I'm speechless : whitepeopletwitter

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 12 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

When I lived in Florida in the '90s, there was a big story in the news about a woman who was contacted by scammers claiming to be the FBI. They told her they needed her help to catch some criminal, and that they needed her to take out $5000 in cash from her savings account and give it to them in a public place. She did this, and they contacted her again and said they almost had the guy but they needed her to take out another $5000, which she did. She only got suspicious and called the cops after they tried this a third time but nobody showed up to receive the money. Apparently they assumed she was on to them and that the third time was a trap set up by the police.

[–] Rooster326@programming.dev 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Why would you do this in person in a country that will prosecute you?

If I was unscrupulous, I would do this but you bet your ass, I would first migrate to a country that doesn't extradite. Nobody in [Blank] gives a fuck if you scam some grandma in USA

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

If you have somebody gullible enough to hand you a bag full of cash, you have to be there to receive the bag. You can scam from India or wherever, but you have to deal with gift cards and the like.

[–] BillyClark@piefed.social 178 points 1 day ago (5 children)

My elderly mother has her phone locked down so that you can't contact her unless you're in her contacts.

We need to rethink how we let random people contact other random people. The upside of letting random people call anybody isn't that large, and the downside is like billions of damages in scams and people losing their retirements.

[–] ravelin@slrpnk.net 2 points 7 hours ago

I've been saying for decades we need to switch phones to a white-list by default contact restriction.

Only approved numbers can get through. Contact should require consent.

[–] OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip 8 points 15 hours ago

I considered doing this, but then the Pixel phones started doing a much better job at just filtering out spam calls so it hasn't really been an issue.

[–] banause@feddit.org 46 points 1 day ago (5 children)

No. What we need is freaking DNS for phone numbers. I don't get why this isn't a thing.

So you can actually register a bunch of numbers under the same name. If DoctorSocks.med calls, you know it is them regradless whether it's the front desk or what not.

If DrJoana@DoctorSocks.med calls, you know it's the number of that particular person.

In that way you can even establish curated lists. On a govermental, but also on a community level.

[–] Black616Angel@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 11 hours ago

I mean there is something like that. It's called a phone number. Problem is, that the way it was thought out is not the way it works today.

(My knowledge is a few years old, so please correct me if I'm wrong) That said, the way it works is like this:

Your phone connects to your phone provider with your number and says: "Here I am, please route calls to me." Or "Please route this call to number XYZ." The provider then forwards it either to the next hop in the direction of XYZ or directly to XYZ's provider. In the end the call lands at XYZ's phone and the call begins. Great stuff.

But today it works a bit differently due to the way those companies "just trust" each other.

A malicious actor with a weird (malicious) provider just says: "This is my number, route a call to XYZ." And then just provides a wrong number and instead of stopping them, the provider just routes it. And all the other providers trust them and just route the call normally. If phone providers would just block list all traffic of malicious providers, all of this would last maybe a month and there would be no more scam calls from spoofed numbers. And afterwards providers could say to other providers "there is scam traffic coming from you with number XYZ, stop that or I won't route your traffic." and then call scams would just cease to exist in a year.

Even worse, malicious actors can register your number with one of those providers. Then the provider will tell the others and they will be like "well if you say so..." and just forward your calls to the wrong person.

(Yes, there is lots of wishful thinking in this comment, but let me dream of a better world)

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 5 points 13 hours ago

Trump got rid of all of the protections that were already set up, very early on this term.

[–] rbos@lemmy.ca 41 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Hello it's me Bill Gates at rnicrosoft.com I will help you do the needful to fix your device.

[–] banause@feddit.org 14 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

See. This is exactly what would not happen.

Because granny's phone white lists the curated list from her government, her family, and, well, her individual phone. Guess what? Rnicrosoft.com is not on there. Plus, it would not work like real DNS. It's merely an anology.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 35 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The upside of letting random people call anybody isn’t that large

That really does depend on the person. My grandma can barely use email and doesn't know the difference between her Contacts app and Gmail, nor does she even understand how to add a contact. She'd just accidentally isolate herself from people without realizing, and would also never get any of the phone calls she gets from her bank, charities and organizations she works for, etc.

