What is a pig butchering scam? (2023)(wired.com)

134 pointsby baud1472582 tahun yang lalu217 comments

What is a pig butchering scam? (2023)

https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-pig-butchering-scam/

224 comments

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

Everyone with elderly parents needs to at some point sit down and have “The Talk” with them about online scams and ideally media literacy in general. The scams are getting more sophisticated (technically and socially) and the scammers are getting much more patient and long-term focused since they can rely on not getting shut down. With convincingly articulate LLMs on the horizon, the problem is only going to get worse and more accessible to would be scammers.

Yes, it’s not just the elderly who are victims of these, but a lot of people at that age are too trusting of strangers and of people who sound like authorities. And let’s face it: older people have all the wealth in the world anyway so they’re more likely to be fruitful targets.

animex2 tahun yang lalu

Cognitive decline plays a big role in the susceptibility of elderly folks.

An uncle of mine was a notoriously a ruthless businessman in his heyday and he fell prey to a gift-card scam where he was kept on the phone for 8 hours straight while he did their bidding. We were all shocked he fell for this but then realized the techniques that they use prey upon individuals with inability to deal with stress or trigger anxiety/panic causing them to act irrationally.

As I age, I've noticed similar declines in ability to deal with multiple tasks, stress, etc.

A better defence is to reduce the attack surface. While, I have legal financial control over mom's estate, suffering from moderate dementia, I've removed her ability to interact with her finances by removing her check book (she had loaned a large sum to an acquaintance without informing us), lowering her credit card limits, removed access to online banking, maintaining a low-balance checking account. All her expenses are on autopay. She doesn't even think about her finances anymore. Whenever she gets telemarketers, she always says "you have to talk to my son". Once in a blue moon she asks me "do I have money? I don't even know" -- and I reassure her she doesn't have to worry about money.

I've done the same -- 2factor, using disposable credit card numbers, maintaining a separate PayPal-linked bank account separate from my main account etc, text notifications on all transactions etc.

The sophistication and technology being used is also becoming problematic in detecting these scenarios even for highly aware/technical folk.

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

> The sophistication and technology being used is also becoming problematic in detecting these scenarios even for highly aware/technical folk.

This kind of worries me too, but I think we can still defend almost 100% by just following rule #1:

“Do not send money in response to anyone contacting you unsolicited, either over the phone, email, SMS, social media, etc.”

You can get a lot of mileage from just that. There is never a case where such contact is not a scam or spam. If it’s someone you know or already do business with, use rule #2: hang up, wait an hour, and call them back using a number you know to be correct.

dreamcompiler2 tahun yang lalu

Except then your "friend" will say they are traveling and they lost their phone (or it was stolen) and they have borrowed a phone from a friend, so you don't have a known good number to call them back.

In which case still call them back at the number you know is good. If they answer, you know the thing was a scam. If they don't answer, you don't know. Call known numbers of friends and family of the "victim" to find out if they really are traveling. This is not definitive, because the scammers might have called those people too.

I think the key to these situations is to ask questions of the "victim" that only the real person would know the answers to. They need to be questions about shared experiences that would not have appeared on social media. If they try to blow you off like "I'm under too much stress to think about such things right now!" hang up.

Also, consider asking your friends to let you know before they travel, and arrange with them a pass phrase they can say if they contact you for an emergency. Maybe a duress pass phrase too such that if they say it, you'll know they're in real trouble. Is this a pain? Is it too much to ask of many people? Yes and yes. But this is the world we're in now until we decide to start putting scammers in prison for long sentences.

t_mann2 tahun yang lalu

I've tried to establish simple language codes with close relatives to deal with such scenarios, but I don't think I could rely on them remembering those. It's just such an awfully awkward conversation to be having that I suspect most people like to forget about it quickly. Any experiences with this or tips?

sfn422 tahun yang lalu

You don't need that. If you know someone just ask them something trivial like "Where did we last see each other?"

michaelmrose2 tahun yang lalu

As someone trying to initiate new business over the phone as an insurance producer this is both reasonable and worrisome. As someone who isn't trying to scam anyone it concerns me that scams are so pervasive this may continue to be incredibly difficult by less legitimate actors.

I'm experiencing difficulties in even contact people who have expressed interest because they have expressed a broader interest than me eg they expressed an interest in foo and are now getting contacted by bar who has a relationship with foo but is not in fact foo and the contact could have occurred weeks ago.

I could stand up a website and plaster it with verifiable information but much of that info like say professional license is itself by dint of being public not entirely verifiable eg I could put up a website for Sam Spade with his license info. For the same reason you are able to verify his license number—its public—its not an actual verification that you are speaking to the right person.

Perhaps more relevant its easy to just never get to speak to the person in the first place because their defenses are rightfully up.

I wish there was an easier way to authenticate as legit.

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

I think in this case, it counts as spam rather than a scam, which is why I mentioned both.

michaelmrose2 tahun yang lalu

If you click a link, fill out a web form, send in a physical letter, or make a phone call and effectively say I want to get info on <product> and the company gives your name to an affiliate who is a licensed professional to try to sell you <product> I don't think it counts as spam either.

I wish your phone had a standardized way to link your expressed intent, the nature of the caller, and official nature/licensing or professional affiliation and show this data on your phone during receipt or during call kind of like you can click on an icon and get information about the legitimacy of a website.

EG when you express the interest in <product> a singular number is created on your end and carried through to anyone who is actually acting such request whether it was asking someone to fix your cable or sell you life insurance and you could then verifiably see beyond caller idea and absolutely verifiable and relevant info in order to ascertain more data than is available via caller ID

On September 2nd 2005 you told comcast their bad equipment was making you consider rage stomping said equipment. You are receiving a phone call from agent 34534 in the <country> who is officially employed by Comcast domain: xfinity.com to handle tech support regarding this issue. OR

On December 10th 2012 you requested information re: life insurance from <Company>. You are receiving a call from <agent> who is a licensed insurance producer license #asdfasdf who has been an insurance producer for n years and has zero complaints regarding this request.

It would be great if you could even address this request online via some standard like canceling it so nobody bugs you or attaching metadata

mindslight2 tahun yang lalu

If someone fills out a web form looking for quotes, and that form pushes them into entering their phone number, and you use that number to call them instead of responding with an emailed quote, that is most certainly spam.

michaelmrose2 tahun yang lalu

Insofar as I'm aware they literally expected to be contacted by a person. The majority haven't provided an email nor sufficient information that would allow anyone to reasonably provide anything beyond a table of values that they may or may not qualify for.

I'd love to collect my own data and converse over email. I would be overjoyed in fact but I don't think people will put their personal medical history in a web page that isn't their doctors and I don't really blame them.

mindslight2 tahun yang lalu

My experience is the consumer side of home/auto/moving/storage with web pages promising online quotes, but are actually just leadgen funnels that hand off phone numbers to traditional high-touch sales processes. I'm sure the sales reps that receive those lists believe the targets actually want to be called, but that's obviously a convenient fiction with the way the web pages are set up.

I've also gotten spam calls that are similar leadgen funnels, where the frontend is obviously robocall spam, and then you're transferred to sales reps at what is likely a different company who clearly expect to be speaking to bona fide interested customers rather than perturbed spam victims just looking to mess with them.

In general I've got to question the impedance mismatch of turning a web form into a phone call regardless of whether it's necessary. To me they're much different head spaces, and just because evening/night me is preliminarily looking into a topic doesn't necessarily mean that daytime me wanted to add it to the in-process run queue. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of your rejection is based on this dynamic where people wanted the interaction/information at the time they requested it, but not later when you're interrupting them doing something else.

michaelmrose2 tahun yang lalu

Thanks for the feedback. I think the process of buying some products is inherently difficult because the space is very fragmented and there really isn't a lot of incentive to streamline the process.

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

This is a good way to think about it. While I might be interested in the product, I’m not interested in the “high touch” sales experience, nor am I interested in doing it on someone else’s schedule. Those aspects of the process are the spam.

rightbyte2 tahun yang lalu

There is a risk associated with not wireing money never ever. Your brother could very well need 100usd for gas to some strangers phone wallet, since he lost his phone and wallet, etc. If he is in some foreign nation not sending money could very well make him end up on the streets.

I would have been screwed like two times in my life if I couldn't solve stuff like this.

