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It’s hard to understand how someone could fall for this scam… if a loved one was having an emergency of some kind I would expect them to call rather than text,

by _yb2s 2y ago

It’s hard to understand how someone could fall for this scam… if a loved one was having an emergency of some kind I would expect them to call rather than text, and I would respond with a call either way to discuss the details. I’m also generally leery of people “urgently needing money.” It seems like something a scammer would do, and I couldn’t see any of my family members doing it. Maybe I’m a jerk, but I’d be more likely to offer a lecture on financial responsibility than a quick money transfer.

lupire 2y ago
Here's how it works, in scams and high pressure sales: 1. Victim suspects scam 2. Victim recognizes the presence of predator. 3. Victim gets scared. 4. Victim tried to maintain composure, but can't think of a way to escape the situation without the predator pursuing. 5. Victim appeases predator because they fear all the terrible things this predator might do, as the predator has no morality and the victim's civilization has collapsed around them. These predators are violating the deepest social contract. They are acting like brilliant, vicious animals. They deserve to be treated like such, yet they are cloaked in the protection of civilized society. They are a cancer on humanity.
- _yb2s 2y ago
  Why would they be afraid of a random stranger on whatsapp?
  - lupire 2y ago
    They don't undertand the technical details. All they know is someone appears able and willing to violate social and legal norms, and was able to make contact. To lizard brain, it can feel like meeting a mugger in a dark alley.
- varispeed 2y ago
  This also works where police abandoned the victims. They feel they'll have no recourse if scammer escalates and becomes violent, so they rationalise that giving in to the scam will be cheaper and less stressful than going to the police and potentially putting their life at risk.
  - nickff 2y ago
    The police are not there to protect individuals, they’re there to protect the government. This has been made abundantly clear in a number of cases where police have disclaimed any duty to citizens & residents. Given all of that, the victims are reacting appropriately.
    - vladms 2y ago
      I would not generalize. Different countries have different police forces. It's true that police will reflect some of the problems of their society (either violence, racism or others), but even that might be more or less strong tendency.
      - krageon 2y ago
        Every police force exists for the state. They are the means by which the state exerts violence on you. The army is the means by which the state exerts violence on all the other countries' citizens.
    - lupire 2y ago
      More properly, police in US have a duty to society, not to any specific individual. They are law enforcement. Not crime prevention or victim protection. This is of course a huge problem, because as seen in Uvalde in elsewhere, not only do police have no obligation to help you (which by itself is reasonable of undesirable), but are also empowered to prevent you from helping yourself.
- throwitaway222 2y ago
  off with their heads
- caf 2y ago
  in scams and high pressure sales ...but you repeat yourself, sir.
makeitdouble 2y ago
The scam has a similar phone version, with a signature "Hey , it's me" first contact to get the victim to fill in the details on who's calling. A good enough scammer can explain away a lot of the red flags (why it's coming from an unknown number etc.) And of course it doesn't require a 100% success rate, they'll call number until hitting a jackpot.
- danielodievich 2y ago
  I sometimes respond to those in random languages, turkish, finding, farsi, polish, really throws them off the script...
randycupertino 2y ago
> It’s hard to understand how someone could fall for this scam… if a loved one was having an emergency of some kind I would expect them to call rather than text, and I would respond with a call either way to discuss the details. I think elderly are more vulnerable to this, because they get scared and want to help. My elderly mother fell victim to a "microsoft" and "paypal" technician calling her twice, despite my training her on how not to pick up the phone from these calls and going over how nobody from these companies would ever call her. She got nervous and scared and basically did whatever the scammers told her because she thought something was wrong with her computer. Now after it's happened twice :she has been reminded not to answer any calls from number she doesn't know. But she still gets nervous she is going to miss something important from health insurance or doctors office so she is still tempted to pick up spam calls. It's tough, no matter how much I train her she will still want to answer and "help" the scammer. They keep doing this because it works. I need to just lock her phone down so all callers not in her contact list go to a voicemail I screen. :-/
- guestbest 2y ago
  You need to be her call screener
- prawn 2y ago
  A friend's mother fell for one of these largely because she'd contacted her ISP earlier that day about a problem and was expecting a call back. Very unfortunate.
- franciscop 2y ago
  Part of my family training has been "phone numbers can be easily stolen" so be wary of that (okay we know it's not "easy", but they CAN be stolen by a semi-decent cracker calling the ISP and this sentence has already 2 words that would take days to explain to them).
- zlefgram 2y ago
  There are collaborative filtering apps that come as a replacement for your phone's native phone app. Works well. Next level approach would be to plug in a LLM with voice synthesis and make the scammers waste time and money.
llamaimperative 2y ago
It’s hard to understand that there are some people who aren’t as cautious or vigilant or tech-savvy or self-confident as (or far more self-confident than) yourself?
hibikir 2y ago
There are similar versions of the scam aiming at companies, as the CEO needs money wired to him as part of a secret acquisition of some sort. There's training trying to target this vector specifically, as the amounts are huge, but it also means more efforts can be made to be more realistic: Getting plenty of pictures and entire voice interviews from many CEOs is trivial. You can imagine how hard one can go crafting a fake message. It's not unlike people entering their credentials where they shouldn't. I've worked at a company you know about, where we had an expert in-house phisher. Her best attempt managed to get 50% of credentials... when targeting the security team itself! So yes, any attack that pulls on the right emotional levers will work on all kinds of people.
- apantel 2y ago
  Yeah with real-time deepfake audio this could be done by an attacker as an actual phone call in the voice of the person being impersonated.
- irjustin 2y ago
  We got "attacked" by this. The team was diligent enough to ask questions, but we are a financing company so money transfer requests are extremely common. We had processes in place and obviously made them stricter. My concern is as AI voice/video generation becomes stronger the social engineering can cause internal processes to be circumvented especially if you have a basic understanding of the inner workings of the org.
- arp242 2y ago
  Years ago there was a Dutch notary who transferred about a million euros from his escrow account to someone pretending to be the Dutch prime on MSN Messenger. The email address was "ThePrimeMinister@hotmail.com" or something like that. They had a long story about national security and urgent need to access the funds and whatnot. There were a lot of suspicions that he might be in on the scam, but as near as anyone could determine, he really was just scam victim. He did get disbarred and got a prison sentence of a year or so (IIRC) because while a victim, he also could and should have known better as a notary dealing with an escrow account.
chaostheory 2y ago
Onset of dementia can help you become prone to scams like this. Most victims are elderly. It’s not a guarantee for avoiding dementia, but doing heavy cardio regularly before you hit old age might help mitigate it.
metalcrow 2y ago
Sure, you think that, but then the one time it does happen and you don't give them money and someone gets serious hurt or dies, you never forgive yourself ever again. And out of worry that that may happen, a lot of people will be safe rather then sorry. Since money is less important then lives.
personjerry 2y ago
Soon your calls won't be safe either; Voice cloning is getting REALLY good.

