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So, this is a crime right? Why isn't there a well known '911' for cybercrime to report things like this to and get help? Society needs to catch up with the actu
by jmward01 4mo ago
So, this is a crime right? Why isn't there a well known '911' for cybercrime to report things like this to and get help? Society needs to catch up with the actual dangers out there and build support networks for this ASAP. This is organized crime and needs organized defense to deal with it.
- calvinmorrison 4mo agoyes this is a crime.
- mrhottakes 4mo agoUnfortunately most evil cybercriminals know the "one weird trick" of "do your crimes in countries that don't care about the crimes"
- jmward01 4mo agoI see several comments like this implying nothing can be done. But that is far from the truth. First, an agency that actually answered the phone could coordinate directly with LinkedIn and other tech companies to quickly take down these fake accounts and minimize harm to others. We all know how incredibly hard it is to contact a tech company. Second, an agency that answers the phone could help less technical people find what may have been compromised and push people towards support services if needed. And finally, maybe, they could do the hard job of combining leads and working with appropriate agencies to maybe find and prevent these things over time.
- noisy_boy 4mo agoWon't that require laws that allow the said agency to compel LinkedIn or whatever tech company to actually pay attention and take action? Like laws compelling tech companies to unlock the bootloader once they stop supporting a device. I wonder why such common sense laws don't exist and who is preventing them from being introduced and passed despite wide public support in general?
- jmward01 4mo agoI'm not a lawyer but it would be odd if a government agency couldn't communicate a possible threat to a tech company. It is in a company like LinkedIn's best interest to set up a phone number/channels for a centralized agency to communicate potentially malicious accounts and other emerging threats. I suspect that actually already exists for big companies. I doubt they are required to -do- anything without laws but this seems like a win that is easy for all sides. The problem is likely mostly on the US (and other govt) side of things. No clearly defined agency with a clear mandate, resources and leadership to take on this task.
- evilduck 4mo agoYou're describing the FBI or your state level equivalent. And they actually do exactly what you are describing, but in measured efforts. I've even had them come by my place of employment before. They clearly lack the resources to work at this scale though. The problem with a phone number you suggest is that it will get spammed and abused with fraudulent imposters too (the complete and utter destruction of trust in phone calls and text messages should also be corrected by the government, but that's a different topic). https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber
- lukewarm707 4mo agowhilst reducing crime is an honorable objective, as we all know, increasing the wealth of tech billionaires must take priority.
- nijave 4mo agoTaking things down doesn't help much unless the platform has something in place to make it hard to recreate them. >they could do the hard job of combining leads and working with appropriate agencies to maybe find and prevent these things over time At least in the U.S., everyone will cry government overreach and no one will fund it. In other countries, they should probably just ban U.S. platforms unless they're reachable and actually resolve these type of problems.
- teiferer 4mo ago> just ban U.S. platforms Try that and see your champagne exports be tarriffed with 100% in no time.
- kobebrookskC3 4mo agochina seems to be doing fine. what are you gonna do, tariff the country that makes all your stuff? 100% tariff on iphones and macbooks?
- nsvd2 4mo agoWell, yes, China has a large number of tarrifs imposed on it from the U.S.
- marcus_holmes 4mo agoWon't that just create another channel for social engineering to delete a victim's account?
- Tarq0n 4mo agoSounds like socializing the harms instead of requiring these companies to bear the burden themselves. Could still be a valid approach but I'm afraid it will make them take less responsibility, not more.
- Grimburger 4mo ago> But that is far from the truth Just install a Russian locale on your computer to prevent malicious programs even starting and get on with your day because it's the truth. Snowden is a free man in 2026 despite the United States of America very much wanting to put him in jail.
- andyroid 4mo agoFree as in being trapped in Russia for life.
- Georgelemental 4mo agoCut the cables
- 55555 4mo agoSomething I've always wondered, because I'm a bit of a contrarian and I wonder if we're really any different: Could an American citizen hack and steal from Iranians and Russians with impunity from America? The issues that prevent the US from extraditing Russians who hack us -- don't they work both ways?
- entuno 4mo agoLegally speaking, no - it would still be a criminal offence. Practically speaking, there is zero chance that the USA would extradite someone to Iran, even if they weren't currently at war with them. Whether they did anything about it would probably depend on exactly what the situation was - there's a big of difference between targeted IRGC or defence systems and ransomwaring an Iranian hospital or scamming random citizens. Where they'd probably get you is if you tried to monetise it, and get stolen/extorted cryptocurrencies (or whatever) into your bank account. But that could easily fall under tax evasion laws rather than computer misuse ones, because they'd be a lot easier to prove in court.
- NegativeK 4mo agoWhat would happen if you honestly listed your earnings on your tax forms?
- entuno 4mo agoIt would be very dependent on the exact circumstances - who made a complaint, what exactly they're accusing you of, what evidence there is, how high profile it is, the current diplomatic position (which changes by the hour), etc, etc. I don't think you can really get a simple answer for this kind of question.
- dolkycape 4mo agoAs far as I know it has never happened. On the contrary, when Alejandro Caceres admitted to ddosing North Korea - taking down all their public websites for a week - he was questioned by the FBI who decided to take no further action. https://www.wired.com/story/p4x-north-korea-internet-hacker-identity-reveal/ https://www.wired.com/story/p4x-north-korea-internet-hacker-... So hostile countries should be fair game for Americans who want a side-hustle. Plenty of Russian targets that could be profitable.