I think the limit should just be how much you send.

boomboomsubban2 tahun yang lalu

>There is never a case where such contact is not a scam or spam.

Bail?

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

I edited my comment to clarify Rule #2: hang up, wait some time, then call back on the known correct number.

boomboomsubban2 tahun yang lalu

If they're in jail, that's not going to work.

aidenn02 tahun yang lalu

You can lookup the number of the jail they are supposedly in.

There was a scam attempt against me that spoofed the caller-id to look like the county sheriff; scammer would not agree to me calling them back on that (or any other) number for the sheriff.

AnIrishDuck2 tahun yang lalu

Um, yes it will?

You pay the court clerk [1]. You either pay in person, or possibly online depending on the jurisdiction. If you aren't paying in person, you'll need to contact them directly anyway, and their contact info should be easy to verify. It's not like they're going to be sitting next to the detained party on the phone with a bitcoin deposit address.

1. https://legalaidnyc.org/get-help/bail-incarceration/what-you...

wolpoli2 tahun yang lalu

> I have legal financial control over mom's estate

A note to anyone in Canada reading this: This would be considered a bare trust and it would have to be declared to the CRA, starting this year.

infinite8s2 tahun yang lalu

And it requires a different return that needs to be filed a month earlier.

bombcar2 tahun yang lalu

Setting the phone to not ring for unknown numbers is also powerful, but to make it work best you need a way to be able to "add" numbers remotely.

I wish it was more intelligent; I'd love to tell it what area codes to permit; the advantage of having a phone from half way around the country is that I only care about a few area codes and the scammers don't know which ones those are.

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

Sadly, area codes are no longer a meaningful signal of anything. My family has three cell phones and one VOIP number; and those use four different area codes, hundreds of miles apart.

petsfed2 tahun yang lalu

You misunderstand.

I have a Wyoming area code. There are less than a million of those in circulation. I haven't lived in Wyoming in years, so the odds that a call with a Wyoming area code is both a) not already in my contacts and b) legitimate, is basically zero. So I let every single (307) call go to voicemail, and if they leave a message at all, I listen to it (and 99 times out of 100 discover that its a failed robocall. That 1 time, its an authentic wrong number, and I've called a few back if it sounded like something they were expecting to hear back about).

bombcar2 tahun yang lalu

It's a signal that a call is a scam - 99.99999% of calls to me from the area code of my phone number (and surrounding area codes) are worthless scam calls, because of https://xkcd.com/1129/

I'd love to ignore all calls from unknown numbers EXCEPT the actual area code I reside in, which they don't know. Then calls from schools, doctors, etc might actually get through.

As it is, those go to voicemail and I get them eventually.

dmitrygr2 tahun yang lalu

WideProtect on iOS can get you most of the way there: "block all phone numbers in the following area codes except those in my contacts book"

arcanemachiner2 tahun yang lalu

I regularly get scam calls that spoof my area code.

Hell, my number is even commonly spoofed! Every few months, I get a call from someone, then I get to explain to them that scammers can spoof phone numbers.

petsfed2 tahun yang lalu

I got threatened with violence, while I was watching my first born child sleep, hours after her birth, by someone who was convinced I'd spent the previous hours repeatedly calling his girlfriend.

He was not willing to listen to reason.

acheron2 tahun yang lalu

His year is off -- my area code is where I lived in 2002-03 and specifically not in 2005, but yeah. I blocked all that area code except for a couple specific numbers.

idontwantthis2 tahun yang lalu

I thought that would work for me, and I got a local number before moving across the country. Somehow I’m getting spam calls from where I actually live now, and not from my phone’s area code. No idea how that happens. I haven’t gotten a single spam call from the area code.

philistine2 tahun yang lalu

The US rule that disconnects phone providers without authentication for phone numbers isn’t active yet.

suzzer992 tahun yang lalu

> We were all shocked he fell for this but then realized the techniques that they use prey upon individuals with inability to deal with stress or trigger anxiety/panic causing them to act irrationally.

It's a good thing politicians and politcal propaganda outlets don't make use of this. :/

singleshot_2 tahun yang lalu

What I worry about is that some jerk with a model of my voice has been helping my parents through this process for the last couple of years.

karaterobot2 tahun yang lalu

I had "The Talk" with my parents, 82 and 79 respectively. They were surprised to learn about it, but they seemed to basically get it. They nodded. I said "what happens if you get a text message from your bank with a link to a webpage?" and they said "never click the link, go to the bank website and look for an alert, then call up the bank if I can't find it there". And so on.

Great, that's that worry taken care of.

Not even one month later my mom spent an hour on the phone with a scammer before my dad finally got suspicious and made her hang up. I still have no idea what all they had her do, and she doesn't remember either. We had to basically treat it as a successful identify theft and potential intrusion into her device, even though she didn't actually give them any money, thankfully.

So, I don't know if The Talk actually does it. For her, it was the fact that there was another person on the line (people wouldn't lie to you, obviously) and that this person was telling her they'd get in trouble if she didn't go through these steps with them. The scammers are cynical experts, they're way more sophisticated than the median elderly person they're fucking with.

This all made me very scared for them, because I don't even know if this single incident will be enough to make them sufficiently canny.

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

Yea it’s not perfect but it’s at least one step. Sadly, older people maybe just grew up in a more trusting US society, and are therefore more trusting themselves. If someone calls them up and says “hi, I’m Jim, from the County courthouse, and I wanted to discuss a matter with you,” heck they might by default believe him! It sounds ludicrous to you or I but their minds are from a different era. “Telephone calls are an expensive, special thing” their 1950s mind thinks, “surely he wouldn’t call unless it was a real thing and important!”

I don’t even answer the phone to begin with. Everything goes to voicemail. If it’s important, they will leave a message, and I can determine later whether they are to be believed.

jmull2 tahun yang lalu

I’ve got to say, this is pretty cringy and more than a little naive.

Of course there are old people falling for scams — dementia is a lot more prevalent and they tend to have retirement accounts — but younger people are vulnerable too.

Pig butchering often has a crypto component, a scam that appeals much more to younger people. I googled for demographics on this and came up with this:

https://www.globalantiscam.org/post/statistics-of-crypto-rom...

Looks like everybody needs “the talk”.

vundercind2 tahun yang lalu

> Sadly, older people maybe just grew up in a more trusting US society, and are therefore more trusting themselves

> It sounds ludicrous to you or I but their minds are from a different era. “Telephone calls are an expensive, special thing” their 1950s mind thinks

This is the key—grew up in a world where people often weren't around their phone to answer it immediately (the older ones, maybe a world in which not everyone even had a phone!) and it cost money to make long distance calls, so mass-call scams had trouble being profitable.

I mean, hell, that's only not been the state of things for a relatively short time. I was still paying connection and per-minute fees for long distance calls until at least the mid '00s.

I think it's seriously worth considering whether we need some more cost-friction on long distance connections. That'd be a pretty elegant way to curb this, since nobody seems willing to just force the telecoms to fix it directly.

swatcoder2 tahun yang lalu

> a lot of people at that age are too trusting of strangers and of people who sound like authorities

Barely yesterday, and probably again tomorrow, throngs of people in their twenties and thirties were borrowing money to buy digital tulips whenever some dude on Twitter posted a graph with a line going up and a stock photo of a Lamborghini.

The threat of being scammed is not age-specific, although the ways people are approached and coached by scammers are sometimes different.

> and let’s face it: older people have all the wealth in the world

I know this is just a popular and divisive trope that pits one bunch of struggling people against another, but you must know different "older people' than I do if it rings true for you.

rightbyte2 tahun yang lalu

The best scammers are those who convince their victims that they also are scammers.

suzzer992 tahun yang lalu

My Dad is the most paranoid online person in the world, and still almost fell for a scam. He won't even open an online banking account because he assumes that means he can't get hacked.

But then he got an email from my mom (they're divorced but still friends) that was so obviously a hack, not addressing him by name, and asking him to "help me purchases some stuffs on Amazon," and he was about to go through with it. I got the same email, and almost didn't contact my dad because I thought no way he'd fall for it. But he was just about to offer to help her buy some "stuffs" on Amazon.