by _yb2s 2y ago

lupire 2y ago

Here's how it works, in scams and high pressure sales: 1. Victim suspects scam 2. Victim recognizes the presence of predator. 3. Victim gets scared. 4. Victim tried to maintain composure, but can't think of a way to escape the situation without the predator pursuing. 5. Victim appeases predator because they fear all the terrible things this predator might do, as the predator has no morality and the victim's civilization has collapsed around them. These predators are violating the deepest social contract. They are acting like brilliant, vicious animals. They deserve to be treated like such, yet they are cloaked in the protection of civilized society. They are a cancer on humanity.

_yb2s 2y ago
Why would they be afraid of a random stranger on whatsapp?
- lupire 2y ago
  They don't undertand the technical details. All they know is someone appears able and willing to violate social and legal norms, and was able to make contact. To lizard brain, it can feel like meeting a mugger in a dark alley.
varispeed 2y ago
This also works where police abandoned the victims. They feel they'll have no recourse if scammer escalates and becomes violent, so they rationalise that giving in to the scam will be cheaper and less stressful than going to the police and potentially putting their life at risk.
- nickff 2y ago
  The police are not there to protect individuals, they’re there to protect the government. This has been made abundantly clear in a number of cases where police have disclaimed any duty to citizens & residents. Given all of that, the victims are reacting appropriately.
  - vladms 2y ago
    I would not generalize. Different countries have different police forces. It's true that police will reflect some of the problems of their society (either violence, racism or others), but even that might be more or less strong tendency.
    - krageon 2y ago
      Every police force exists for the state. They are the means by which the state exerts violence on you. The army is the means by which the state exerts violence on all the other countries' citizens.
  - lupire 2y ago
    More properly, police in US have a duty to society, not to any specific individual. They are law enforcement. Not crime prevention or victim protection. This is of course a huge problem, because as seen in Uvalde in elsewhere, not only do police have no obligation to help you (which by itself is reasonable of undesirable), but are also empowered to prevent you from helping yourself.
throwitaway222 2y ago
off with their heads
caf 2y ago
in scams and high pressure sales ...but you repeat yourself, sir.

