I got my money back from a scammer by contacting his mom on Facebook (2016)
blog.haschek.at
blog.haschek.at
Attempts to discuss it with him were futile. I was pissed. At the time I was a freelancer and so this was a huge portion of my income. I basically lived off the dopamine hits from each sale, not to mention the actual sale revenue via a PayPal debit card. The OG ones that were that weird blueish silver sparkle. Funds basically went directly from sales to paying bills and feeding myself.
So I used his personal info to track his location. Ended up finding his poor old grandmother who was his caretaker and barely spoke English. I tried to explain the situation to her and explain how unreasonable he was acting. She didn’t understand anything I said but I think the mere act of getting her involved scared him enough to undo everything he did. He was not happy I had figured that out.
Check mate kiddo.
That's not to say piracy doesn't happen at all or can be ignored. You will find your software on file sharing websites eventually. But, quite frankly, it doesn't matter that much in practice, because free riders eventually come knocking at your door for support or an upgrade -- at which points you go "Mmm, I'm not seeing you in my customer list". And when they're students, they're really just learning how to use your software -- which you can view as free marketing.
Source: I lived off of selling licenses for OSS that I was developing for about a decade.
Did it have any measurable effect on your sales, in percents?
reminds about the scene from Godfather II with Pentageli's brother at the hearing.
So I looked into what I could do and found that the email contact for their domain wasn't working.
Reported to ICANN[1], and their domain was shut down for several days. Then called the supervisor and let him know I was the one that reported it. The sales calls stopped.
[1] https://forms.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/complaints/w...
The week I was leaving, she didn't want to give me the deposit .I warned her I'll public shame her if she didn't gave me back the money, and use "internet magic" to collect other poeople stories so it will stop people renting from her. Nothing happened until 3 months later she sent me a wechat transfer. I've closed the website. But then learned again she was keep doing the same thing with an other business name. I've reopened the website with adding her new business name. She didn't contacted me yet.
She get away since foreigners just don't want to to deal with that when they are about to leave the country or deal with that.
You can Google/Baidu/Bing "courtyard007" or "homeudream"
It has always worked.
I hypothesize it’s easy to rationalize things away, but the FB channel typically requires a non-owner employee to ask the owner/purchasing manager why the company isn’t paying their suppliers.
He emailed me a few hours later with an express tracking number.
I kind of felt bad for him but doing he did from his office is extra stupid.
While I understand the sentiment, we sure are softies when we sympathize with the guy who got in trouble for trying to scam us. He earned that consequence 100%.
They literally live with you, and are supremely immoral.
None of it would have been safe to do if they were still living with them.
If OP had outed them, they would have further angered the ex roommate and freed the roommate from consequences it they wanted to get revenge on OP.
I was arguing that would have been an insane thing to do, as you would then have had no more leverage, and would have angered an immoral person.
I.e. You didn't need to do anything more than you did.
Then assess the situation. Bad behavior shouldn’t be rewarded. There’s no reason the room mate should ever know how the parents learned that information. If the parents were tactful they would use the information to make a plan to bring it to light organically.
https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/extortion.html
"Most states define extortion as the gaining of property or money by almost any kind of force or threat of violence, property damage, harm to reputation, or unfavorable government action."
My IANAL interpretation of that would be extortion wouldn't apply here. Because my security deposit is legally mine, and they were holding it on my behalf, I'm not gaining anything. Demanding my own property back is not the same as profiting. If I had demanded my deposit back plus $1, then it would be extortion. Maybe. Again, IANAL. Fortunately the statute of limitations makes me safe, as this was long ago :)
> "Most states define extortion as the gaining of property or money by almost any kind of force or threat of violence, property damage, harm to reputation, or unfavorable government action."
Under your interpretation, if Alice took Bob's lawn mower without permission and refused to return it, and Bob told her he would call the police and report this unless she returned it, that would be extortion. The police coming and arresting Alice for theft is an unfavorable government action from Alice's viewpoint.
Similarly, if you were contemplating suing someone for damages over a harm you felt they did to you, it would be extortion if you told them you were going to sue to so unless they agreed to settle.
The son was likely guilty of some sort of larceny (theft by deception) and it may have been a federal offense, especially if it crossed state lines or involved the postal system.
Collection agencies (or whatever they are called in the US) hound people for money they owe to third parties. They often call your workplace or relatives as a way to get you pay.
