Forum: Editors/Reviewers Hangout

my SOL password has 7 characters

DocGrumpyHappySleepyBashfulSneezyDopey?

AJ

Afterwards, Grumpy became Sleepy.

I find I am too old for the "asjlHG%^ciuhew4218379*(98790" type of password.

Password managers are your friend. 1Password, LastPass, Remembear, etc.

Is Reem'em Bear a gay icon?

AJ

More likely, they don't have the contact list at all. They are simply using one of the many login-password lists that have been hacked from other companies in recent years. Since many logins are emails, you just send a message to that email and include the hacked password in the threatening message. The rest is down to gullibility and the high chance that the person has reused the pw.

Cheers
RS

Not really. They don't purport to be official entities trying to gain new info. They read like straightout extortion letters wanting payment.

Summary article: https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-sextortion/

Cheers

RS

She left her film to be developed and someday her prints will come.

Sorry, obsolete.

They took our Kodachrome away over a decade ago.

Kodachrome made slides. Kodacolor was a color negative film from which you got prints.

*sigh*

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

I've had a few of those.

I don't have a webcam.

AJ

I don't have a webcam.

Makes it amusing when they claim to have taken over your webcam and captured a video of you watching porn, doesn't it?

It's also disturbing. A webcam is on my shopping list, although a long way from the top. The question is, how difficult for someone to actually spy on you? Smart TVs do it, the likes of Alexa and Siri do it, Windows 10 does it.

AJ

The question is, how difficult for someone to actually spy on you?

been happening for over 20 years, the default setting leave them wide open for hijacking. There are only three ways to ensure a camera on a computer device are not filming you:

1. Physically disconnect it when not in use - recommend get a USB webcam and unplug it when not being used.

2. Put a very thick dark sock over the camera so it gets no light and no image is you don't want to go the route of options 1.

3. Ensure the cammer is pointing at something innocuous when not being used as a camera. Turn it to the wall at close range or similar.

I don't have a webcam.

Isn't it built into a laptop? I've read articles that said to put tape over the lens to protect yourself from being spied on.

I deactivated the camera in the bios

In the COVID-19 world, Zoom replaced meeting face-to-face. Can't Zoom without a camera (not that I've used Zoom, but my wife has). I don't even know where the lens is on my MacBook Pro.

Not really hacking, but I can beat that. About a dozen years ago I got an email from Nigeria. A guy there gave me a death threat. Pay up or die. He had his 'fellows' watching me at all times and if I tried to notify the constables they would kill me and all of my family.

Note: single, live alone. I drive all the time for work. Anyway, I wasn't worried but I called the police, non emergency. Had a great talk with a local detective who was laughing out loud. Not dead yet.

I'm impressed. It is well written.

Here are my red flags when reading this:

* Doesn't attach a small clip to verify s/he has such a video.
* Says the trojan horse is undetectable
* Says his email letter cannot be tracked.
* "Everything has been orchestrated precisely" Riiiight!
- Except the part where I won't reward your stupidity
* Come on. If you're so smart, tell me which device you got access to and the OS I'm using.
* Once I pay, you'll delete everything? Let's go back to showing me video proof.

The two I get all the time aren't fraud but annoying as hell.

One is for my business to get listed on Google. I don't have a business. It seems a heating company had my phone number at one time.

The really bad one, like 5 calls a day, is to warn me that my car's warrantee expired. I don't have a car without an active warrantee. They're fishing. When I have time, I speak to someone. They ask me what year and make my car is. I tell them they should know that because they are calling me that the warrantee is expired. Often they hang up. I once gave them a 1975 Camaro. They hung up. Sometimes I keep them talking until they realize what I'm doing, and then they hang up. Many times I just call them a "fucking asshole."

I find that about 95% of me email is pure garbage.

I find that's the case after I block the spam and fishing emails.

and block those numbers immediately.

I used to do that until I found out they were using other people's phone numbers so you end up blocking someone you don't mean to and not blocking the ones you want to.

I tend to call back and the few times I get someone's home or work phone I tell them someone spoofed there number so they should let their phone company know incase someone files a complaint with the FTC's Do not Call Reg.