- john_strinlai 4mo agothe main issue is that we lack a global '911'. secondary is the effort asymmetry between spinning up one of these scams (near 0 effort) and catching/prosecuting these scams (big effort, astronomical cost)
- umpalumpaaa 4mo agoI don’t know but the us kidnaps ehhh arrests people on foreign land on a regular basis… and brings them to the US to stand trial. So if it’s “important” enough it will be aced upon…
- Diti 4mo ago> the main issue is that we lack a global '911'. 911 is for emergencies. I don’t think the global 911 service would give any attention to a LinkedIn scam.
- john_strinlai 4mo agoi used the same terminology as the parent, and i think we all know what is meant by it
- pocksuppet 4mo agowhat about the outcome asymmetry between spinning up one of these scams (get one guy's computer) and getting caught (jail for life)
- john_strinlai 4mo agoyou arent getting jail for life for this, even in the extremely remote chance you are caught. you are probably getting more than one guy's computer, though.
- Jolter 4mo agoI’m sure they’ve gotten more than one hot wallet from out of work crypto bros. Probably a profitable venture.
- 4mo ago
- eblume 4mo agohttps://www.ic3.gov https://www.ic3.gov You won't hear back from them, though. But, at least for US citizens (and possibly for anyone?), this is as far as I know the closest thing there is to an "Internet 911".
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> You won't hear back from them You might. (I have.) They were able to get a wire sent to a fraudster reversed. (Not my wire.)
- bityard 4mo agoTo put it bluntly and perhaps a bit cynically, on the tree of bad things that people do to other people, this is pretty high-hanging fruit. Right up there next to scam phone calls that prey on the elderly while claiming to be from Microsoft support. It's basically impossible to catch suspects because they are either smart enough to cover their tracks very well, or (more often) live in countries whose governments don't care about their citizens (even pay them for) scamming westerners.
- Barbing 4mo agoSaw Microsoft has a dedicated scam reporting page - guess it was damaging their brand https://reportfraud.microsoft.com/en-us https://reportfraud.microsoft.com/en-us Wonder if they’re effective in going after reports. I’d still report to IC3/FBI/powers that be, too. Just in case someone somewhere has the resources to do something… perhaps a high hope
- mgiampapa 4mo agoI get more calls from Google Security than any other thing. Oddly the Pixel's built in scam detection and call screening lets them through without fail. I normally don't have my phone even ring unless it's in my contacts, but saying you are calling from Google is like a magic code.
- throwaway85825 4mo agoThey must have whitelisted the word Google. Very useful to scammers.
- Xirdus 4mo agoHard disagree on the scam phone calls. It would be trivial to eradicate them almost completely if the phone operators did the bare minimum to fight against it. At any point in time, any given US phone number is handled by exactly one phone carrier. There is nothing stopping that carrier from requiring name and address to issue that phone number. They already do for 99.99% of their legitimate customers. It would be very easy to make it so that every single phone call originating from the US, including all VOIP calls made with US phone numbers, can be traced back to a specific business or person that can later be sued or prosecuted. And no, number spoofing isn't an excuse either. We literally solved the much harder problem of email spoofing already. There are, what, 3 carrier networks in all of US? And they cannot do with each other what DMARC did for the hundreds of thousands disjoint organizations that comprise the internet? Please.
- pluc 4mo agoHave you seen the state of *gestures at everything*
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- stefan_ 4mo agoYou mean organized crime like NSO Group? Sorry, governments all over the world are too busy using them to spy on opposition to care.
- throwaway85825 4mo agoThe scammers are in a different whole uncooperative country.
- cute_boi 4mo agoOr they may be in this country, but uses proxies, virtual machines, hostings from uncooperative country.
- throwaway85825 4mo agoLess likely and when they are usually they're immigrants and if they're investigated they just go back home.
- deejaaymac 4mo agoCool let's hear your solution, you seem well versed on how infosec works.
- cluckindan 4mo agoYes. But the perps are in North Korea.
- dakolli 4mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- SauntSolaire 4mo ago> simply for being one of the last communist countries Well, that plus their 50 nuclear warheads and continued ICBM development, amongst other things.
- kridsdale1 4mo agoI read the other day they are making quite a turnaround in GDP by selling munitions to our enemies.
- dakolli 4mo agoWe have what, 2500 of them, and we threaten them with them... Wouldn't you? Iran deserves them too.
- bryan_w 4mo agoYes and we want them to have zero. What do you not understanding about this?
- edm0nd 4mo agoThere is but the FBI is horrible at responding to cybercrime. They have IC3 but its basically useless. They arent going to help or even contact you if you report a crime to them.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- PUSH_AX 4mo agoThe amount of crime in the world -that requires arguably "low skill" time to resolve- that just gets filed away because of low resources is insane. How are forces going to stand up high skill task forces for these kinds of things?
- berkes 4mo agoIn the Netherlands there's an official government agency that allows a simple mail or report: https://www.ncsc.nl/en/report-an-incident-to-ncsc-nl https://www.ncsc.nl/en/report-an-incident-to-ncsc-nl I presume more countries have this, not sure about the US though (CISA maybe? CERT/CC?). CERT is the overarching org that manages local agencies like this Dutch NCSC. Though I am not sure if and how easy it is, globally, to report incidents.
- tsss 4mo agoTry calling 911 for a real world crime and see what it gets you.