The guy was an employee of a local company. He cold called me. I was busy so I just hung up, but I did hear the company name.
Then I saw a bad review left by someone pretending to have been a customer of mine. He used his real name as it was a google review.
I googled, found out he worked for the company that had called me. Spoke to the owner, gave the owner the info. He said he'd look into it.
Called back 30 min later, apologized for his employee's actions, said he disciplined him and got him to admit his action was petty and wrong, and he made him take down the review.
Real life leverage is a powerful thing.
At least that's how I interpreted it.
[0] https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1377985 (in swedish though...)
This is one of the pervasive dark patterns of social media. Even if you're not on social media, you cant stop people from posting an image of you or tagging your name. That feels wrong to me.
Not Stealing, cheating and telling lies that causes other harm is how I happily live my life. What I was taught..were u not taught the same?
Or, for that matter, that governments may disapprove of.
Don't go out or wear a mask or move out of the city.
Photos taken by strangers on the bus or at the bank are not broadcast to their friends, so they do not cause tension.
Also, wearing a mask to the club causes further issues, since your friends will still tag you in their photos, and people who see the photos will now be wondering why you are wearing a mask. When you answer that you were trying to maintain your privacy so that your friends didn't broadcast your whereabouts to your other friends, they will likely point out that your friends still know who you are, and that wearing a mask does not prevent them tagging you.
Strangers take pictures of movie stars and sell them for thousands.
Also, while the police do deserve much of their reputation, it's worth remembering that citizens and police interact frequently, all day every day, across the country, and mostly nothing newsworthy happens.
Sure when I was 22 I felt as grown up and superior as anything, yet the same amount of years later I realise how little I in fact knew then, and still do.
Christian did the old kid a huge favour.
I also don't think Christian did the scammer a favor either. If anything Christian's interaction with the scammer may have emboldened him because even when he got caught he got away with nothing lost other than a potential reputation hit with his family. Can encouraging a known scammer to keep scamming by showing them how to not get caught and that there aren't any consequences if you do manage to get caught really be considered a favor?
So I started digging into the php files and found some sort of irc bot and noticed the channel it logged on an the admin username that was allowed to issue commands. Logged on the server and channel and hanged out for a bit but no trace of the username. Started asking around for the person, and someone messeged me and asked what's this about, I explained that I just want the hacking to stop so I don't get kicked out of the hosting I was barely paying for. I was met with understanding and the person said they would pass along the message. The hacking stopped. And I was a happy kid 16 year old.
I doubt that.
That being said, back in the early 90s I was playing around with virus generators (total script kiddie stuff) and ended up infecting my own system. That was enough to keep me out of nefarious activities from then on.
Doesn't eBay make the other party pay first before you ship? I thought that was the whole point of eBay.
What I did, was set up a basic website with http request level logging, friend the fake account, waited until the scammer contacted me over FB messenger, and ask him to check out my "website". He did, I kept the conversation going for a little bit, he got to the ask, and I said, "hey, you are a scammer, you live in X town in Y country, I know more about you, and if you don't stop using this account there will be problems!" Anyway, this was about 3 years ago, and there has been no activity on the fake account since!
I had put the website up at Amazon and could take it down, but I didn’t want to get in trouble for “unauthorized access” stuff. I considered doing a DMCA takedown since they had never signed any copyright assignment. Would have probably succeeded. Another thing I could have done was introduce a “bug” that happened to hit at a certain day and demand being paid before I do any more work.
But in the end I didn’t do anything. That $30K out of my pocket really set me back for a long time. Lots of people were pissed at this startup, it was a shitshow.
Story 2
A friend of mine was quite mistreated by a girl who went out w him. She liked me so I contemplated inviting her out to an expensive restaurant, ordering a large meal and then skipping out on the check. Never did it.
I even thought of doing something worse. Saying we should get matching tattoos, except mine would be a fake one.
Story 3
Also I had met a girl and texted back and forth, she seemed excited to meet, we made plans, I drove an hour to meet her and then she totally stood me up and stopped answering.
I was pretty upset at her and I contemplated putting up an ad on Craiglist in the “hookers” section (they had one back then) with her phone number and a fake name that would make her realize I did it (“EGreg’s XYZ”). Suffice it to say I never did that one either.
Conclusion:
I know how to be an asshole but seem to never choose to follow through lol
We're all humans and all terrible to each other, but in short bursts sometimes we can anonymously improve the network by not contributing a negative action to experience control. Good on you for not abusing your female acquaintances with trick tattoos or besmirching someone as a prostitute, but it might feel even better to find a way to avoid needing the fantasy altogether.