I'm not sure there's anything you can do, including the talk, to stop this.

dhosek2 tahun yang lalu

My 80+-year-old mother, being 80+ years old, still has a landline, which she still answers when there’s an unfamiliar number. However, she’s also alert enough that she apparently enjoys toying with the scammers. She got a call from someone who addressed her as “grandma” and said that he needed money because he was stuck overseas. “O⸻?” she asked using the name of my son who was in kindergarten at the time. “Yes!” the scammer asked. “Why aren’t you at your kindergarten?” she asked. The scammer hung up.

I learned about the above story when I sat down to have the “the talk” with her.

neilk2 tahun yang lalu

For my aging relatives I have set up code words to be used for actual emergencies, in case I'm impersonated over text.

t_mann2 tahun yang lalu

How did you approach this, and how successful do you think it was? Do you have any tips?

dylan6042 tahun yang lalu

> With convincingly articulate LLMs on the horizon, the problem is only going to get worse and more accessible to would be scammers.

Eventually, maybe we can just run any email, text, or even phone calls through our own LLM driven assistant that detects and notifies about the scam.

[deleted]2 tahun yang lalu

mindslight2 tahun yang lalu

Good luck getting them to listen and take you seriously rather than engaging the standard ego defense of "I would never fall for that".

And in general "don't give out money or information to anyone calling on the phone" is good advice, but thinking it's a complete solution is a bit fanciful. I'll admit to personally finding myself on the receiving end of a call from $bank, and in a moment of weakness having supplied various bits of low-stakes personal information for their "verification". I had called them earlier and was expecting a response, but it could have just as easily been a scam calling at the perfect time. After the mental gears started turning and I realized how little I actually knew about the incoming call and how the requests were escalating, I stopped the conversation and asked where I could call them back. The point is it took a realization on my part, because these banks utilize highly deficient security procedures that make people comfortable with insecure behavior (starting with the use of effectively public information for "identity verification"), and the scammers only need a very tiny sliver of success rate to make it profitable.

Also many of these scams are legitimate-business adjacent (medicare billing, medicare advantage, save money on electricity/tv, political campaigns, etc). Old people just want someone to talk to, effect their own fading agency, and really do believe the spiel of a friendly sounding person promising to help them. The potential damage there is lower than accounts being drained, but the continuum makes it hard to draw an absolute line when the "helpful" quasi-scammers blow right through it.

pookha2 tahun yang lalu

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boringg2 tahun yang lalu

"And let’s face it: older people have all the wealth in the world anyway so they’re more likely to be fruitful targets."

Your comment would have resonated without the unnecessary last line that I don't even believe - are they they the ones who built all the technology companies in the last two decades?

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

If you were a scammer, and your cold call console had three buttons: “20-40 year old”, “40-60 year old” and “60-80 year old”, which one would you push to optimize your chance of finding someone with the right combination of wealthy, trusting, and lonely? Even ignoring things like cognitive decline and loneliness, I’d hit the older button every time, despite the fact that yes some wealthy 20-60 year olds do exist.

boringg2 tahun yang lalu

"And let’s face it: older people have all the wealth in the world anyway"

My argument is that your comment is incorrect (hint: they don't have all the wealth in the world) and your tone.

I don't disagree that they are the best target if you are a scammer its how you delivered the comment awfully close to blaming the prior generation for all our woes .. i.e. doesn't matter anyways because they "have all the wealth in the world anyways" flippancy.

michaelt2 tahun yang lalu

You haven't looked at the statistics on this, have you?

Imagine vastly simplified world where people are in full time education (with no income and zero net worth) until age 20, then they start earning wealth at a constant rate. At age 30 they'd have 10 years of savings. At age 60 they'd have 40 years of savings, and that's 4x as much.

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

Come on. “All the wealth” is obviously a benign exaggeration, just like if I were to have said “I do this all the time” or “You always do that”.

radlad2 tahun yang lalu

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2020/10/02/wealth-inequ...

Data comes from https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm

organsnyder2 tahun yang lalu

Baby boomers and Silent Generation people hold over 60% of the wealth in the United States. Gen X-ers have about 30%.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/more-than-half-of-us-wealth-...

neilk2 tahun yang lalu

Millennials hold about 9%.

Fun fact: Mark Zuckerberg personally holds over 1% of that 9%.

(That is, he holds ~0.09% of all the wealth of US citizens, and happens to fall into the group of Millennials who as a group have ~9%. This from rough calculations and googling. There's an old reddit post that has about the same numbers. https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/nbqfvn/requ...)

dragonwriter2 tahun yang lalu

> Baby boomers and Silent Generation people hold over 60% of the wealth in the United States. Gen X-ers have about 30%.

It would be more significant that the first two groups have twice as much aggregate wealth as the last if they didn't also have over a time and a half the population. (>30% vs. <20%.)

https://www.statista.com/statistics/296974/us-population-sha...

kennywinker2 tahun yang lalu

In a capitalist system, you don’t have to build anything to have all the wealth.

Statistically I believe op is correct, wealth is more concentrated in older demographics, and it has been increasing in concentration for quite a while now.

RajT882 tahun yang lalu

I like to string scammers along for fun, if I have spare time.

These "pig butchering" scams provide hilarious possibilities.

They like to send their photo pretty early (always an attractive Asian lady), so I try and beat them to the punch and send my own photo (of course, also a photo of an Asian lady). Curiously, this doesn't deter them! My wife finds this particularly hilarious.

One time, I had 2 people randomly texting me at the same time, using the same name - Jenny. I started sending them screenshots of each other's conversations, which kind of annoyed them. "Which Jenny is this? Do you know the other Jenny?" lol

A list of things which also doesn't seem to deter them or make them think they might be being toyed with:

- Claiming to work for the FBI (in an anti-scammer unit)

- Being homeless

- Claiming to be Peter Frampton

- Claiming to be Bill Clinton

barfbagginus2 tahun yang lalu

This practice is called scam baiting, and there are communities you can join, like 419 eater. You can improve your techniques there.

But be careful with scambaiting.

1. Scammers can have networks, with connections that are more violent and capable than a given scammer. They might be capable of hitting you with a drive by, doxing, swatting, or hiring local muscle to visit you. The risk of this is kind of 'expensive' escalation low but not zero - especially if you're causing real problems for an operation

2. Many scam agents are victims coerced into scamming by their bosses. This makes it unethical to bait them unless you have the power and intent to liberate them - which almost no scam baiters do

3. Many scam agents have bots for dealing with repetitive objections or harassment attempts. It doesn't cost them anything to string "vigilantes" along with low effort bot responses, occasionally dropping the payload URL, hoping you will make a mistake

4. Some scambaiting activities are illegal and could make you liable for legal penalties - things like verbally harassing scammers, hacking scammers back to surveil their operations, threatening to have scammers beaten or murdered, etc.

Remember that the agents that you're talking to are softies, with a little power, but they're working under the supervision - and often the coercion - of hardened criminals in many cases. Scambaiting should not be done just for fun. It should be done with some form of desire to help liberate the victims enslaved by these operations.

I have personally chosen to stop most of my own scambaiting operations until I find a new form of scambaiting that can actually help victimized scammers.

The only kind of scam baiting that I do now is teaching python and open source contributions on GitHub, with the hope that teaching a valuable skill can help a scammer escape the cycle of crime and extortion. If a potential scammer is willing to learn Python with me and start making open source contributions, I don't really care what else they are doing. But of course this approach has a downside - I could be teaching valuable programming skills to a person who will just use them to automate their scamming operation.

wizerdrobe2 tahun yang lalu

In what jurisdiction would I be liable for verbally harassing a scammer?

I ask because worked for a cybersecurity firm and we would, on occasion, and mostly the “teh lulz” screw with phone scams. Our legal had nothing to say on that front.

bragr2 tahun yang lalu

In many countries, harassment of any kind is illegal, regardless of the reason or if it involves a protected class or not.

voakbasda2 tahun yang lalu

The scammers would have to take you to court. Something about throwing stones in glass houses comes to mind as relevant here.

CamperBob22 tahun yang lalu

But of course this approach has a downside - I could be teaching valuable programming skills to a person who will just use them to automate their scamming operation.

Exactly; I'm sure that in many cases the people who taught them English had similar hopes.

