All posts tagged: scam

Yes, You Too Can Fall for a Scam

Yes, You Too Can Fall for a Scam

Published by Jenni Sidey

All last week, I felt stupid and ashamed for being duped by a scam. I’d had an ugly argument with someone I love, and it left me demoralized and not sleeping well. So, when an email hit my inbox from Microsoft saying my subscription had been upgraded to “Premium Class,” and my credit card had been charged an extra $397, it upset me, and I took the bait. Usually when I get unsolicited or suspicious emails, I flag them, categorize them as scams, and report them. I’m a publicized author. My name, photos, and videos are out there, making me vulnerable to scams, some directly targeting authors, some targeting anyone with a bank account. Romance scammers send me praise on my writing and ask me to follow them. Delete, block, flag. That’s my usual response. But this time, I fell. If I were being charged for something I didn’t order, I wanted to correct it right now. Without stopping to think, I impulsively called the Microsoft number in the email. Had I been in my …

‘We detected unusual activity’: the scam that uses AI to exploit your holiday photos

‘We detected unusual activity’: the scam that uses AI to exploit your holiday photos

Published by Sam Flores

You are on a short break in Porto and post some pictures of your family on Instagram or Facebook. With a small section of the Douro river in the background, you think it could have been taken anywhere. A few days later, you get a text saying that your card was compromised. “We detected unusual activity while you were travelling in Porto – please verify immediately,” says the message. You click on the link to confirm your bank details. Since you have not put any details of your trip on any of your social networks – bar the indistinct pictures – you don’t suspect there is anything suspicious about the messages. But the text was a fraud designed to extract your financial details. The criminals behind it figured out where you had been on holidays – lending credibility to their text – by using AI to analyse the image for the most sparse signs of where it was taken. Image showing how AI identifies the location where holiday pictures were taken. Photograph: McAfee Labs New …

The Masculinity Scam

The Masculinity Scam

Published by Sam Flores

American manhood is a fragile and precarious thing, shattered by the slightest deviation from ever-shifting norms—eating the wrong taco, tasting tofu, not eating meat, or maybe eating too much meat. Or at least, that is what right-wing commentators have suggested by their attacks on the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas, James Talarico. Since the 37-year-old state senator clinched the nomination, right-wing politicians and media figures have been running a bizarre smear campaign attacking Talarico for not being manly enough. President Donald Trump called Talarico a “vegan,” and Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller has twice declared that Talarico is “transgender.” Right-wing media figures have referred to him as “Tofu Talarico” and suggested that he is “against meat.” That prompted the Talarico campaign to put out photos of the candidate eating meat, leading the Fox News host Jesse Watters to sneer that Talarico was “getting his hands on whatever meat he can.” Watters is 48 years old. Anyway, you get it. Talarico is gay or something, and for the GOP, there’s definitely something wrong with …

The SPLC’s Real Scam

The SPLC’s Real Scam

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by David Harsanyi via The Epoch Times, It turns out that the most generous funder of white supremacist groups in the United States was likely the Southern Poverty Law Center. At least that’s what the Department of Justice’s superseding indictment against the SPLC alleges. The organization secretly paid informants to engage in the active promotion and funding of racist groups while denouncing and “fighting” the very same groups in public. The SPLC purportedly created fictitious entities to hide funding from their donors. The SPLC, for instance, is accused of bankrolling the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally, paying a leader nearly $300,000 to post racist messages, organize and even transport people to the infamous Charlottesville protest, where one person was killed. In another instance, a pair of white supremacists who approached the SPLC about leaving the Klan were encouraged to stay in the group and recruit new members. Given salaries, the two men were allegedly reimbursed for the costs of their activities, including those “incurred for cross-burning events, to include the wood and fuel used.” …

A Suspect Is Taken into Custody in Decade-Long Louvre Ticketing Scam

A Suspect Is Taken into Custody in Decade-Long Louvre Ticketing Scam

Published by José Betancourt

A Louvre employee was indicted and detained on Wednesday on charges including organized gang fraud as part of an investigation into a scheme to defraud the Paris museum of ticket fees for thousands of visitors. Six others had been placed in custody “because of the communications they may have had with the first defendants,” the public prosecutor said, per Le Monde.  The indicted employee also faces charges of use of forgery, assistance in the entry and circulation of a foreigner in an organized gang, active corruption, aggravated money laundering and participation in a criminal association, according to the paper. The six others, while indicted on the same charges, were released, adds Le Monde, which notes that two others charged with complicity in organized gang fraud, passive corruption, and aggravated money laundering were also released. Source link

