If you notice a new account on your instance has a seemingly "real" name attached to their account, it might seem strange at first, but do yourself and Fedi a favor and google that name.
There's some here that are scammers trying to impersonate famous people from somewhat niche entertainment media. Just this morning there was an account registered on a small instance with the name of a professional wrestler.
Thankfully this person had the misfortune of grabbing my attention (wrestling fan) immediately in my timeline and I notified the admin of the potential scam and we were able to mitigate any real harm.
You may not be so fortunate as this in the future.
Some even go so far as to attempt to impersonate lesser known athletes from other professional sports and try to get gullible fans of the team or sport to give them money.
Be safe out there and do your due diligence. It just might save you, your users, or other Fedi users from getting scammed out of their hard earned money.
Thanks for coming to my FED talk. PLEASE boost for reach. This is important.
I hate to say it, but there's a long running #donation#scam campaign regarding #lgbtq people in the #kakuma camp in #Kenya. I was contacted privately in the typical fashion (just "hi") by @ mawa@mastodon.world. Don't fall for it. If you want to help with the real dire situation, the attached reddit link has information and true donation links.
If you encounter #scammers, please #report them. And please #boost this for more awareness. https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/wacwlw/regarding_kakuma_camp/
A service called Spy Pet is scraping Discord servers, archiving and tracking users' messages and activity, and then selling access to that data.
Spy Pet scrapes more than 10,000 Discord servers, and besides selling access to anyone with cryptocurrency, it offers the data for training AI models or to assist law enforcement agencies, according to its website.
Spy Pet claims to be tracking more than 14,000 servers, 600 million users, and includes a database of more than 3 billion messages.
4 major nonprofits that rose to prominence during the #coronavirus pandemic by capitalizing on the spread of #medical#misinformation collectively gained >$118M between 2020 & 2022, enabling the orgs to deepen their #influence in statehouses, courtrooms & communities across the country, a Washington Post analysis of tax records shows.
Article from The Verge on the state of big tech in 2023 (it's crap!)
"Google is trying to kill the 10 blue links. Twitter is being abandoned to bots and blue ticks. There’s the junkification of Amazon and the enshittification of TikTok. Layoffs are gutting online media. A job posting looking for an 'AI editor' expects 'output of 200 to 250 articles per week.' ChatGPT is being used to generate whole spam sites. Etsy is flooded with 'AI-generated junk.' Chatbots cite one another in a misinformation ouroboros. LinkedIn is using AI to stimulate tired users. Snapchat and Instagram hope bots will talk to you when your friends don’t. Redditors are staging blackouts. Stack Overflow mods are on strike. The Internet Archive is fighting off data scrapers, and 'AI is tearing Wikipedia apart.'" https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/26/23773914/ai-large-language-models-data-scraping-generation-remaking-web
Reading about #scammers always depresses me. I know there are far greater problems in the world, but I wish the people who put so much effort into scamming others would redirect those efforts into doing something positive for society.
Started to collect art #scammers on #Twitter in a list a while back in order to spot them easier.
I used to bother reporting them but eventually gave up since they rarely if ever get banned. Checking the list its up to 184. Unfortunately I can't share the list in an easy way, as the site lacks exporting tools and making a private list public, the users will immediately block, removing them.
Since joining mastodon last year I've only come across one scammer here. #artscam#scambots#scam
An Ottawa woman is warning people who are selling their vehicle to be wary of scammers who try to lure sellers into purchasing vehicle history reports through fraudulent websites in order to obtain their credit card information.Ellen Thompson says she was encouraged by the large number of responses to an ad she posted on AutoTrader to sell her son's 2011 Honda CR-Z.
"The first day I was inundated with interested people and I thought 'Oh, this is crazy,'" says Thompson. "I couldn't even keep up to the interest."
Thompson had already paid for a vehicle history report for the pending sale, but she estimates nine out of every 10 text messages she received from potential buyers led to the same request for a vehicle history report from a different company.
I’m trying to sell my tv on #facebook#marketplace and had the same step by step experience as in the article. It’s interesting that last year I sold a pair of speakers and never encountered a single scammer. Now the place is rife with #scammers
«But the factor that predicts whether someone is connable […] [is] their desperation. The kid selling drugs on the corner, the mom desperately DMing her high-school friends to sell them leggings, the cousin who insists that you get in on their shitcoin – they're all doing it because the system is rigged against them, and getting worse every day.» @pluralistic on why the #scammers are the #MLM-scammees. A must-read. https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week
All the more reason why to stop publicly posting about your kids and letting kids have public social media accounts. It will be interesting to see if this is just a passing fad scam, or if spoofing kid's voices will become more prevalent. (Get your safe word prepped now) https://lifehacker.com/don-t-fall-for-this-virtual-kidnapping-scam-1849871660
I really fail to understand why scamming websites can't be shut down and shutdown quickly. Wilko is being used for the latest one now, so take care. I hope Karma does it's thing to #scammers,# fraudsters etc. Glad I didn't order the air-fryer! #Mastodon#Fediverse
A New Tool Helps Artists Thwart AI—With a Middle Finger.
Kudurru, the new tool from the creator of Have I Been Trained?, can help artists block web scrapers and even “poison” the scraping by sending back the wrong image. #scams#scam#scammers#spam#cybersecurity#data #artists#creators#scraping
The last two weeks I have noticed an uptake in scammers using 800 numbers, as such I have now blocked ALL inbound 800 numbers coming into my telephone switch.
@mikeymikey oh look, MSFT being a problem for FOSS communities? never! lol 💁🏼♀️🤭🤣
Maybe one day people will realize that MSFT has always been a problem and will always be a problem. Closed Source has its place, but the way MS behaves is a direct causal link to CVEs and threat actors causing instability and security crises.
oh... did FOSS also warn everyone that MS buying Github was a terrible mistake, yes.
Over the past year, I’ve received dozens of spear #phishing/#smishing SMS text messages pretending to be from my employer’s CEO or another executive. Today I got my first one marked as an #iMessage (#Apple’s exclusive messaging service—the “blue bubbles” in your #iPhone Messages app).
This is pretty troubling—it means #scammers are getting past Apple’s defenses in addition to abusing the porous patchwork of SMS providers and networks.
The trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of Ontario's self-proclaimed "Crypto King" wants a judge to deny Aiden Pleterski a discharge from bankruptcy until he pays back more than $4.5 million in assets and funds the trustee says Pleterski hasn't accounted for.
Just looked at my bank account to realize that a company called "Remitly", which is a money transfer company, has taken $500 from my account, yet I have never heard of them until today.
Debit card has been cancelled, stop payment put into place and I should have my money back within 10 days.
Of course this happens right before we go on vacation this Thursday.