makeitdouble 2y ago

The scam has a similar phone version, with a signature "Hey , it's me" first contact to get the victim to fill in the details on who's calling. A good enough scammer can explain away a lot of the red flags (why it's coming from an unknown number etc.) And of course it doesn't require a 100% success rate, they'll call number until hitting a jackpot.

danielodievich 2y ago
I sometimes respond to those in random languages, turkish, finding, farsi, polish, really throws them off the script...

randycupertino 2y ago

> It’s hard to understand how someone could fall for this scam… if a loved one was having an emergency of some kind I would expect them to call rather than text, and I would respond with a call either way to discuss the details. I think elderly are more vulnerable to this, because they get scared and want to help. My elderly mother fell victim to a "microsoft" and "paypal" technician calling her twice, despite my training her on how not to pick up the phone from these calls and going over how nobody from these companies would ever call her. She got nervous and scared and basically did whatever the scammers told her because she thought something was wrong with her computer. Now after it's happened twice :she has been reminded not to answer any calls from number she doesn't know. But she still gets nervous she is going to miss something important from health insurance or doctors office so she is still tempted to pick up spam calls. It's tough, no matter how much I train her she will still want to answer and "help" the scammer. They keep doing this because it works. I need to just lock her phone down so all callers not in her contact list go to a voicemail I screen. :-/

guestbest 2y ago
You need to be her call screener
prawn 2y ago
A friend's mother fell for one of these largely because she'd contacted her ISP earlier that day about a problem and was expecting a call back. Very unfortunate.
franciscop 2y ago
Part of my family training has been "phone numbers can be easily stolen" so be wary of that (okay we know it's not "easy", but they CAN be stolen by a semi-decent cracker calling the ISP and this sentence has already 2 words that would take days to explain to them).
zlefgram 2y ago
There are collaborative filtering apps that come as a replacement for your phone's native phone app. Works well. Next level approach would be to plug in a LLM with voice synthesis and make the scammers waste time and money.

llamaimperative 2y ago

It’s hard to understand that there are some people who aren’t as cautious or vigilant or tech-savvy or self-confident as (or far more self-confident than) yourself?

hibikir 2y ago

There are similar versions of the scam aiming at companies, as the CEO needs money wired to him as part of a secret acquisition of some sort. There's training trying to target this vector specifically, as the amounts are huge, but it also means more efforts can be made to be more realistic: Getting plenty of pictures and entire voice interviews from many CEOs is trivial. You can imagine how hard one can go crafting a fake message. It's not unlike people entering their credentials where they shouldn't. I've worked at a company you know about, where we had an expert in-house phisher. Her best attempt managed to get 50% of credentials... when targeting the security team itself! So yes, any attack that pulls on the right emotional levers will work on all kinds of people.

apantel 2y ago
Yeah with real-time deepfake audio this could be done by an attacker as an actual phone call in the voice of the person being impersonated.
irjustin 2y ago
We got "attacked" by this. The team was diligent enough to ask questions, but we are a financing company so money transfer requests are extremely common. We had processes in place and obviously made them stricter. My concern is as AI voice/video generation becomes stronger the social engineering can cause internal processes to be circumvented especially if you have a basic understanding of the inner workings of the org.
arp242 2y ago
Years ago there was a Dutch notary who transferred about a million euros from his escrow account to someone pretending to be the Dutch prime on MSN Messenger. The email address was "ThePrimeMinister@hotmail.com" or something like that. They had a long story about national security and urgent need to access the funds and whatnot. There were a lot of suspicions that he might be in on the scam, but as near as anyone could determine, he really was just scam victim. He did get disbarred and got a prison sentence of a year or so (IIRC) because while a victim, he also could and should have known better as a notary dealing with an escrow account.

chaostheory 2y ago

Onset of dementia can help you become prone to scams like this. Most victims are elderly. It’s not a guarantee for avoiding dementia, but doing heavy cardio regularly before you hit old age might help mitigate it.

metalcrow 2y ago

Sure, you think that, but then the one time it does happen and you don't give them money and someone gets serious hurt or dies, you never forgive yourself ever again. And out of worry that that may happen, a lot of people will be safe rather then sorry. Since money is less important then lives.

personjerry 2y ago

Soon your calls won't be safe either; Voice cloning is getting REALLY good.