Tag: scam

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Voice Scammed

Over the years we’ve grown skeptical about text messages and unknown callers. Unsolicited calls informing us our car’s warranties are expiring are a joke now and it is becoming well known that Amazon and the like will not contact you to refund your money. But the scammers are always one step ahead and voice AI muddies the waters. In essence, scammers are cloning the voice of someone you know, then contacting you saying they need money. And people are falling for it. Pranshu Verma at the Washington Post has more of this fascinating way scammers are working their new angle.…

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I’m Sorry I Got Caught

Autographs and original works of art are always collectible. For fans of Bob Dylan, his new book The Philosophy of Modern Song had a special edition: For $600 you could buy an autographed copy complete with a certificate of authenticity from the publisher Simon & Schuster. So imagine people’s ire when they found the autographs were not signed by Dylan but by an Autopen machine. Yeah, I’d be pissed too. Daniel Kreps at Rolling Stone has more. After initially rejecting requests for a refund, earlier this week, publishers Simon & Schuster said in a statement that they learned “the limited edition…

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Unfulfilled Wish

If there was a Dollar Store for the internet, Wish would certainly be it. Cheap, sub-par, sometimes knockoff goods, Wish is the place where you can buy weird stuff and things that end up looking nothing like the images on the site. At the NY Times, Tiffany Hsu and Sapna Maheshwari report on how Wish, once flush with cash, has stumbled so hard they’re barely keeping afloat. There were unbelievable bargains on “bestdeeal9,” a store hosted on the e-commerce platform Wish, including a $2,700 smart TV being sold for $1 and a gaming computer advertised for $1.30. But none of…

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From the Terrible Ideas Department

Twitter’s Twitter Blue premium (and paid) service posted this head-scratcher about a new ‘perk’ to paying the company money to use Twitter: gm! You asked (a lot), so we made it. Now rolling out in Labs: NFT Profile Pictures on iOS I’m not sure why people would ‘need’ this feature when an NFT is literally an image you can screen shot and upload as your profile photo. Even worse is the growing fad of companies jumping into NFTs as if it’s some super-hot market. From what I can tell, most people have no clue what an NFT is nor can…

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Targeting the Zelle

An article that flew under my radar was this one over on Krebs on Security wherein Brian Krebs explains Zelle scams. It’s a fascinating breakdown of fraudsters anticipating how the system works and manipulating victims into bypassing Zelle’s security. Here’s the kicker: it’s not about giving up your password. An important aspect of this scam is that the fraudsters never even need to know or phish the victim’s password. By sharing their username and reading back the one-time code sent to them via email, the victim is allowing the fraudster to reset their online banking password. Brian Krebs Zelle, for those…

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Benn Jordan Reveals the Streaming Music Grift

Benn Jordan, known for writing music under the name The Flashbulb, has uploaded a 20-minute video to YouTube in which he goes over how he’s been scammed. And not by some ordinary person, but by a reputable NYT reporter. At first, this video seems quite long for viewing. But Jordan goes into many details on how New York Times reporter Ian Urbina has allegedly scammed him. Jordan says he was solicited to write original music in exchange for potential exposure. We know exactly what exposure is worth: zero. The video is a full takedown of Urbina’s position wherein he allegedly…