 2025, when AI is even more crazy... will be so beleivable.
- rietta 3y agoMust be a tough balance. By posting this video he blows this process since the scammers will now know the details.
- RALaBarge 3y agoScammers do not have a shared consciousness (some may argue lack a conscience at all) so unless they see this video, they don't know the details simply because it exists on YouTube.
- sumedh 3y ago> Scammers do not have a shared consciousness They do have whatsapp group chats though.
- chrisjc 3y agoYeah, it's tough one. On one hand they make their living with videos and need to producing and releasing, but then blow their cover. On the other, they could be wasting scammers time and effort for a longer time, building up years of material but have to float the all the costs until they're ready. Perhaps they have something else in the works. Perhaps they're gonna white-label the call-center/bitcoin stack they built so that more scambaiters can "apply their brand" and get in on the action. I'm hoping for some kind of AI representative functionality that just keeps them in a conversation for hours. Perhaps they can run full circle using AI conversation as the victim all the way through to the bank/call-center. Kinda like the Lenny bot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evlFPmy-4lU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evlFPmy-4lU
- alpaca128 3y agoHe's already known to many of these scammers, I've seen multiple videos where he was identified. But by that time he'd already wasted the time of two or three people in the call center.
- lokesh1729 3y agoI did the similar thing. A scammer trapped my wife to loot 170k INR. After a few days, we found the trick and scammed them for 50k.
- rpmisms 3y agoI know Kit through a friend. Played magic the gathering with him once. No difference between his persona and personality, one of those people made for the job. Absolutely great guy, too, nice wife and kids. He also started off as a Web Dev. The fake banking websites are all his own work. Really clever stuff, ironically using phishing tactics to catch phishers.
- KingGeedorah 3y agoReally, never would have thought he was a programmer.
- jackmott42 3y agoWeb Dev sometimes isn't. Sometimes it is CSS and HTML and art/design specialty. I don't say that to be a gatekeeper, I think CSS expertise is harder! heh
- JaDogg 3y agoCSS is harder indeed.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Vicinity9635 3y agoI'd rather do assembler than CSS.
- irrational 3y agoYou only say that because you have spent more time in assembler (I presume). I've spent enough time doing CSS that I find it to be pretty easy.
- Vicinity9635 3y ago
- bertil 3y agoThis is product thinking. Let’s get deep: Story time! I initially liked the guy but grew a bit tired of him using what could be veiled racism for views — I’m not accusing him of anything; it just felt cringy-er than I like my YouTube. The ethics are more complicated than that, but something bothered me, especially since that special episode where they sent someone physically there, let pests in the building, etc. I couldn’t put my finger on why. I didn’t particularly appreciate using animals, but that wasn’t it. I wasn’t a fan of the tall Serbian guy and his friend: they felt like standard prankster YouTubers, and I wouldn't say I like those. It felt like Mark Rober was part of it (He’s my favorite YouTuber, like everyone here) but didn’t like it; he should have been more active but wasn’t… More on MR later. It’s relevant—I promise. In the meantime, my partner (a medical doctor) has been watching those for a while. She loved it: administrative nightmare, people taking advantage of older people, computer glitches… there was so much schadenfreude to keep her giggling for hours after long shifts. I liked watching over her shoulder, recognizing the episode, and telling her if something good was coming (those are long). I have this pet theory that some jobs are intensive (you work as much as you do, like clinical work for doctors, plumbers, bakers, or therapists) or extensive (you do things that work for you, like teacher, software developer!). Anyone with an intensive job has a terrible life because they have to work too much in construction. So I’m very tolerant of what you do after a shift to rebuild yourself. (And I think we, the tech community, should turn every job into an extensive one because that’s a better life). But there still was something that bothered me. It was about how he needed the views to justify his time hacking them, and the views relied on a show that was always the same, and the poor, desperate, upset, and soon openly racist Indian “call center” operator had to be the bad guy. Having the bad guy always have the same skin color didn’t make the viewer any less problematic. I thought about the theory of Moral luck (some people are in a position where they have to make hard choices, neither option is moral, and judging them for their worst decision without the context is complicated), but