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Seriously. To pretend that you need the advanced capabilities of an AI in order to trick older people by email is somewhere between ludicrous and clickbait. M
by ghurtado 11mo ago
Seriously.
To pretend that you need the advanced capabilities of an AI in order to trick older people by email is somewhere between ludicrous and clickbait.
My father in law just bought a car online this weekend on accident. And nobody was even trying to trick him.
There's a reason the Nigerian prince type stories are so low effort: you really don't need much more sophistication than that.
- MattGaiser 11mo agoHow do you buy a car by accident? Like, put in a credit card and fully paid for one on Carvana or something?
- ghurtado 11mo agoVery good guess: it was actually exactly that. Carvana shopping for a used car. He clicked on something and got charged the downpayment of the car to his CC. He got his money back, but I'll never not be surprised by what some older people can manage to do online left to their own devices. To you and I, it seems impossible. For Larry, it's just Saturday.
- degamad 11mo agoIt does not seem impossible to anyone who has watched someone use a computer for a few minutes... A bright green button from google pay saying "click here to secure your interest in this car" is easily mistaken to mean "save to my interested list" rather than "place a deposit on this". We know how hard it is to even find the download button on a website: https://www.howtogeek.com/how-to-spot-the-real-download-button-on-websites/ https://www.howtogeek.com/how-to-spot-the-real-download-butt...
- ghurtado 11mo agoYou're right We like to pretend that we are immune to that, but we've all made similar mistakes. And there's an entire Internet of websites trying to trick us.
- prawn 11mo agoIt's sad, but you need to browse almost any site assuming the company is an adversary. I register my domains through two decent registrars but I recently needed to help a client through using GoDaddy and NetSol. The up-sells and cajoling were relentless, vile and eye-opening.
- georgefrowny 11mo agoTo be fair, Amazon one click purchases got me once. The principle that no one button should cause a "dangerous" action (i.e. one where you can't escape or undo it easily, and especially with money and data) is sometimes violated when the action is only "dangerous" to the user and beneficial to the provider. Usually the result of clicking such a "dangerous" button is the user gives the provider money or data. It's not common that the provider makes it easy to one-click-no-confirm a process that gives the user money or the provider's data.
- DalasNoin 11mo agoYou agree that AI is used for amplification by attackers? they interviewed people who had worked at scam factories who clarified that they used LLMs in their work.
- ghurtado 11mo agoI do, of course. My point is that it is neither a tool unique to this scam nor an application of the tool that is particularly surprising. In other words, if I can be a little histrionic, it seems to me like saying "using ELECTRICITY to scam old people".
- ceejayoz 11mo ago> To pretend that you need the advanced capabilities of an AI in order to trick older people by email is somewhere between ludicrous and clickbait. The trick is being able to do it, on a convincingly personalized level, to a million old people at the same time.