[–] BillyClark@piefed.social 25 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Those examples you mentioned aren't random people. They're people she knows and organizations that she associates with. I am suggesting that we rethink the system to specifically disallow randos.

[–] bran_buckler@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Have you ever had food (or package and furniture even) delivery where they need to call, or gotten a call from a pharmacy, or had to call a plumber, or lost a pet? There’s tons of reasons why people need to call a random person.

It makes sense to have the option to lock down a phone to just contacts, like for kids and the elderly, but not for everyone.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I'd love to know what people who set their phone to auto ignore anyone not on their contacts are missing. Just last week I had two random calls from new to me numbers that were actually calls I wanted to take.

Spam calls are annoying but only take a second to figure out what they are and I can choose whether I want to engage and waste their time or save my own by just hanging up. Though I don't get many lately, not sure if it's Canada improving its phone system or my own phone's filtering (I've seen people mention pixels do well filtering but I'm on graphene so no idea if that applies to me).

[–] QualifiedKitten@discuss.online 2 points 12 hours ago

Also on Graphene. I'm unemployed and dealing with a semi recent health diagnosis, so I definitely get calls from numbers that I haven't saved. I just let them go to voicemail, and if they're not spam, I save the number and call them back.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

For me it's calls from medical professionals regarding my wife. There's no way to know ahead of time the entire list of numbers all of these organizations - each facility, each provider, each insurer, each pharmacy.

[–] bran_buckler@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Definitely! And if you’re someone’s emergency contact, forget about it.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

People and organizations that:

Are known to use a variety of numbers (e.g. her bank uses different numbers for fraud alerts, customer service, specific front helpdesk phones, etc, and her medical providers all use different numbers and platforms to send out information)
She doesn't know how to add manually even if she's told the details for

That's why I'm saying it isn't for everyone. Sure, maybe you can find someone that does have a bank, medical providers, insurance providers, etc, that uses only one number for all phone-based communication and uses no third-parties, but that's not the norm, so for her, that would result in constantly missing bills, follow-up texts, fraud alerts, customer service callbacks, etc.

[–] brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 17 hours ago

That's why the STIR/SHAKEN attestation was setup for VOIP.

It basically adds a layer of trust and verification that the person placing the call owns the number that is being used in the caller ID. It helps prevent random calls from being transmitted from random numbers, one of the reasons it's almost impossible to prevent scam calls right now.

But it's not enforced system wide, and we don't have legislature that is making a point to deal with these scam and junk calls.

[–] BillyClark@piefed.social 8 points 23 hours ago

Again, my suggestion was that we rethink the system, not that we keep the current system exactly as it is except that everybody locks down their cell phones. If we rethink the system, then those examples you thought of would be use cases for contacting people under the new system.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 7 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Does your mom not have any doctors?

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 hours ago

In the US, somehow, all your doctor calls' are made through the insurance's phone. (i guess)

[–] kuerbiskernoel@feddit.org 11 points 23 hours ago (6 children)

She can simply save her doctors as contacts

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 22 points 22 hours ago

my dad almost fell for a chase/credit card phishing scam, luckily hes very poor and remember passwords. and asked us for advice we told him its a scam.

[–] papalonian@lemmy.world 121 points 1 day ago (3 children)

My ex fell for a "credit repair" scam over the phone. They said they'd charge a certain amount every month to her credit card and invest it in an account she could access in a year, and that it would look like she was paying off a debt.

She told them she didn't have a credit card, just a debit card. "That's fine," they said.

I asked her how she thought that would work and she said she didn't know.

[–] rozodru@piefed.world 4 points 17 hours ago

I think this is what people are neglecting to point out. Sure scammers tend to target the elderly more but in all honesty, as per your example, all you need is one idiot.