GaryNumanVevo2 tahun yang lalu

I appreciate your attitude about trying to better the people who are working the call centers, but they're often held illegally in a foreign country. The criminal gangs that run these call centers take their passports on arrival, learning Python isn't going to help them unfortunately.

host02 tahun yang lalu

"Hello, I'm calling from the Microsoft regarding an issue with your computer" "Sure, lets talk about the difference between a module and a package"

barfbagginus2 tahun yang lalu

Talking about how pep 518 makes python packaging a lot easier is actually one of my screening steps. If they can't pretend to be captivated by that, I drop them immediately. I don't care if you're trying to scam me, if you're also learning key peps!

And God help a scammer who ends up in my hands... Because I will definitely teach them python packaging and GitHub build automations for pypi publishing! I am honestly in awe of some of my students' abilities to deal with python BS.

And Poetry? Pip's own Pep 518 compliance ensures we don't need it! We're managing dependencies by hand, `pyproject.toml` style! Woohoo!

sp3322 tahun yang lalu

Last week, hundreds of kidnapped people were freed from a scam center in the Philippines where they were forced to carry out pig butchering scams. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68562643

lukan2 tahun yang lalu

I think most of them are largely automated at this point, with the human scammers overlooking lot's of fishing gear. Only writing in some situations themself.

Telegram is full of them, often they are so blunt, that you wonder why so stupid. But I saw people react and fall for them in group chats (where other people could intervene), so apparently it works with private chat. And they use all kinds of pictures (not just asian) and try to adapt them to the local groups at times. But the general theme: sucessful and happy. Making the victim wannabe just like his new friend.

Some people are really desperate for success, so they ignore all warnings and go for it.

Seriously messing with them would require LLMs at this point, to automate it as well.

rightbyte2 tahun yang lalu

> But I saw people react and fall for them in group chats

Are you sure they were not co-scammers though or the same scammer? Seems like scamming 101 to make victims fomo.

lukan2 tahun yang lalu

That surely also happens, but in the cases I mean, they were genuine people.

tim3332 tahun yang lalu

One thing which was kind of funny when the girl was trying to get me to send crypto to some fake exchange of the sort mentioned in the article, is that my friend issued his own crypto/shitcoin which I have a bunch of so I tried to pitch her on buying that instead. Sadly she didn't buy our token.

Jun82 tahun yang lalu

Does anyone have a good explanation;anation why a photo of an Asian woman is used in almost all cases, as opposed to, say, German looking or Indian woman. Is it because they are deemed to be the most attractive for the target victim demographic?

tim3332 tahun yang lalu

A lot of the scammers are based in Asia. At least one I chatted to did look like the photo - we video chatted.

harkinian2 tahun yang lalu

If I had two of these at once, I'd copy/paste the messages from one to the other and vice versa – make them talk to each other.

ben_w2 tahun yang lalu

I used to get dodgy calls. Still do on my UK number. Back when I was still in the habit of actually picking up, if I got such a call I would advise the other party to join a trade union, which generally resulted in them hanging up instantly.

manquer2 tahun yang lalu

Well they are victims too , they are held in prison like compounds and forced to work 16 hours a day and physically abused . They don’t have a choice but to talk to you .

Everyone you engage you are making it worse for the person on the otherside

tim3332 tahun yang lalu

Yeah it's all a bit shocking and quite a lot near the beach in Sihanoukville where I'd hung out a while doing beach stuff. There really should be a way of getting this stuff stopped.

muttled2 tahun yang lalu

I'd be surprised, given the technical savviness and polish of these scams, if they weren't using LLM's that are scripted such that the bot isn't "aware" it's a scam.

Muromec2 tahun yang lalu

The real way they do it is by offering a nice job in IT to somebody with a passable written English (read Indian), then traffic them to Shan states in Myanmar and beat them into doing it. Apparently it scales better and is more predictable than LLM.

gryn2 tahun yang lalu

> Apparently it scales better and is more predictable than LLM.

there's something in this sentence that hit different.

sp3322 tahun yang lalu

Also the Philippines https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68562643

RajT882 tahun yang lalu

I don't think they are. They don't immediately reply all the time. And like I say - they get annoyed sometimes and tell me to fuck off once they figure out I'm toying with them.

dragonwriter2 tahun yang lalu

LLMs (either online services—which also risk getting cut off—or the hardware to run them locally) are probably a lot more expensive than trafficked workers.

harkinian2 tahun yang lalu

These scams have been going on since before LLMs were passable in English convo, and I'll bet they're still using whatever human labor they had.

CollinEMac2 tahun yang lalu

You very well may have been talking to victims of a fraud factory.

khazhoux2 tahun yang lalu

What does this mean?

CollinEMac2 tahun yang lalu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud_factory

Scammers aren't always acting on their own free will.

vundercind2 tahun yang lalu

Is making a scammer less-productive, so possibly saving some number of vulnerable people from losing their ability to support themselves in retirement, ethical if that scammer may (may!) not themselves benefiting from the scam, and may be beaten or otherwise punished for poor performance?

... my god, might we even have a moral obligation to help them make their numbers?

noodlesUK2 tahun yang lalu

The thing that I don't understand is why the telecom companies that are letting these scammers SMS spam en masse are not being cut out of the domestic telecom market. There should be a certain percentage of spam reports to legitimate messages that is just permadeath for the telco. I'm pretty sure if I tried to use twilio to send these kinds of messages I'd get banned, but there are sketchy sms/sip companies who go out of their way to enable the bad behaviour.

STIR/SHAKEN is a good start, but we need to come down hard on this.

Nextgrid2 tahun yang lalu

Nobody seriously tries to stop spam because they make money off it.

If someone tells you that it's impossible to trace the origins of spam, ask yourself how they can know whom to bill.

The reality is that it's possible and easy but only when the bottom-line is concerned.

noodlesUK2 tahun yang lalu

This is why there needs to be regulation with teeth.

It needs to make business sense to prevent spam/scams by there being penalties for screwing things up, and incentives for doing well. Otherwise you're right, unscrupulous telco companies like to make money by charging scammers to send messages to customers.

Nextgrid2 tahun yang lalu

We need regulation and regulators with a minimum of technical skills, common sense and bribery/lobbying being adequately punished that it's no longer seen as worth it.

Currently that's not the case, so the excuse of not being able to trace the source of the spam is successfully preempting regulation as nobody involved has the skills and/or financial incentives to ask "hold on, how come you know who to bill but not who's originating the spam?".

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

We need a proactive and inquisitive press that questions PR and asks these companies to clarify why they say what they say. Our current media simply reports “In a statement, Company X said Y” and leaves it at that.

ianburrell2 tahun yang lalu

I don't know if the phone providers are making money on scams. Phone calls that have gotten so cheap that VoiP calls from overseas may not be charged anything. It is also likely that the overseas scammers are using US machines to make the calls. My guess is that the scammers don't want to pay anything since greedy and don't want charges that can be traced.

Simpler explanation is that the phone companies don't care about the scams because it doesn't affect them. They aren't liable, and there is no mechanism to report scams to them, and make them spend money investigating.

Nextgrid2 tahun yang lalu

Calls and texts are of course cheap on a per-unit basis, but they're still not free. So not only it means that in aggregate, telcos will lose maybe 10% of revenue if they do fight it, but most importantly that detail actually means every bit of traffic has a paper trail associated to it (since this traffic must be billed for) and thus all the information required to trace the source of the spam is there, just that everyone (including regulators) are financially incentivized to look away and pretend it isn't.

rightbyte2 tahun yang lalu

I would pay 10% more for a phone plan some with spam blocking. Like, even just as simple as blocking all voip phones or foreign numbers.

lazyeye2 tahun yang lalu

Yes how easy would it be to auto-detect unusual activity on their systems likely to be scammers? How many people ring random numbers 24/7 in foreign countries for legitimate reasons for example?

nickff2 tahun yang lalu

The scammers are much more sophisticated than you suppose. One common trick they use is to “hack” local PBXs, and use them to place vast numbers of calls.

laweijfmvo2 tahun yang lalu

I'm certain the "Report Junk" thing on my phone is completely ignored, if only because I clicked on it 100 times by accident when it was first rolled out (with very poor UI, IMO).

hocuspocus2 tahun yang lalu

I get very little SMS spam, and they're usually filtered by Google Messages so I don't even notice.

And in this case, pig butchering scammers use Telegram and Whatsapp mostly.

harkinian2 tahun yang lalu

Yeah, WhatsApp was the first place I saw these scams, and I continue to get these messages from "women" on there.

dghughes2 tahun yang lalu

>STIR/SHAKEN is a good start...