I enjoy pruning wild bushes. It gives me the pause to re-balance whatever is getting to me. I wander through the woods looking for lopsided wild cherry bushes and give them symmetry. It's still sort of a form of chaos but better a wild bush than a person. It's my dumb thing, but there's millions of activities that might be a good fit for anyone. Thanks for your post! Cheers.
It's just super risky on both sides so very few legitimate buyers want to do it since as a seller you could be giving them fake or used codes.
Not sure if any KYC/AML or other banking regulations would make this less economically viable.
You send them one card, they receive it and know they can trust you. They send you the money so you trust them, then you send the final card. Worst case you only lose $250.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2...
https://blog.haschek.at/2019/the-curious-case-of-the-RasPi-i...
Disk not ejected properly
Eject "STEVE" before disconnecting or turning it off.
Wiki about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/419eater.com
Also live scambaiting on Twitch from Kitboga:
He is trying to waste the time of scammers while having fun and providing entertainment for his viewers.
And after he graduates criminal university, he's probably going to do far worse.
Most people only act evil under anonymity, thinking they can get away with it, and can't withstand the risk of public shaming.
This applies not only to the internet, but government officials, entertainment industry execs, etc, anyone who thinks themselves safe from scrutiny.
It doesn't mean you can't be evil in public, but it does mean it's a suboptimal strategy for your own best interest.
Scarily if the public moral compass gets warped enough, then you can be evil in public and get away with it because according to the public you're not doing evil. Like Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany. The definition of evil itself changes.
Luckily their social superset, the rest of the world, saw them as evil.
Makes you wonder, what are we currently doing that is evil but the entire world supports it?
China's treatment of Hong Kong and minorities comes to mind. And all the wars and massacres going on that have the full support of the first world and its media.
I also wonder what I just take for granted that future generations will see as evil. Probably eating meat, and not being responsible for negative externalities (burning hydrocarbons).
I don’t see eating meat ever getting to that level. It’d take the elevation of the rest of animal world to our level.
In my estimation they're already there. I'd be interested to here how you measure the level upon which you gain the right not to be killed for food, as we obviously measure it differently.
Seriously, how would it be measured?
I wouldn't put rights - those things based on reasoning and experience, much like the rest of the vast body of law - into a category with gods, reincarnation, gender pronouns and mythology, but that's just me.
Thanks, as a Buddhist I'm glad to hear that there are others catching up with Nagarjuna's insights, though you've still a long way to go.
> You’re admitting that your estimation is subjective.
All objectivity exists within subjectivity, I don't need to admit something I've not claimed to be otherwise.
> Why are you so worried about others eating animals, then?
There's no then, you've provided a non-sequitur, plenty of proponents of schools of thought that say all things are subjective - including us poor nominalists, the Buddhists, though not only us - find it actually strengthens our moral arguments, not obviates them.
> Because a lot of other people now are too?
Do you eat meat to be popular? Please. That kind of jibe is low grade and not for HN.
There are animals, they suffer, humans have agency, we can do better, and I care to do better. I do not act simply because I can, and I do not lack consideration for others - especially those less powerful than me - simply because those around me think it's okay. Which is ironic given your jibe about wanting to be popular, meat eaters are the majority.
What I am trying to get at when referring to other people also not eating meat is: Are you really motivated by a moral cause, or are you taking the easy route, signalling away your guilt like many of the western middle class on this forum and elsewhere?
Does your choice not to eat meat and prevent animal suffering, not really just mirror a realisation that you yourself are at the wrong end of the hierarchy?
I also have not made any claim about what others should do - are you going to keep up with the straw men? It's getting a bit long in the tooth. My initial response was about the way Koobla makes the distinction.
> Are you really motivated by a moral cause
I wouldn't call it a moral cause but a choice between suffering and not suffering.
> or are you taking the easy route, signalling away your guilt like many of the western middle class on this forum and elsewhere?
No, I'm not guilty and I'm working class and I've no need to signal virtue, I'm not religious.
> Does your choice not to eat meat and prevent animal suffering
It does reduce and prevent animal suffering, good of you to… admit that.
> not really just mirror a realisation that you yourself are at the wrong end of the hierarchy?
No. The realisation was and continues to be that my choices can reduce unnecessary suffering, for myself and others.
