Aghhh. Tax. I’m really trying to line everything up properly and I’ve got a friend to help but good God I can’t do it for long stints. I remember my occasional temp jobs in offices, one time working for a man called Steve who wasn’t a natural hunchback but had transformed himself. His larynx was like a straw.
I’ve been making sure I move about, but I’ve been at the laptop when it lets me. I’m aware of how prolonged periods affect my back, which is thankfully easing every day. When it freezes I start talking to the (made up) guys in India in my head who have remotely commandeered access and are using it to mine bitcoin or try and take all the money I don’t have. How else can it be so slow?
I’ve had a number of issues recently. When I was in Stratford loads of people over a short space of time time started to receive calls that looked like they came from my phone. ‘Spoofing,” they call it. Now I’m getting loads of bullshit calls from India spoofed to look like Manchester or North London. I’m aware of Artificial Intelligence and how they need samples to make voices, so in my ridiculous way I’m answering all calls from unfamiliar numbers with a random and extreme pastiche of a regional accent. This afternoon it was Glaswegian. Twice. I’m certain something is up.
If I was one of those scrotes who makes money by stealing from the vulnerable, this is exactly how I would be building a database. Hack a phone. I fear that might have happened. Even if not, spoof the number and establish it works. Learn about the owner either through the hack or more likely, through calls to them. Over the course of this learning, employ your prototype software that captures the voice and starts to parse it into sounding like them. When you’re happy with it, you have a model where you can pass for the person. “Reception really bad. Can’t access bank. I’m going to be eaten by cannibals here in Utah unless you send me enough money to pay my hotel bill. I’ll pay it back. I’ll text you the details…”
It’s an old classic but with new tech it’ll start happening. So I’m giving them nothing to go on, plus there’s a freedom in being “other” when these fuckwits ring you. “What the fuck are you talking about, my accident? You’re talking absolute shite, how did you get this number? Can you take me off the list?” They sound like old scams, but these people evolve the whole time. I’ve been enjoying Pierogi for ages – he is a YouTuber so carries all that narcissist shit but … anything that raises awareness of this horrible industry of theft is absolutely worth flagging. He not only baits these guys but now is resourced enough and smart enough that he can hack them as they try to hack him. He’s learnt languages in the line of work so he can pick up background chatter. He’s incredible. I’ll look him up for a link... He calls himself Scammer Payback. It’s very entertaining but it’s also deeply frightening the extent to which the people he talks to don’t care at all about the person he’s pretending to be. These guys are pigs. I’ve been enjoying his content for years, but thought to share in case your aren’t an instinctive critical thinker. I fall foul of thinking people are my friend in person when they are the opposite, but I am good at spotting remote scams and thinking through how they work. I still might get fucked, we all might. When we were looking for a cat, Becky Holmes (@deathtospinach) helped me dodge a kitten fraud bot based on the model of romance fraud bots that she plays with. She fucks with romance fraudsters. This stuff is seeded through everything. These people don’t give a fuck but they are a literal industry because a successful hit pays well. I have always blithely thought that these things would be obvious. I’m very critical in my thinking online, I always examine the source and consider the motive, I look for edit jumps and cuts in videos and draw conclusions from them and where they are (you’ll get plenty in Pierogi, he’s crafting the narrative but I’ve seen enough of his over years to trust).
I’m sharing these things now thinking I should have done it years ago just in case someone needs to hear it. It is a lie if they put time pressure on you. Accident claims, bank fraud, distressed loved ones, family members on unknown numbers, your bank manager, the police, an authority figure… It can be very convincing I came SO CLOSE once with fucking Wizz Air customer service when I was fuming about a charge for printing out my boarding pass and tweeted them saying they were out of line. Scammers respond to their tweets with slightly adjusted user names, and Wizz Air doesn’t respond to their tweets at all ever forever until the heat death of the universe, so it’s a fertile ground.
There are buildings full of scammers doing this stuff. I know that I wouldn’t go to that level, even if I was desperate. You have to have hate in you. But plenty of people I know are very very good at “other”ing. All you have to do is convince yourself that your mark isn’t a real person that matters because of where they live, how they vote, whatever your bullshit is. That’s the slippery slope. Hold tight.
AlBarclay 