It seems to have done nothing. Even for phones I get more spam than ever. Same for my Mom 99% of calls to her landline are scammers.

RajT882 tahun yang lalu

Something has changed. The auto warranty scam calls have stopped, which at one point were the majority of scam calls I got. Scam calls are most of my calls as well.

Now I get:

- Travel package scams (I believe this is related to timeshares, this is most calls I get).

- Medicare/Medicaid scams (a close second by volume)

- Auto accident scams (pitching an insurance payout)

- Home security system scams (free security system!)

Wistar2 tahun yang lalu

These days—meaning the last few weeks—I get:

• Home remodeling come-ons. So many. They know my name. Often “I’m calling for my Dad’s construction company, xxx, who is working in your area …” It’s a different company name every time.

• Medicare BS.

• “Scare” scams—just lately with no specific reason, just words such as, “…your case is urgent and you must call our agent Sam at 555-xxx…”

• Tax relief crap.

RajT882 tahun yang lalu

Oh yeah - the home remodeling ones - I get those occasionally.

Also occasionally solar company calls. These appear to just be really shady lead generating companies, but the solar companies are real (if maybe themselves a little shady).

Once in a long time I get the "scare" scams - those are usually claiming you owe the IRS a bunch of money.

derekp72 tahun yang lalu

The scare scam I got a while ago was a "cop" claiming that I missed showing up for jury duty that morning. He spoke "cop talk" and passed me to another "officer", who tried to convince me that since I missed showing up for jury duty that a bench warrant was issued which would result in me getting arrested if I tried to show up to the court house to "post bond". Instead, he recommended that I use a remotely located "bond posting" machine they have in several locations (he rattled off 3 addresses), and I can give him the receipt number and that would clear up the warrant. It just so happened that if you googled "Bitcoin ATMs", it came up with those 3 locations as the first three results.

Now what really pissed me off is that it took more than half an hour to get to the scam part -- they put me on hold multiple times, and passed me back and forth between the two "cops", with really no information given to me. Once it got to the demand for money, I started putting them on hold, until I hung up (which he of course warned me not to do), and they kept calling back until I blocked the number.

noodlesUK2 tahun yang lalu

Anecdotally, I tend to agree. I have both UK and US phone numbers. The US phone number receives dramatically more spam calls than the UK one, despite us not having STIR/SHAKEN in the UK yet. I don't know if that's because the US people are likely to be juicer targets (richer etc) or because of some infrastructure difference that makes it more of a hassle to do in the UK.

deathanatos2 tahun yang lalu

Jim Browning did a thing on these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu-Y1h9rTUs

The second half of the scam — the cryptocurrency theft. The one I've seen recently is variations on any of the terms "ChatGPT MEV arbitrage ETH slippage bot"; in essence, the author claims to have used ChatGPT to write a bot that waves hands does something something with arbitrage and makes tons of money. The explanation is technobabble, and the claims are often like "earn returns of $2k/day", which is of course solidly into the "way too good to be true" territory. The "smart" contract just steals your money, it's that simple.

I have been seeing these all over my YouTube sponsored videos. I.e., the scammers are running these as ads. I've reported them as I see them, but thus far, YouTube has taken down exactly none of them, AFAICT. (In fact, my entire report history is 0% removed, despite every entry being a rather crystal clear ToS violation since I'd otherwise have been too lazy to go through the flow for it.) As I write this, both ad slots on the homepage are this scam.

pornel2 tahun yang lalu

Instagram is also full of these scam ads, and they remove maybe 1 in 20 I report. Many of them are obviously fake or hacked accounts, e.g. having "Nail Salon" as the business type on their profile, but their posts are promising $$$ if you have an account on Binance.

cameron_b2 tahun yang lalu

Last Week Tonight, on this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg

nytesky2 tahun yang lalu

The divorcee with terminal cancer losing 2.8M was soul crushing.

ahi2 tahun yang lalu

I was vaguely aware of the scam, but didn't realize that most of the perpetrators are also victims. Whole thing is very depressing.

shaicoleman2 tahun yang lalu

https://archive.is/BvEqS

projektfu2 tahun yang lalu

I had one of these working on me for a while, years ago. It took me a while to catch on but then I also am not quick to send money to someone. The scammer reached out from a public forum (language learning app) and then traded WhatsApp numbers. At first I thought it was just an eccentric person, but then I realized their goal was to get me to "invest" with their "rich uncle".

At this point I hadn't heard about this specific scam, as most scams are kind of low effort and quick to screen people for susceptibility. This one surprised me in that they were very good at acting like someone they claimed to be. Google Translate has gotten to the point where people can carry on a conversation in their own language and talk to someone in English without sounding too odd.

Before I blocked the scammer I took a closer look at "her" WhatsApp profile. She was a business account. Big red flag, I wish I had noticed that before. Still, if no money changes hands it's free entertainment? I also learned by paper trading on Forex that I suck at it and shouldn't play that game.

Crypto scammers also sometimes try to play the long game, and I think they are based in different countries from the pig butchers. I met one through the same platform and saw through it right away, but noticed that they were working as a pitchman for another scammer.

rubenbe2 tahun yang lalu

The Darknet Diaries podcast recently had an episode on this type of scam: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/141/

bobchadwick2 tahun yang lalu

As did Search Engine: https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/whos-behind-these-scammy-text-.... That episode takes a really dark turn.

dc-programmer2 tahun yang lalu

Mild spoiler, but I could not find corroboration for the black axe human sacrifice claims anywhere on the internet

gunnarde2 tahun yang lalu

Came here to say this! Great episode

thefourthchime2 tahun yang lalu

PJ Vagt (from Reply All) has a FANTASTIC episode about this. Give it a listen, it's one of the most interesting podcasts I've heard since the golden days of Reply All.

https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/whos-behind-these-scammy-text-...

FireInsight2 tahun yang lalu

Reply All is still my comfort podcast for short walks. Nothing has yet reclaimed the throne of being my most listened from it. Search Engine carries the torch somewhat, and is really good for it's scope, wjch obviously differs from the scope of Reply All.

acover2 tahun yang lalu

Are there bank accounts that have a person watching every transaction and can call you to ask why you went to a Bitcoin ATM? A bank account an elderly person with dementia could use?

kurthr2 tahun yang lalu

If you're over 80 years old and don't do online banking, but are convinced by someone calling "from the FBI" that your account is in danger, Wells Fargo will happily try multiple times to transfer your life's savings to multiple different Bitcoin bank accounts (the first few closed for fraud and funds returned) over more than a week and several visits, then open a new credit card and transfer the maximum cash advance electronically as you read the newly issued password out to someone on the phone in their presence, and never mention there's a danger in doing this or question your decisions, until all your money is gone.

How do I know? If you happen to have been a school teacher for 50 of those years, you keep excellent hand written notes of the events, that make your relatives sick to their stomachs.

suzzer992 tahun yang lalu

Wells Fargo really is rotten to the core. The other banks at least make cursory efforts to prevent this stuff.

kurthr2 tahun yang lalu

The only saving grace was that they ended up on the hook for the cash advance.

suzzer992 tahun yang lalu

I'm sure they weighed the costs and decided it was more profitable to make zero effort to stop fraud. Never mind the moral hazard.

bradley132 tahun yang lalu

I know someone who, due to ADHD, has trouble paying their bills on time, and managing their money. They found a legal service that handles their basic finances, and gives them their budget for shopping, fun-money, etc.. The service is surprisingly reasonable, something well under $100/month.

While not quite what you asked, a service like this would at least provide an additional barrier, before someone hands over their net worth to a scammer.

The next step after that, often used for elderly people, involves a full power of attorney: someone else is completely responsible for their finances, and hands them either cash or a debit card with a small amount of money that they can use however they want. But that is for extreme cases.

javajosh2 tahun yang lalu

Sounds like a great service. What is their name?

bradley132 tahun yang lalu

Probably not applicable to you, it's just a small legal/financial/tax services office here in Switzerland. Not sure how he found them - maybe they did his taxes, and he asked?

t_mann2 tahun yang lalu

Sounds like a service that in itself requires a lot of careful checking and trust, which kind of defeats the purpose. If someone offered me such a service, I'd probably assume that it was a scam. Things like 'Regulated by FINMA' may mean less than you might assume.