"Wrong end" is subjective. "Hierarchy" is subjective… Either you're going to start using terms in a normal way or you're going to remain inconsistent in your use (or, more precisely, convenient in your application) and continue to provide no argument at all.
That doesn’t mean I see have no empathy for other creatures of this world. Of course I do. Suffering or torture of animals would never be justified. But I’d never put their existence itself ahead of a fellow human’s. That’s, to me, totally asinine.
Aside: this thread escalated quickly from scamming Apple gift cards on reddit
We're omnivores, we eat meat and plants, meat is thought to have been what gave us our big brains.
https://paleoleap.com/human-brains-evolved-meat/
Hardcore vegans already think it's a horrific practice, but for most people it will just be a diet of the time, especially if future people are eating imitation meat.
The difference for you and I -and everyone else reading this- is that we now have easy access to meat-free alternatives. Plant proteins and mycoprotein are readily available in most developed countries. Machine pressed oils give us cheap access to plant-based fatty acids. Today we can easily get all of our calories and important nutrients without factory farming and/or slaughtering animals.
If you believe in sentience, and the value of it, given their low awareness, either you support never even letting them live or what?
I can understand supporting low suffering, but non-existence seems even worse somehow?
Easy to wrap yourself in weird arguments and end up in the absurd, a la Douglas Adams Restaurant at the end of the Universe.
I doubt ours is the odd position in all of this.
It's like you believe animals are like humans, they're not, stop anthromorphising them. They're not like Mel Gibson screaming "you can take our lives".
It also makes we wonder if you've ever lived in the country and met wild animals. They are generally not a happy bunch like you see in kids cartoons.
Trap some and I'm pretty sure you'll find they want to escape. They certainly understand the concept of captivity.
> It's like you believe animals are like humans, they're not, stop anthromorphising them
You could instead stop with the childish mischaracterisation of my views, of which you know little. I do not believe they are humans. I do, however, know via increasing amounts of evidence that they suffer and can experience complex emotional and social lives, and that our treatment of them is largely an unnecessary cause of their suffering.
> It also makes we wonder if you've ever lived in the country and met wild animals.
I worked in a butcher shop, I've been to working farms, I've been to cattle auctions. I wonder if you've only ever got your meat vacuumed packed in plastic and tell people you "love" bacon - but I wouldn't use that as an argument because it would be irrelevant and crass, especially on a forum like this that's supposed to represent discussion based on a higher level of reasoning amongst respectful peers.
> most animals living in the wild is a terrifying existence where they can get killed every day and struggle to find food. Putting aside battery farming, they have a life of luxury compared to their wild cousins.
You're using the same arguments people used to justify keeping slaves. They weren't any good then so I'm not sure why they'd be any better now.
If we accept that living is always morally desirable, no matter how much suffering is involved, then it leads to absurd moral conclusions. For one, it would mean that it would be ok to have a baby, then kill it to sell its organs: after all, the baby wouldn't have existed otherwise. For another, it would mean that we should try to increase the world's population as much as possible, even far past the carrying capacity of the earth, because it's better to exist in a world of extreme poverty, starvation, and war than to not exist at all.
Animals might not be aware of things like love or beauty, but I'm pretty sure that a male chick has an unpleasant experience when it's being macerated, and I don't think the couple of days it's allowed to live make up for it.
If not, why are you worried about what other animals do? You are a sentient being with the greatest ability to reason and empathise compared to any other species on the planet - their behaviour has nothing to do with your choices.
This suggestion sort of like saying "Oh, you think our country should outlaw wife-beating? Well why don't we conquer the entire world and stop every country from practicing wife-beating?"
As for domesticated animals, I think we absolutely should try to find ways to feed them without killing other animals. There are companies out there trying to make vegan cat food, and although I'm not sure whether it's good enough to keep cats healthy yet, I definitely wish them luck in achieving it.
Nearly everything.
Interesting, any references about this reputations ?
But now 25 years later I see the Internet as a tool to allow people to be downright evil. I can't believe people are or would act this way in real life.
Which is where a lot of issues on social media are coming from. People are seeing behaviour that would previously be fine among friends/with one audience broadcast to all these others, and it's revealing everyone's flaws and multiple sided behaviour to the world.
Besides, I've met few moms/brothers who weren't curious what their kids/siblings were up to. Perhaps Christian helped him to become closer to his family in the end.