Which ultimately does no good, as most are overseas organizations.

It is amazingly easy to set up such an operations. I can pick up a used Adtran 1550 24 port VOIP gateway used on FleaBay for under $200. Then just find 24 old school POTS phones, those are cheap as hell. Wire them all up in a few hours through a patch panel, then contact one of dozens of POTS gateway companies, and grab a block of 24 lines anywhere I want. I can even set them up with 24 different area codes, then target them by that area code. The 310 phone calls 310 numbers, the 212 phone calls 212 numbers.

And here is the amazing thing, each of the numbers is a real phone number. As far as the phone system knows, I really am calling from LA or New York.

Thankfully, most scammers are at the level of using Skype, and know how almost none of this works.

But yes, it really is that easy. So long as you get somebody that actually knows what they are doing. Some of the facilities I supported had in excess of 400 phones installed in them, and we even had set up tech support local phone numbers at each facility. Oklahoma, Texas, New York, California, Idaho, they all had a local number to call.

Each of which actually called into our main customer call center in Oregon. Myself, I was "Internal Tech Support", so only talked with our field techs and facilities, and not actual customers.

As far as I can see, the telephone spammers sourced my number from the telephone book. I kept the number but delisted it 18 months ago and that has helped a bit, aggressive blocking has helped some more.

"Aggressive blocking" includes blocking entire countries, cities within this country along with known telemarketeers.

Actually, most now are "robocalls". They generally do not use a list at all, and literally call one number after another.

Then you have the robocall lists. Ever get a call where there is nobody on the other end, and they immediately hang up? Congratulations, you were likely just the target of a robocall compiler. They do the same thing, but listen for phones that are picked up and answered by real people. They then save the number and after compiling a few thousand sell them to other robocallers.

Oh, and "blocking by country" is worthless in the era of VOIP. For around $500 in equipment and a $25 charge, I can set up anybody in the world who has a high speed internet connection with any phone area they want in the US. Want to call from India and look like you are really in New York? Want to call from Los Angeles and look like you are in Chicago? All that is so damned easy in the modern era.

Damned easy, snap of a finger. In fact, if you want it on a budget, you can set up professional quality hardware that can run 24 lines for $200 (used). You can even hook it up using old POTS equipment, connect it to the Internet, go through a VOIP service in the US, and it is 100% impossible to tell that the call is not coming from the area code they got the number in.

Do any of you realize that YOU yourself are at the cause for so much email spam?

Most of mine is because I have been using the same email address for over 24 years now. But even then, like robocalling it does not mean much.

I have bought a new cell phone, and within 4 hours gotten spam calls. Set up a new burner email for some reason, and gotten spam messages within a day. I have hooked up new locations to the Internet, and seen the fixed IP bombarded with attempt to gain entry within an hour.

We always laughed when we saw that, and then logged into the router and blocked all traffic that did not originate inside the US. The funny thing is, we did special location VOIP. There were actually no computers at those locations, not a one. A router, between 1 and 20 VOIP to POTS gateway switches, and literally old school phones hooked up to those.

The beauty of modern communications, because of computers it is amazingly cheap to set up an operation to farm such systems however. Do not even need to use the old "wargames dialer" as those of my generation remember them. You can set up a score of wargame dialers in a single computer, and gather thousands of numbers in an hour or so.

These days you can get voip phones and skip the VOIP to POTS gateway switches.

There is a huge difference between the two. Especially if you are running multiple lines, as the overhead of running individual "VOIP phones" is very high. And then there is the thing about quick central management.

I can set up a 24 line VOIP system that can run off of a single DSL or Cable connection for under $500, and in about 3 hours. And then a week later in about 5 minutes change all of the phone numbers (and not spoofing, legitimate change). With a few commands entered from a terminal to a single switch.

Thankfully, most who are doing that are largely idiots. If I see NO NUMBER, I just send it right to spam call hell. If I see a crazy area code, I normally ignore it. If I see the area code is 3 states away yet they claim to be local, I block it.

Just yesterday I blocked one, claimed to represent the "Local Police Union", but with an LA area code. Nope, not happening.