My parents are in their 70s and have never fallen for this and they have been called a few times with these scams. my Dad will just tell them to fuck off and my Mom will essentially do the same but in a more polite British manner. Hell my mom is better at using her smartphone than I am, she just embraced that shit when it came out. My Dad has been using computers since the 70s and now runs Slackware of all distros on his PC. he loves it. So both are technologically savvy. I don't have to worry about them falling for scams. They've even gotten the scam call where someone claimed to be me or know me saying I was arrested and needed bail. they laughed them off because they KNEW I would never do something like that.

[–] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 42 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I asked her how she thought that would work and she said she didn’t know.

Fun fact, this is actually a real thing you can do, and the real ones aren't scams. (unless you consider paying a fee in exchange for quickly building solid credit history without spending money on goods a scam)

They're called Credit Builder Loans.

Essentially, you're not technically "putting money in an account", you're being given a loan at a future date, after you've made your payments. (basically just a reversed loan schedule) If you miss a payment due date, it hurts your credit just like missing a regular loan payment for money they already gave you.

Some charge interest (basically any given by for-profit companies/banks), some don't (mostly just the occasional credit union). They do exactly what the credit system is supposed to indicate, which is show that you can make payments consistently and on-time, regardless of if you got the money upfront or after.

Personally, I almost always would say secured credit cards and credit-building "debit" cards are a better option. (e.g. the Chime's and Step's of the world where your card limit is always your current balance and never more, except for overdrafts) If you look at a big credit builder loan provider like Self, you can see their plans result in you paying pretty large fees overall just to boost your credit score, like paying $600 in and getting $511 back on their cheapest plan. Ideally, you'd have a credit union that wouldn't charge a fee, but might just offer a low or no interest rate compared to investing it in a CD in exchange for them having to effectively hold that money for you instead of being able to offer it out for loans. (and even then, the term is fixed, so they can still loan it out as long as they know they'll get it paid back by the time your term ends)

[–] Akasazh@lemmy.world 4 points 14 hours ago

The American credit system is so bonkers

[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 43 points 1 day ago (2 children)

no wait what? the bank is basically borrowing from me, and yet i can be charged an interest and be punished if i don't lend them money on time?

that, sir, sounds like a scam.

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

It's only a scam if they tell you one thing and charge you another. If the terms are laid out in plain English and everyone agrees to the terms, it's not a scam, no matter how bad those terms are for you.

[–] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 8 points 1 day ago

yet i can be charged an interest and be punished if i don’t lend them money on time?

Yes, that's one of the reasons they work so well at quickly building up credit history for people with really bad credit to begin with. The credit bureaus see an actual loan, with actual interest, and actual required payments. If they didn't ding you for missing payments, then the credit bureaus wouldn't count it as a loan in the first place. There has to be some kind of pressure, consequence, and real-world stakes to missing payments to actually make it valid in their eyes, otherwise it's no different than a regular savings account you put money into whenever.

The entire point of it is to measure if you can be trusted to responsibly borrow or pay back money, they have to give conditions closer to actual loans to actually be considered in your credit score.

The trade is pretty simple, you give them some of your money, your credit score goes up. It might not be a good deal if you already have the ability to earn off a credit card, but these are mostly targeted at people who get rejected for any card they apply for. They're so low-risk for the company and so guaranteed that it's why they can offer them to basically anyone regardless of credit.

That said, I still would say secured cards are a better option, as nowadays there are cards where instead of it being like "give us a $200 payment and we'll give you a $400 credit limit with chances for increases later", it's "give us a $200 payment regardless of your credit score, and you can spend up to exactly $200, and maybe if your score goes up enough we'll give you the real deal".

The main problem with secured cards is that the way your credit score is calculated also calculates the % of your credit utilized. Higher is generally worse. So if you get a secured card, and the company offering it only allows you to start with $200, if you spend all $200, you'll actually get a smaller boost to your score than if you'd spent $50 out of the $200 and no more over the entire month, or spent $200 on credit builder loan payments, which counts as a full, outstanding debt, just one that you're regularly making payments on.

