this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
120 points (99.2% liked)

World News

38987 readers
2132 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

"The Chinese gangs taught me how to make my profile look credible, gain followers and post regularly. After finishing my training, I started identifying my victims through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Line," said Narin, a 20-year-old from northern Thailand.

This wasn't just an isolated incident but part of a troubling trend. Thailand leads Asia in scam calls and text messaging, with a staggering 78.8 million incidents reported since last year, according to the country's Office of the National Economic and Social Development Council.

Now, the gangs, often led by Chinese masterminds, are expanding into the U.S. and appear to be ensnaring more Americans.

In 2023, U.S. authorities issued a stark warning about the growing danger of Americans being trafficked into scam syndicates in Southeast Asia. The seriousness of the situation became evident in December 2023, when the Department of Justice announced the indictment of four individuals based in the United States. These individuals were accused of laundering over $80 million in profits from scam operations.

To warn others, Narin, an ex-scammer, told Newsweek about his journey into the dark underbelly of cybercrime. In Thailand, he traveled from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai before crossing the border into Tachileik, Myanmar. From there, he was transported to Laukkai, a Myanmar border city notorious for call center scams.

Recruited by friends of friends, he trusted them out of desperation for money. But once in Myanmar, he quickly realized the true nature of the operation. Fearful for his safety, Narin felt trapped and couldn't leave.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (3 children)

They don't seem like they're very good at it, but I guess if you snare even 1%...

This is one I got not too long ago:

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They are deliberately bad and obvious because they want stupid people. If those messages were more realistic, they would have had a lot more "hits" that would just waste their time because ultimately, they wouldnt be able to scam them as easily.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Never even occurred to me but it seems obvious now thst you’ve mentioned it.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Maybe. It's a common refrain from email spam that all of the misspellings and grammatical errors are intentional choices. There is no way to confirm or disprove it either way.

However, in the "unlikely" column, the spam industry works on a "SaaS" model where the people that send out millions of spam emails are paid to do so by customers. They compromise email severs and end user devices to build up a fleet of machines to send out the messages.

The spammers themselves don't care if the customers content succeeds or not, so there is no incentive to help them write good spam. They just pull in the next sucker who thinks sending out 10 million badly worded emails will work to make them money.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Yeah, I wasn’t going to go and call that case-closed; industry tactics exposed, story at 11:00. It’s a theory and intentional or not (misspellings) I think there’s a definite possibility it’s working as described in some cases.

I like the SaaS theory too, ransomware clearly operates using exactly that model… unfortunately there’s been a few investigations and a lot of it is just the intersection of actual and economic slavery. I suspect there’s some of what you propose as well, why not, right? If we can dream it up somewhere somebody’s probably trying it. But I’d also wager that once you achieve any real proficiency at this kind of low level scam, there’s opportunity in organized computer crime, spearfishing and pretexting scams, operations with more sophisticated planning.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don’t think those are the ones you need to worry about—or, should I say, that are the more professional ones. The real ones are the ones who act like people, not businesses. You get random messages that say “hey! I lost my work phone and transferred the numbers, but I don’t remember whose number this is.” Or find a way to send a picture of a pretty girl and say, “remember me? We exchanged numbers a while ago!” Or some shit like that. I think those are the more effective and dangerous ones. I get a lot of those.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I get my share of those too. Too bad for them I don't know anyone.

(White space included to show why they contacted the wrong guy.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

I know a kid that fell for the scam recording contact twice, second time cost him a grand, dunno what the first time cost. I warned him but the desperation is real.