it wasn’t it… I thought about how, after that big bust and the subsequent one, authorities arrested many people. They let most of them go because, of course, the police are deeply in the pocket of the owners that you never see in those videos, who are never really risking much. It felt performative: nothing structural happened. It also felt possibly “culturally racist”: again, good reason to suspect corruption in India, but without evidence, it still felt prejudicial. But obvious. But then I say this video (the first two minutes, I’m waiting for my partner to come from her shift to watch it together — she’s going to love that one). Kitboga didn’t just find something better, automating him wasting time with others: I recognize that team huddled around a table. That’s a product team. It felt more like a physical product team, like what you see in Mark Rober’s video about his toy company, but suddenly it clicked: I didn't like Kitboga videos, not just because they were ineffective, but because they couldn’t scale. He had to spend time wasting their time, “making content” to get one caller to waste his time. This video is about someone who has done intensive work until now, switching to automation and opening himself to extensive work. This time, fighting spammers doesn't rely on at least enough of them being “minstrels” (caricatural entertaining stereotypes: the thing that led to the expression “black face”) to make “good content.” It works as a video based on the excitement around building and iterating on a product, led by data. Well, presumably led by data: I haven’t watched beyond the second minute when he says they were tracking “EVERY click,” so my product analyst self suddenly felt very involved in that part. That’s why I like (and I’m assuming everyone on HN likes) Mark Rober’s videos: he builds a product. There’s some story-telling, but he clearly follows the ups and downs of trying to build a systematic solution to a given problem. This is something that MR wasn't able to do in the video with spies getting inside the call center. I sometimes struggle to explain my theory about intensive and extensive work, or what makes a company “product-driven,” and why it’s so important. You rarely have both options that are easy to compare favorably in an industry without the gap in quality being so prevalent: industrial bread vs. hand-make baker, ready-to-wear vs. bespoke fashion. But for so much software, having an industrial option is usually better because quantity has a quality of its own. Here, Kitboga is trying to fight an industry. It doesn’t matter that he’s witty every time he’s talking to an agent; he just needs to be witty enough to edit it into his video. To fight scammers, he needs scale — a different scale than what millions of viewers can give him. This automation will allow him to waste so much scammer time that he might make the sector unprofitable. Not sure when, where, or how… (indeed, they’ll notice when they step in a maze?), but that glimpse at possible success where no one thought that was possible. Everyone who started a company knows that moment, the product-market-fit, the Road-to-Damascus glimpse: “Are you a billionaire? - Not yet, but soon. - How?! - That one guy said that I’ve made his day a little bit better.” Seeing someone work on something for years and finally change—that’s a rare sight. I’m happy it was all filmed. Plus, those look like horrifying UX dark patterns. I love those. Now that I’ve wasted everyone’s time with my theory, my partner is finally home: let’s watch it.
- naet 3y agoThe part where someone waits for a super long time in a queue, finally gets connected, but then gets sent to an answering machine that says "the mailbox is full" hit too close to home. I know this was set up on purpose but I've had that exact same thing happen to me on a real & important government system recently. I've been trying to call California EDD to get some back pay for my state paid family leave. There is no option to get what I need online, I need to call in. I've had that exact thing happen twice after an hour of waiting in the queue... phone rings, goes to voicemail, full mailbox, line gets disconnected. And I have about a 1/100 rate of even getting a chance to join the queue when I call; usually I hear that the queue is too full to join at all. It's absolutely maddening and I may never get my PFL paid out properly.
- behringer 3y agoCall your senator
- aceazzameen 3y agoI've had this happen to me with a bank before! It was nuts. Eventually I DM'd their twitter account and got the customer service I needed.
- wing-_-nuts 3y agoCalling comcast customer support almost guarantees this happens. You call in, repeatedly ask for a representative, they will hang up on you. The only way I've reliably been able to talk to anyone to say you wish to 'Talk to a representative about cancelling my account'. TBH, I kind of dread when they start incorporating LLMs or better ai, because it will be truly impossible to speak to a human anymore.