Again, this is why they are marketed to people looking to increase their score faster. You might spend more overall in interest, but you get a larger impact on your score than other options that factor in utilization, and they also tend to result in much larger increases over the same period for people that don't already have a line of credit, which is obviously good for... people who don't have access to credit and want to increase their score fast to get that access.

I wouldn't personally choose one, it makes no sense for my situation, but they are a good option if you are, generally speaking, unable to get other lines of credit, will spend close to the limit of a secured card, and/or need a higher score faster than you could otherwise slowly build it up.

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I got scammed with a phishing email a few years back. I'm still pissed at myself. Motherfuckers got lucky. I had lost a credit card so I canceled it and got a replacement. I had several subscriptions on that card and I was going through changing my card info on them. I just so happened to get a scam "unable to process your payment" email for Netflix before I had changed the card info for it. I did what you never do. I clicked the link instead of going directly to Netflix and changed my payment info. Didn't notice anything was wrong until they bought a plane ticket with it. sigh

[–] zurohki@aussie.zone 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's how those scam emails work, they know that some percentage of people will have just changed cards or something that day so they'll be inclined to believe the email.

[–] minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

Was good day. Their entire scam is base on them getting lucky, unfortunately. I've gotten hooked a couple time at first because it related to my life. My suspicious now triggered when I have to fill in too much detail to connect it to my actual life. The best lies use truths.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] violentfart@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Being old is not an excuse for being dumb.

I’m not talking about knowing stuff, but the inherent knowing-that-you-don’t-know.

[–] minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Do you not know how aging works?

[–] Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 5 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

There's a line between having full blown dementia and being entirely helpless with out help. And a random 65 year old just being fucking stupid cause they are "old" and stopped trying to think for themselves.

A LOT of elderly are still entirely of sound mind and just even attempting to think for themselves. Hell it is not even just the elderly. People let themselves go fucking retarded the moment they have to actually use their brain for anything outside their expertise or day to day tasks.

Its insanely frustrating to watch.

Yeah some times the scammers just get lucky or someone has a brain fart. It happens we all have off days.

But dear fuck do some people just never try.

[–] minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

No they aren't, even without dementia or other cognitive conditions, aging causes mental decline. This is widely researched and known.

[–] Jako302@feddit.org 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Yes Cognitive decline is well researched and starts way earlier than your 60s, but its also an umbrella term for a lot of things.

Reaction and processing speed goes down starting from your mid 20s, short and long term memory gradually declines in your 30s and your vocabulary decreases from the mid 40s. But the ability for complex judgement that's important here shouldn't start declining until your 60s. If you are in your mid 60s and are completely helpless when it comes to technologie that's been around for 10+ years, you either are in the early stages of a cognitive condition like dementia or you are willfully ignorant cause you can't be bothered to learn.

There are a few other causes, like excessive lead exposure (which is especially common for Americans) and malnourishment during you development (often the case for developing nations), but at least the former can be classified as a neurological condition.

[–] minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 hours ago

All of the things you mention that decline are part of being capable of good judgement. Being disconnected from the latest changes is also extremely common the older one gets, which removes contextual information necessary for good judgment as well. For people who don't have kids in their life, or a connection to younger generations, that disconnect is amplified, as will be the increasing case for millenials all through Gen alpha.

[–] prole@sh.itjust.works 1 points 16 hours ago

the inherent knowing-that-you-don’t-know.

Something that the boomer generation is notoriously shit at

[–] guyoverthere123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 22 hours ago

Yep. Our parents always told us to not believe everything on the internet.

And now, they believe anything from some random shitbag overseas.

[–] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

It kind of is. There is are a lot of people in the early stages of dementia or Alzheimer's who get easily confused and are aware that they can't trust their own memory. It's very easy to see how they could be talked into trusting someone they shouldn't.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Idk I think everyone is dumb somewhere and I dont think people can generally identity where that is.

load more comments (1 replies)

People Twitter