50402 tahun yang lalu

This sort of service can be useful for gambling addicts too.

dcow2 tahun yang lalu

The thing with a Pig Butchering scam is it’s not the drive-by gift-card/bitcoin Kitboga variety you’re thinking of. Asian organized crime groups build entire fake trading platforms and convince otherwise well adjusted healthy people to set up their own accounts and dabble with investing their own money. The platform is fake and the money is gone as soon as you move money to it. But you don’t know until you try to withdraw.

bigbacaloa2 tahun yang lalu

graemep2 tahun yang lalu

If you have a few million in liquid assets than a private bank might do that. Some do (or used to) manual daily reviews of balances and manual sweeps to interest bearing accounts so its not inconceivable.

For anything less, its too much work.

nytesky2 tahun yang lalu

You setup a trust, and you run a main account with automatic transfer to their spending account for day to day.

lazyeye2 tahun yang lalu

Cambodian slave labor

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-08-17/crypto...

freitzkriesler22 tahun yang lalu

I get a lot of scammers on my IG account messaging me. Typically they're the profiles of young women. A lot of the time, I verbally insult them or ask how the cat fishing is going. My favorite is telling them to stand in front of a mirror with the current date written on a piece of paper. Since they're all ESL, they fail this hard.

But one time, I decided to see how far I could take it.

Had a scammer message and follow me on IG. I went ahead with it. We kept it going for about a month which escalated to sending pretty scandalous pictures.

The scammer asked to me my d*ck. Full disclosure, I'm a pretty average 5.5 inches. Instead of sending a real picture of mine, I found one online of some guy who had a massive slong held next to what looked like a 7/11 big gulp cup for comparison.

I sent the pic to him and immediately the scammer reveals himself and threatens to reveal my messages and pic to my other followers on IG unless I send him some Bitcoin.

I chuckle and say, "go for it". Now my friends all know me really well and wouldn't be phased by this. My buddies I went to school with know my size because of the sports teams I played on with them and they thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

The girls all immediately began talking amongst themselves and I started getting hit on by acquantances that followed me.

Was probably one of the funniest stunts I've ever done.

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

Wait, wait, wait… the scammer actually made good on his threat to send the Big Gulp Schlong picture to all your friends? LOL I never knew what they did when you called their bluff. That’s amazing!

freitzkriesler22 tahun yang lalu

Yup he did. This was a year or so ago and it was the funniest thing I've ever done.

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

Holy shit, I want to do this so bad now. Maybe I’ll start answering those “Hot Asian MILFs In Your Area Want To Sex You” ads. LOLOLOL. Sadly they’re probably just OF ads and not scams though.

freitzkriesler22 tahun yang lalu

Father fell prey to one of these scams. He asked me about crypto trading and mining so I talked him through it. He then mentioned he was doing it through a company whose name was big in the forex world.

I got confused because the forex company wasn't involved in crypto so I asked him for the site nor was anything he said related to trading or mining.

Going to the site, i immediately knew it was a scam. I asked him how he got a hold of this and some chinese woman had cold texted him. He's a senior so of course boomers are ripe for the pick since he lived alone. Ended up buying $10k worth of crypto to send to this scam site.

When he tried to withdraw they sent h some nonsense email about tax withholding from the WTO and subsequently "froze" his account until he deposited 75% more.

The worst part of the ordeal was how defensive he got with me about it. He was more concerned with the nonsensical scenario of him losing his PoA than losing $10k to an otherwise obvious scam.

I showed him some of the fun culturally insulting things I've said to indian and Chinese scammers who cold text.

Dad ended up getting a part time job to occupy himself and have some people to talk to. Haven't heard about him day trading or mining crypto either. I said if he wants to get into day trading to do it through some US based company you've heard before and if he wants to mine crypto, then I'll help him find hardware to do it.

baobabKoodaa2 tahun yang lalu

> I said if he wants to get into day trading to do it through some US based company you've heard before and if he wants to mine crypto, then I'll help him find hardware to do it.

I like that you didn't tell him to stop doing these things entirely (even though that might arguably be for his best) but instead you told him you would help him do these things if he wants to do them.

freitzkriesler22 tahun yang lalu

It's his money to lose. Id rather he be day trading and losing money with a slight chance he might get lucky than playing slot machines which are a guaranteed to lose money.

Crypto mining is a passive activity so no harm there

theshrike792 tahun yang lalu

I wonder when banks start offering delayed payment options, similar to vaults having timed locks.

You can transfer that 100k to the Very Reliable Businessman, but it'll require you to accept the transfer now and confirm it 2-3 business days later before it activates.

I'd really want one of those on my accounts when I get older, preferably with a limit closer to 1k.

Muromec2 tahun yang lalu

Just give your second factor to your children once you get older, they will also be more aware of scams

mrguyorama2 tahun yang lalu

The problem is, the people being scammed are convinced what they are doing is necessary. When our system prevents a grandma from buying $500 of iTunes gift cards at Target because it is clearly a scam, they will call our customer support help line and beg us to help them "get their niece out of jail" or whatever bullshit has been fed to them. We literally have to fight them to help them not be scammed.

By the time you are sending someone money, you "trust" them.

breadwinner2 tahun yang lalu

I have experience with this (but didn't fall for the scam).

The scammer, whom I met on social media, was extremely convincing. She claimed to be wealthy. She has pictures with celebrities, pictures with her Lamborghini, and so on. She said her stepfather is an executive in the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which gives him access to information that other people cannot have. This information allows her to make currency pair trades that bring guaranteed profits. (This would be insider trading, technically.) She showed me screenshots of trades where she made $250,000 USD to $500,000 USD in a matter of 30 minutes (buys and sells in 30 minutes; timing is based on instructions from her stepfather). Then she encouraged me to make trades with my own money as well.

She asked me to install the Coinbase Wallet app. She asked me to press the Browse button in this app, then type seemingly random characters into the box. (Part of the scam here is that victims may not realize they are actually typing a website URL). The website then displays inside the Coinbase Wallet app, and its function appears to be part of Coinbase Wallet.

She had me create a demo account, and guided me through the steps of making a demo transaction and showed me that I could make a significant profit. Then she asked me to make a real account. By this point I was suspecting a scam so I did not go through.

All this happened over a period of 3 weeks, so the scammer takes her time to "groom" victims. An Asian lady who speaks Mandarin and speaks good English with the help of translation apps. I never met the lady in person (she claimed to be on the other coast of the USA), but I did have a video call with her. She claimed to have been using the website for two years (but in fact, internet records show this site was only created weeks before). I discovered that her phone numbers are Twilio and Google Voice VOIP numbers, and her IP address is Azure, which probably means she is logged in to an Azure VM from another country.

Warning signs: They are always far enough away that you can't meet in person, but promises she will be moving to your city soon. (Or they are from your city, but currently away on business). Wants to switch to WhatsApp or Telegram. They always do video call to show that they are a real person. Shows off their wealth, mansion-like houses, fancy cars, dining at expensive restaurants. Casually mentions investing in crypto as their source of wealth. Then wants to show you how to invest in crypto yourself.

Edit: Here are some pictures the scammer shared with me. She is with celebs (Asian celebs, I don't recognize them), in her new Lamborghini at the dealership and so on:

https://imgur.com/a/uRKaE8g

https://imgur.com/a/HV7v1XF

https://imgur.com/a/vDvifL2

https://imgur.com/a/sI01Upb

TylerE2 tahun yang lalu

It's much much worse than that. There no "the woman", there was "a woman" who was hired to play the part. The rest of the operation is call center sweat shop/boiler room. Often the people involved are being held against their will.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68444058

bumby2 tahun yang lalu

The podcast "Search Engine" recently had an episode about this [1]. One aspect that came to light is that while some targets will sometimes waste these callers time by playing along just to mess with them, they can actually be putting these people in harms way.

[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whos-behind-these-scam...

the_snooze2 tahun yang lalu

Before pig butchering, Reply All (Search Engine's direct forerunner co-hosted by PJ Vogt) investigated tech support scams. It's all organized crime too, but this was before they realized they can use slaves instead of hired operators.

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/6nh3wk/

GJim2 tahun yang lalu

Wait.....