- ilamont 3y ago> The only way I've reliably been able to talk to anyone to say you wish to 'Talk to a representative about cancelling my account'. Threatening to leave is also a reliable technique to stop ridiculous price hikes and even get hefty discounts. Sometimes you have to talk to someone on the "retention team." At other times you can do it online. Most recently I preserved the NYT intro rate of $4 every 4 weeks (instead of $25) and I got a 33% discount on an Adobe subscription after they announced a 50% price hike and I started the cancellation process.
- JaDogg 3y agoKudos to Kitboga! But let's really think about it, isn't it true that most things in the world are some form of a scam? Growing up in a poor country, I've realized that scams are everywhere, right from the day you start school: 1) Parents resort to scamming the school hiring board using fake addresses just to enroll their children in a good school. 2) In the early years, students learn how to cheat in exams to survive. 3) Teachers unfairly give lower marks to students (or parents) who don't buy into their side hustles like private tutoring or educational CDs. 4) Movies and music are all pirated, contributing to this cycle of deception. 5) Even radio and TV shows shamelessly copy Hollywood productions. 6) Need to get something done at a government office? Be prepared to pay bribes. 7) If you want to leave the country / immigration purposes, you have to navigate a web of bribery and money-grabbing schemes at every level. 8) Far-right racism use pseudo-science to deceive people into thinking that the majority is superior. 9) There are fake diploma and degree providers scamming people within the same country. 10) Interested in day trading? Beware of commission-driven scams and cryptocurrency schemes targeting people from your own country. 11) If you need the government to fix a road, you have to approach politicians and plead for something they promised in the first place. 12) Even small local shops dilute products, potentially selling toxic items to unsuspecting customers. 13) Need water? Attempting to approach politicians is futile. Eventually, the local community took matters into their own hands, establishing a private company to provide water. By the time standard water lines were laid, the locals had already constructed the water tank. (My father played a significant role in this endeavor - the type of person politicians dislike, haha!) 14) As elections draw near, there is a sudden decrease in the prices of goods. 15) Having trouble conceiving? Thinking of consulting the local guru? Don't worry; if your daughter bears a resemblance to the guru, it's all good. 16) A women fell victim to a cryptobro/environmentalist/spiritualist/influencer scammer. Interestingly, this scammers's father is also a con artist who specifically targets older women (he's the old school type). (It's essential to educate your children about pickup artists and red pill nonsense; unfortunately, these tactics sometimes work and are genuinely dangerous.) --- It's no surprise that people resort to scams, likely due to a lack of empathy, extreme cynicism, narcissistic personality disorder, or some combination thereof. Extracting individuals from this mindset requires significant effort.
- selimthegrim 3y ago
- Jeff_Brown 3y agoI literally can't think of anything funnier I've seen in my life.
- digital-cygnet 3y agoWhat I don't understand is the bit at the end (spoilers): he finds out that a person who Kraken's fraud team sees as a victim of scams, but hasn't been able to contact, has called his Gauntlet. He's then able to reach out and help her, as well as other scam victims who end up in the Gauntlet. So, three questions - 1. How do scam victims end up in the Gauntlet at all? I thought the idea was that Kitboga and his team pose as marks, send the bogus QR code to the scammer, and that's their whole pipeline. How do legitimate people end up in there? 2. Assuming the above is something like "scammers are clearly manipulating scam victims into helping them with the Gauntlet", doesn't that raise questions about the glee with which he, and all of us, are watching "scammers'" frustration? It becomes a more nuanced moral calculus if some number of the people you are frustrating are innocent people manipulated into navigating this system for scammers. You could argue it's still net good because otherwise the effort spent manipulating them would have been spent doing a real scam on them, but honestly I'm not sure 3. How did they identify the non-scammers who ended up on the platform? If there was a solid answer to this I suppose it could mitigate (2), but it's hard for me to believe (unless it's something very labor intensive that would make the automated nature of the system less useful) Overall I still enjoyed the video and found parts completely hilarious (and far too realistic given my own experience on phone trees). But the above does give me pause about unreserved support for what he's doing
- iosystem 3y agoI agree; it feels like what could happen a lot with this system is similar to what people did to get past captchas with their bot software. They might hire some less fortunate individuals to attempt solving it. I found the video funny, but I am definitely aware of how privileged I am not to have been born into the circumstances that would lead to becoming one of these 'damned folks' – the scammers or the victims.