L.A. pair try to scam senior twice, but their timing is horrible

L.A. pair try to scam senior twice, but their timing is horrible

Published by Sam Flores

First came the suspicious, unexpected text message. Included in the communication was a return phone number and a plea to call “immediately.” By evening’s end, a frazzled Ventura senior citizen — during a cloak-and-dagger assignation — had uttered a secret code to a person who claimed to be law enforcement, then handed him $25,000. It was the culmination of a well-executed scam — so successful that the San Gabriel Valley pair behind the scheme decided to try it again, authorities said. They contacted the same Ventura senior, and this time, they asked for double, authorities said. But the victim, realizing he’d been duped, had reached out to police. And the scammers contacted him right when he was in the middle of an interview with detectives, authorities said. In the end, Shaohua Sun, 39, of Monterey Park and Yanwen Gu, 40, of Rosemead were arrested by Ventura police detectives and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit elder abuse. The charge carried special allegations of the victim being particularly vulnerable and crimes indicating planning, sophistication and professionalism. …

The Scapegoat Scam – The Atlantic

The Scapegoat Scam – The Atlantic

Published by Sam Flores

The Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, who lost his election in a landslide on Sunday after 16 years in power, presented himself as a defender of Western civilization. But at best, his lofty rhetoric was a code for bigotry and a justification for the persecution of minorities; at worst, it was a scam to fleece Hungarians by persuading them to blame everyone but those responsible for their problems. Maybe both. Eventually Hungarians decided that a major source of their problems was Orbán himself. Maybe someday Americans will come to a similar realization about Orbán’s great admirer, Donald Trump, who praised the former Hungarian leader before the election as a “fantastic man” who had done a “fantastic job.” Orbánism was, more or less, a model for what Trump and the Republican Party are trying to do in the United States. The Trump administration was so desperate to prevent Orbán’s defeat that it sent J. D. Vance to ask Hungarians to “stand for Western civilization” and “freedom, for truth and for the God of our fathers.” Few vice …

Dealing with silent robocalls? This is why scam callers keep quiet

Dealing with silent robocalls? This is why scam callers keep quiet

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways There’s a reason scam callers don’t respond when you answer. The goal is simply to confirm that your number is active and spammable. To deal with a call, hang up and use spam filtering to block them. Have you ever picked up your phone to answer a call from an unknown number, only for no one to reply? That “hello?” you’re shouting into the silent void could be feeding a machine. When you pick up a mystery call and hear nothing but dead air for three seconds, you aren’t waiting for a confused human. You’re actually waiting for automated dialer to hand you off to a live predator. Also: This new phone scam has ‘carriers’ calling to exchange your device – don’t fall for it Yes, there is a method behind the madness. Just knowing that someone answered the call is validation that the phone is owned by a real person and that the number is active. That marks the intended victim and …

The Longevity Scam – The Atlantic

The Longevity Scam – The Atlantic

Published by José Betancourt

The quest to live forever has fascinated humans for millennia. The Epic of Gilgamesh, composed about 4,000 years ago, follows a king who searches the world for a plant that can restore youth, only to lose the plant to a thieving snake. The (likely apocryphal) story of Juan Ponce de León, who is said to have embarked on a search for the Fountain of Youth in the early 16th century, refuses to die—unlike its protagonist, who was killed along his journey. Today’s longevity-medicine movement is driven by the same aggressive desire for eternal youth as the mythic stories of old. But whereas in earlier times ideas about wellness could travel only as fast as the people who held them, today just about anyone with an internet connection can use social media and AI-generated graphics to sell medical advice in seconds. Despite a decided shortage of placebo-controlled trials in humans to support that advice, the business of longevity is booming, thanks in large part to sleek direct-to-consumer marketing delivered by health influencers with far more confidence …

This scam notification reminds me that nothing is safe

This scam notification reminds me that nothing is safe

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Lots of scams come from surprise sources, like an email impersonating your bank or a sudden loud pop-up. We trust the apps and websites we use all the time not to throw scams our way, but letting your guard down can lead to you falling for tricks. Recently, I got a scam notification from a financial service I use. Its systems were breached, allowing someone to broadcast a sham that looked legitimate. Thankfully, I didn’t even consider opening it, but I’m sure many people did. It’s a good reminder that you should always be skeptical for your safety. This didn’t seem fishy at first I wasn’t interested anyway I’ve used the service Betterment to invest and store savings for a long time. While I’ve limited my phone notifications to avoid distractions, I keep them on for apps like financial services because I want to know when a deposit is complete or similar. I have them go to the Notification Center on my phone, where I can review them on my terms. A few weeks ago, …