Thankfully however, most of these scammers have about the level of sophistication as you seem to know (not an insult, being accurate here), and run their operations like a bunch of amateurs.

The company seemed to think the VOIP phones were cheaper.

Here in Australia we pay for every byte of data uploaded or downloaded, and we pay for calls outside of the local area based on time and distance. Thus, many of the big companies saved a fortune by converting to VOIP for their phone systems. They already had dedicated high capacity high speed data lines between their offices in the capital cities. The bulk of the use of the lines by the IT dept was at night for daily backups etc. It was cheaper to have a full-time dedicated line than try for one at night, so they sat very idle during the day. Then someone realised over 80 of the interstate phone calls were to their other offices. Swap the phones to VOIP in the dedicated lines and there goes over 95% of the phone bill. The lot went through a server in each city that directed the phone calls to the network or the normal phone system. Most soon had interstate calls to clients being directed through the voip system to the office in the city nearest the client and then it usually became a local call on the POTS instead of a long distance calls. That took care of a hell of lot more of the phone call bill. Some companies reduced their phone bill to less than 1% of pre VOIP and for no extra transmission cost, just the once of cost for the hardware and the software needed.

I was in a corporate office that switched all the desk phones to VOIP. The company seemed to think the VOIP phones were cheaper.

All you needed was a live LAN port to plug the phone into. You actually had to log in the phone into the network but that made it possible to easily move your office number to a different desk. Just log out the phone already at that desk and log back in with "your" phone number.

My home phone line is VOIP through my ISP. Again, all I need is a VOIP phone which isn't any more expensive than a pots phone and an open LAN port to plug the phone into.

Overhead, as in bandwidth. Not cost.

At work you are probably using a real professional VOIP system. Where there is a single device hooking them all into the Internet. And depending on which system you are using, there may be other requirements (like say Cisco Call Manager).

This is very different than say Skype, Ooma, magicJack, Ax, or one of the dozens of others. Those each connect as an individual device, so have their own individual management (hardware and software), which will bog down your system if you have to many of them hooked up.

Use a solution like that with 10 lines, you have 10 different devices, all connecting individually. With a professional system like Cisco, Adtran, or any of the other "Professional Systems", and you do not have that at all. The switching equipment is going to manage all of those phones at once, and the overhead is going to be the same, be it 5 lines or 50 lines.

In your case, your ISP is providing that service, so it is the same thing. That is not the case with most turnkey systems out there.

And VOIP phones are significantly cheaper, depending on your phone needs. PSTN numbers can be as cheap as $10 a month in most areas. And want to cut your long distance charges? This is what many companies did 20 years ago when VOIP was in it's infancy.

Especially as most commercial VOIP solutions use the Internet to completely skip the traditional POTS system. Instead of going through the century old long distance system via switching, they see the destination is say Boston. It then simply forwards the call to the closest POTS gateway, where it then drops from the Internet to POTS, and is made like a local call.

Our cell phones do the exact same thing, which is why we do not pay long distance charges on them either.

Set up a PSTN number in a location you called a lot, then any call made from it was local, no matter where in the world you were at. Call Moscow every week? Get a PSTN in Moscow, and literally every call is local from Moscow as far as the local system cares.

But thankfully, most of the scammers are not technologically sophisticated.

Our government actually did something good one time. They set up a Do Not Call directory. If you registered your phone number on the Do Not Call register then if you report the calling company they would be fined.

The problem really was that most call-centers at that time moved overseas. There was simply no way to "fine" a company working out of China or India.

And to compound it, those very same spammers then used the "Do Not Call List" as a call list! Is not like they were ever going to get fined, they were not even in the US to begin with. I discovered that when I added my number, and within a month had 10 times more calls than I had before.

Of course, this was also the era before Robo Calling.

The problem really was that most call-centers at that time moved overseas. There was simply no way to "fine" a company working out of China or India.

But if it was an American company using an overseas call center, the company should still be fined.

My car warrantee spammer is an American company. I don't know where the caller is, but the caller is representing the company.

But if it was an American company using an overseas call center, the company should still be fined.

Why? Will not happen, unless it can be proven they are aware that the company is breaking the law, and does nothing about it.