- john-radio 3y agoYour questions are really apt. At the end of the day, scammers like this are predators (and of course, the ones featured in these videos are just the tip of the iceberg; scamming rich westerners is a billion-dollar industry) but they are also victims, of the asymmetrical rewards of global capitalism and colonialism at least, but in a more concrete sense, a lot of them are victims of human trafficking who are being forced to work on these scams. https://www.csis.org/analysis/cyber-scamming-new-destination-human-trafficking-victims https://www.csis.org/analysis/cyber-scamming-new-destination... When I was reading through kitboga's site earlier it said that they "make some light of a dark situation" which sums it up well.
- nickphx 3y agoIt would be interesting to see how far the 'scammers' would go in an attempt to withdraw funds. I imagine someone that sits for hours on hold and revisits numerous times would happily install a mobile app. One could develop a mobile app that collects data from scammer while presenting a simple web view of existing trap sites.
- DonHopkins 3y agoWhenever I get a scam call, the first thing I do is say "Oh, this sounds VERY important, thank you for calling me. Please give me your phone number so I can call you back in case we get cut off." Most of the time they hang up immediately, because the last thing they want is for me to call them back, but recently one scammer took the bait and tried to give me a fake phone number: 123456789. So I pretended to believe them and earnestly write it down, but I kept getting the digits wrong and reading them back incorrectly, and asking them to repeat it, talking over them by reading the digits back while they were reading the next digits, repeating and swapping and missing digits, pretending not to get that it was an obviously fake phone number, until it drove them crazy that I could not understand something as simple as 123456789. Then I asked for their company name ("Bitcoin Company"), and web site ("bitcoin.com"), and then tried to have them guide me through logging in, reading them what I saw on the page and clicked on to log in, and asking them where to click and what to enter and what to do next. They finally got really angry frustrated and yelled at me and hung up, but not before I berated them for being a scammer!
- johnyzee 3y agoAnyone remember the anti-scammer phone bot that pretended to be a senile old man ('Lemmy' or something)? It waited for the scammer to stop talking, and then said some statement (either a question or some really long rambling story), simultaneously hilarious and expertly crafted to keep the conversation going, often for hours, until it would start repeating itself and the scammer would blow up. It was a bit smarter than this (otherwise beautiful) scam, because the conversation flowed very naturally (exploiting the fact that scammers love to talk, given the opportunity). Idea for your next version! There used to be a bunch of examples on youtube, but I couldn't find them just now.
- DonHopkins 3y agoLenny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_(bot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_(bot) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSoOrlh5i1k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSoOrlh5i1k https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/comments/5lcfwq/lennys_history_why_he_isnt_creative_commons/ https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/comments/5lcfwq/lennys_his... Also, I highly recommend the movie, "Sorry to Bother You": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorry_to_Bother_You https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorry_to_Bother_You SORRY TO BOTHER YOU | Official Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enH3xA4mYcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enH3xA4mYcY With LaKeith Stanfield playing Cash, and David Cross playing Cash's "white voice"! The Art Of The White Voice by David Cross and Patton Oswalt (Sorry to Bother You): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxZt3sD3rzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxZt3sD3rzo Watch Lakeith Stanfield Use His ‘White Voice’ in ‘Sorry to Bother You’ | Anatomy of a Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9RQFX28j0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9RQFX28j0
- spondylosaurus 3y agoSorry to Bother You is a wild movie. The less you know about the plot going into it, the better. (I was not expecting... the thing. You know which one.)
- Vicinity9635 3y ago[dead]
- taylorson493 3y ago[dead]
- taylorson493 3y ago[dead]
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago[dead]
- johnyzee 3y agoHe should try to make the scammers pay a small fee for 'premium support'.