A stranger (out of the goodness of their heart) lets you in on their secret technique for making £MILLIONS, and you didn't immediately tell them to bugger off?

breadwinner2 tahun yang lalu

They are only a stranger on the first day, right? After weeks of chatting, you feel like you know them. They take their time, and only into the second or third week do they offer to share their wealth making technique.

bombcar2 tahun yang lalu

They send you a text "Hey, how's it going? Remember Paris?"

And you reply "new phone who dis" and they apologize and chat about unrelated things for weeks becoming your friend.

This is why any text from an unknown number should be "block and report as spam".

mrguyorama2 tahun yang lalu

>And you reply "new phone who dis" and they apologize and chat about unrelated things for weeks becoming your friend.

Or maybe, just maybe, you should rethink how much you actually KNOW someone who you've merely been texting with for a few weeks.

I wouldn't trust my closest friend giving me advice about making money, because his advice was an MLM. I sure as fuck am not taking financial advice from someone I have never met face to face. Even if they are legitimately letting me in on a way to make free money, it's probably unethical at best.

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

Yea that’s what I don’t get. I almost can see falling for the “Microsoft tech support” and “I am the IRS” and “Your nephew needs bail money” scams, as they all sound like emergencies and I can see people setting aside common sense to handle an emergency. At least until the iTunes Gift Cards take the stage. LOL.

But “hello Internet Stranger I know how you can invest and make $millions?” LOL how does that make any sense? Put yourself in the scammer’s shoes: you found a way to double your money. Are you really going to tell random people on the internet how to do it? Obviously not.

DharmaPolice2 tahun yang lalu

You're right of course but the thing is - it's not "Hello, how would you like to make millions" - It's "Hello, how are you?" followed by a period of building the person's trust. And then it's an incidental "Oh btw, did I mention I'm involved in this great investment club". At this point a gullible person is seeing this other person as their friend (or more, a lot of people are lonely). Wouldn't you share your investment strategy with your friend?

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

Yea I think that also needs to be part of The Talk with your elderly relatives, too: Random online people are not looking to make friends with you, no matter how friendly they seem, they are taking advantage of your loneliness. I can see how the conversation could be unpleasant and you need to be delicate and respectful when telling it.

Turing_Machine2 tahun yang lalu

> At least until the iTunes Gift Cards take the stage. LOL.

Yes, I'm amused by those too. In my experience, the IRS has always wanted US dollars. But maybe Apple gift cards became legal tender without us noticing?

LOL indeed.

bombcar2 tahun yang lalu

Scammers target people who will fall for it; immigrants are already used to using gift cards for various things and reasons, so they are not as likely to immediately recognize it as a scam.

Which is why all gift card racks now have the "IRS IS NOT ASKING YOU FOR THIS GIFT CARD" signs on them; still not good enough.

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

I guess another, more controversial regulatory path we could go down is:

Does the world really need gift cards? Do their few, anachronistic legit use cases outweigh the scam use cases? I personally believe gift cards are an overall net negative, even just considering the amount of plastic and packaging wasted on them, but add on the scam aspect, and we have to ask: should gift cards even be a thing?

bombcar2 tahun yang lalu

If not gift cards, something else.

They're just currently the most effective "give me some numbers over the phone and now I have money" currently available.

It used to be Western Union, but it would move to something else.

Cash, money orders, PayPal, Zelle, any number of things have been used and will be used.

ryandrake2 tahun yang lalu

You’re absolutely right and I can tell you’ve given this topic much more thought than I have. Thanks!

erehweb2 tahun yang lalu

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gift-card-scam-get-your-money-b... says that gift card fraud was c. $200M in 2022, and that people have about $20 billion in unspent gift cards. Flow vs stock, but it seems like the majority of usage is legit. (Though maybe not for particular businesses).

Turing_Machine2 tahun yang lalu

> Do their few, anachronistic legit use cases outweigh the scam use cases?

Anachronistic? I still give these as small gifts all the time, and every grocery or department store I go in seems to have a rack of them at the checkout stand.

50402 tahun yang lalu

Often, they won't call them gift cards. They'll use things like "verification card." Newly arrived immigrants are often hopelessly confused already. They'll fall for fake job offers. These "jobs" will eventually require them to get gift cards. It can escalate into blackmail. The victim will have handed over all sorts of private information as part of the job application/interview.

toss12 tahun yang lalu

Yup, too long ago for this scam, but the dating scam. Woman from Russia, a number of nice email conversations, then she wants to come to meet me. I suggest we meet in the EU, splitting expenses, and of course that will not work. Push it a few more times (absolutely not picking up the option she's pushing to "send money to help with my airfare to the US"), and surprise, I got ghosted. This scammer/scam-team at least seemed to fairly quickly pick up the signs of a non-cooperative target.

erehweb2 tahun yang lalu

Curious - what tipped you off to this being a scam? And when you were still believing, why did you think she wanted to share her "inside knowledge" with you?

breadwinner2 tahun yang lalu

I was the wrong demographic for this scam. I am successful in the stock market so I would never have fallen for questionable investment schemes, especially one involving trading on insider knowledge.

gizmo2 tahun yang lalu

Why did you go along with this for weeks. Morbid curiosity? Blinded by greed?

breadwinner2 tahun yang lalu

It was weeks of friendship, nothing to do with investment or greed. Only after the friendship is established do they offer guidance on wealth making.

IncreasePosts2 tahun yang lalu

Do you just strike up friendships with random people who message you?

rightbyte2 tahun yang lalu

Come on. It used to be perfectly normal.

IncreasePosts2 tahun yang lalu

Was it? I can understand making friends with people you bump into randomly throughout the day, but someone just sending you a message isn't exactly bumping into you, it seems like the person was explicitly seeking you out.

rightbyte2 tahun yang lalu

In the late 90s early 00s I got the feeling there was alot of (and I myself self made some) random encounter pen pals. Like in "Hi whats up where are you from?". The real people to scammer ratio seemed way different back then.

But ye, if someone texts me on some chat service nowadays and it is a stranger I assume it is a scam.

[deleted]2 tahun yang lalu

notShabu2 tahun yang lalu

An insight that allowed me to get past mental blockers to bargaining (guilt, awkwardness, etc...) was the thought "I am a person, just like you, not some animal to be milked"

This allows the price to be sought in a non-adversarial way since it makes building a connection and understanding of the local situation a part of the communication.

Much of the awkwardness comes from not really understanding how the local market and local way of life works while also basically being royalty from an economic perspective. This out-of-touchness creates a principal agent problem where the "foreign" other is distrusted but also relied on for "truth".

The negative experience doesn't come from the literal economic damage of being scammed but being treated (or programmed) like a pig let to slaughter.

nytesky2 tahun yang lalu

The fake apps for the scam are egregious. Come on Apple Store.

Honestly for ACH and wire transfers they should have required financial counseling before executing — I remember that women with the “CIA” cash scam was handed a brochure, maybe they should sit down with CFP or someone before they can execute.

mrguyorama2 tahun yang lalu

Your daily reminder that Apple has a walled garden to protect you.... from giving anyone else a 30% cut of every payment you make.

App that claims to be a trading business? Sure, greenlit no problems here. App that is obviously a scam version of lastpass? Hell yeah, get on the app store, you pass muster.

A trivial update to an open source app that doesn't even have any form of payment and requires nearly no permissions because it's not sending your data to fifteen different data brokers?

Hey, hold on there, that sounds sketchy so you will be denied

causi2 tahun yang lalu

the scammer seizes the opportunity to strike up a conversation and guide the victim toward feeling like they’ve hit it off with a new friend

Ah, so not something we of the 'tism need worry about. The only way I respond to wrong numbers is by blocking them.

digging2 tahun yang lalu

Mostly, although autistic folks can also get extremely lonely and we all present differently. A few years ago I actually got one of these "random wrong number" texts and, although I thought it was real and responded, I just didn't engage when they tried to keep talking. I did suspect it was a scam at that point but even if it hadn't been, I was not interested in meeting any random person - statistically we would not likely get along!

BadHumans2 tahun yang lalu

I sent a text to wrong number last week and I'm grateful the recipient let me know it was a wrong number so I wasn't just sitting there waiting for a reply from my friend that was never going to come.

ct02 tahun yang lalu

My company has phishing tests regularly. There needs to be a subscription service to test your elderly and disabled loved ones on their ability to discern a scam from non-scam.

badcppdev2 tahun yang lalu

Perhaps it needs to be like vaccines and immune systems... pay someone to scam your elderly relatives for small amounts of money so they learn.

coupdejarnac2 tahun yang lalu

I've encountered this so many times, and it always follows a similar pattern. I tell them to fuck off in Chinese and call it a day.

FabHK2 tahun yang lalu

Remember though that many of the people manning the chats are trafficked victims themselves.

coupdejarnac2 tahun yang lalu

That makes no difference.

robrenaud2 tahun yang lalu

Is there a sustainable business for a company that monetizes defenses against pig butchering?

If you could make a honey pot LLM that engages the scammers, costing them time and learning their patterns, even misleading the scammers and figuring out their crypto wallets, could that be a profitable endeavor?

not2b2 tahun yang lalu

John Oliver did an excellent explainer about how pig butchering works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg

(apologies if the YouTube link has geographic restrictions, don't know if it does)

circa2 tahun yang lalu

Came to post this too. It was a great piece on it. I'm glad more people are becoming aware of them. They're starting to get out of control.

not2b2 tahun yang lalu

One thing I didn't understand before his piece was how often the person who is trying to defraud you is being coerced to do it, sometimes in slavery-like conditions.

harkinian2 tahun yang lalu

Doesn't help how even a legitimate investing platform often won't let you withdraw money immediately.

ametrau2 tahun yang lalu

There’s something missing from all these discussions. The country where the caller is located.

[deleted]2 tahun yang lalu

sarahwoodssarah2 tahun yang lalu

bella0142 tahun yang lalu

yungporko2 tahun yang lalu

paywalled

7174n62 tahun yang lalu

There is a move to rename the crime to "financial grooming" because the term "pig butchering" is an intentional form of victim shaming. Anyone who is still using the term pig butchering should be immediately discredited.

trompetenaccoun2 tahun yang lalu

It's a literal translation of the original Chinese term. This scam has been popular in Asia for years. One can use a euphemisms but it doesn't really help the victims. Also the term "grooming" has a negative connotation itself since some Western media outlets started using it to downplay child gang rape. See the British "grooming gangs".

GJim2 tahun yang lalu

> Western media outlets started using it to downplay child gang rape

What on Earth gives you this ridiculous idea? "Grooming" certainly isn't a euphemism. It is an entirely accurate and descriptive term.

snapcaster2 tahun yang lalu

People have to use words understood by others to communicate. this is the first time i've ever seen this term and agree it's better but don't think it's fair to discredit people using the current term

toast02 tahun yang lalu

Financial grooming is a better name anyway. Maybe not the best, but I assumed a pig butchering scam had something to do with pigs or butchery, like maybe selling other meats as pork or pork as other meats, or selling products sourced from pigs as vegan.

Financial grooming has money right in the name. And there's other victim grooming patterns, so I wouldn't think 'financial grooming scam' is something to do with recombing a president's hair.

blowski2 tahun yang lalu

Seems to me that the name is an extremely vivid explanation of what's happening, and might therefore prevent it happening, by sticking in people's minds. Better to prevent it happening at all than name it to make people feel better about themselves.

hyperhello2 tahun yang lalu

Don’t you think that term might be offensive to swinds?

spaceisballer2 tahun yang lalu

Honestly that makes sense, the main reason the public doesn’t hear about these things is because victims don’t want to speak on this. They just got swindled, can you really blame them?

carlosjobim2 tahun yang lalu

In almost every scam there is an element of "grey legal area", where the victim thinks that they are doing something slightly illegal or completely illegal and that's why it is going to pay out so well for them. That is to make sure victims don't tell police or really anybody. "Hey I was putting all my money into this criminal scheme, but instead I got scammed, can you help me?"

That is why we have the old saying: "You can't fool an honest man"

digging2 tahun yang lalu

> In almost every scam there is an element of "grey legal area", where the victim thinks that they are doing something slightly illegal or completely illegal

That isn't true of pig-butchering scams, or in general.

> That is why we have the old saying: "You can't fool an honest man"

The saying is "You can't cheat an honest man". And it's also bullshit. Don't trust old sayings; you can quote me on that.

carlosjobim2 tahun yang lalu

How are you so sure, and why are you so angry as to rage against old sayings? The pig butcher scammers might very well tell their victims that the supposed crypto investments are not allowed in China, to make them seem more lucrative.

orwin2 tahun yang lalu

No, that's not how it works.

The most effective way is to get a 'finance' app approved on the Apple/Google store (which is easy), then you send your victims there after grooming them for multiple weeks, then show above average returns, but not exceptional ones, so they keep depositing their savings, then when they try to withdraw, you make a message like 'you have to pay 40% taxes on your total earnings, please deposit that much before you can withdraw'.

That's why I think 'pig butchering', despite the negative connotation, is accurate. Yes, grooming is part of the scam, but it isn't the majority of it.

digging2 tahun yang lalu

> How are you so sure?

No, you're the one who made a claim unsupported by TFA, that victims usually believe they're acting illegally.

The scammers might very well tell everyone carlosjobim put them up to it. You can't just assume something is happening because it technically could happen.

carlosjobim2 tahun yang lalu

I was talking about why victims are many times reluctant to talk to the police or others when they've been scammed. My comment was not in response to the article, but to another comment.

Frankly you seem to be looking for some kind of argument where there is none.

digging2 tahun yang lalu

It just looks like I'm more upset than I am because of how I write.

Your comment claimed that most scam victims believed they were doing something illegal; I don't think that's a reasonable claim without evidence.

carlosjobim2 tahun yang lalu

If not most, then very many of the victims when it comes to scams for large amounts of money. There's good reason for this, if the victim wants to keep their dealings secret then there's less risk that somebody finds out and tells them they're being scammed.

digging2 tahun yang lalu

I understand the logic but there is still no evidence to support your hypothesis.

GJim2 tahun yang lalu

"Financial grooming" is the term in common use in the UK.

I've never heard of 'pig butchering' which sounds rather victim blaming and certainly would not be used as a *descriptive* term by UK banks, government or media.

rprospero2 tahun yang lalu

I'm also in the UK and I'm not seeing the victim blaming part of it. I don't think it's a great term, given that I had no idea what it meant until I read the article. Then again, I would have assumed "financial grooming" was a service offered by a concierge banker to lower my direct debits. Out of the two phrases, I do feel that saying "my uncle is being butchered" will get law enforcement to act more quickly than saying that he's being "groomed".

I'm obviously missing some context or nuance here, since you're the second person to identify the connotation. Is it the "pig" part?

7174n62 tahun yang lalu

This place is ridiculous. How do I get downvoted for trying to help the victim from being stigmatized? The term is horrible, and there is no legitimate reason to use it.

seryoiupfurds2 tahun yang lalu

> There is a move to rename the crime to "financial grooming" because the term "pig butchering" is an intentional form of victim shaming. Anyone who is still using the term pig butchering should be immediately discredited.

Your first sentence was fine, although I disagree that the term is intentional victim shaming.

But you came into a forum where people know term A, and went on full blast with "anyone who is still using (well known) term A instead of term B (that many people didn't even know exists) should be immediately discredited."

That's needlessly aggressive and doesn't really help get your message across.

rprospero2 tahun yang lalu

You're right that this place is ridiculous. However, as I mentioned in a cousin comment, I don't see the stigma and you haven't done a good job of explaining it.

Is it because the word "pig" implies that the victim hasn't kept Kosher and that the scam is god's punishment for that? Is there a general consensus that people who are "butchered" deserve to be murdered? This stigma was obvious and immediate for you, but I'm not picking it up. I don't wish to perpetuate the stigma, but you haven't shared what it is.

saintfire2 tahun yang lalu

As far as I know the "pig" part is about fattening (increasing trust and and thus the payout) them up before butchering (scam exit). Really doesn't seem like victim shaming. If anything it makes me feel worse for the victim because its a long con involving trust and feelings.

stcroixx2 tahun yang lalu

Horrible? I can see mildly offensive, but horrible? Why is it so bad exactly?

splitstud2 tahun yang lalu

This weird drive to compel the speech of others is the thing that needs to be discredited.

thetoon2 tahun yang lalu

As I've been told long enough "be strict in what you give, be liberal in what you accept". We're all welcome to apply (arbitrary) strict rules to what we say, but we ought to live with the fact not every does (or, anyway, have the same set of rules to start with)