- l0b0 3y agoThe really sad part is how many of these you'd encounter regularly when talking to "real" companies: - Voice deliberately downsampled to the point where it's like listening to a walkie-talkie on a propeller plane. - Insanely terrible pause "music", at full volume, downsampled and volume-boosted to the point where it physically hurts. - Random disconnects. - Circular redirects. And this is while being polite and patient with the poor person working for these assholes all day.
- ryanisnan 3y agoI love how in 2023, the heroes we need are people like Mr. Beast and Kitboga.
- dom96 3y agoWhat makes Mr Beast a hero?
- ziddoap 3y agoNot the parent, but I presume they are referring to his philanthropy.
- kcb 3y agoEntertain my audience and make me $1 million and I'll give you $500k philanthropy?
- ziddoap 3y agoHis philanthropy channel has millions of views on each video with 100% of the advertisement revenue, brand deals, and merchandise sales donated to charity. He also runs a non-profit that does charity work. I'm not here to convince anyone that he's a hero (or not). I just think his philanthropy is what the original comment was referring to. >make me $1 million and I'll give you $500k philanthropy? Even if it was just the equivalent of donating half his earnings, that's significantly more than I think most people do.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoI've heard he donates a lot to charity.
- xyst 3y agoWhile it’s entertaining, it’s just a bit sad that people continue to fall for these scams. The one woman who believed the Amazon refund scam sounded young, maybe in her 40s. While the idea of wasting the call center operators time appears noble. After watching a few of these scam baiter videos, it appears the call centers are staffed with at least a few dozen people. If one dumb operator stays on the line for 8+ hrs with a scam baiter while the other operators are taking calls from real potential victims. The impact seems limited. Also, some people will say that it’s educational. But if you look at the target audience of the scammers, it’s mostly the elderly and/or those with dementia or some other progressive mental illness. The education won’t help this vulnerable population. How do we stop the root of the issue? How do we make it so that scamming the elderly and vulnerable population is not profitable?
- kumarvvr 3y agoThe best way to stop, is for systems to be in place, put by family / govt., that limits wire-transfers, or other forms of money withdrawal in forms of cash, unless an authorized or approved guardian be present. Of course, this is for the very elderly. For regular folk, who may not have much knowledge about computers and stuff, if they hear "mY nAmE is STevEN" with an Indian accent, tell them to shove it.
- readyplayernull 3y agoTo experience what a call center trap is, just call GoDaddy with a technical problem, if they have no clue or seem to be wasting time hang and call again, repeat until and random support person actually knows what you are talking about. Or even better, stop using GoDaddy as I did.
- kumarvvr 3y agoI wonder, with increasing popularity, his videos are watched more and more by scammers, leading to less effective content and outcomes. Already, in a few videos, his name is asked out. Its possible that the logical end to this is that Kitboga ends up interacting with the most gullible scammers, and the clever ones evolve to recognize the likes of Kit and protect themselves, if it can be called that. Even this video, when sufficiently viral, is a beacon call to scammers to identify scam baiters. How long before the scammers start using AI to find patterns in speech content and patterns, to identify Kit early on.
- nomilk 3y ago> It took the scammer 127 tries to complete the maze, and then we reset it, so he had to do it again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWzz3NeDz3E&t=17m45s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWzz3NeDz3E&t=17m45s
- cdchn 3y agoIts moderately depressing Kitboga has hitched his wagon to a crypto exchange.
- cushpush 3y agoLove Kitboga and this video had me in peels. The fact that this maze thing has actually become something that can inform people who were plagued by scammers is actually really heartening, and reminds me of Paul Graham's words that the best way to get great startup ideas is to work on fun stuff -- Maybe Kitboga has discovered a new avenue for antifraud
- RobKohr 3y agoI don't do anything fancy, but I like to be a telemarketing (usually just scams) speedbump. I am slightly skeptical, but kinda hesitantly agreeable, and try to keep them on the phone as long as possible and go through as many levels of their org as possible and mess with the end sales person. If just 1% of all people did this, I think it would kill telemarketing. AI bots though are starting to make it annoying. I try to get through their screening questions and get to a human, but sometimes it is clear there is no human to reach.