Do you say - is it pronounced ‘byna coo die?’ It’s something like that maybe?
My Punjabi’s spotty so maybe my word choice is off. I should go overseas to hear how they really say that phrase. Maybe Bhaina coo die, something like that?
One thing I keep getting (in my scambaiting mailboxes) is the spam saying I have won this or that prize from this or that store - often like 5 or 6 of them in the same day, supposedly from different stores, but all looking very similar in terms of format. Never clicked through to any of them as I suppose it could be some sort of malware.
The wording of them is nearly always janky, but often in a subtly amusing way. Yesterday I got one claiming to be from B&Q (a DIY store chain here), saying I had won a cordless drill that is ‘the NEWEST model YET’.
I mean, when things are new, they are new. It’s not possible to make something that’s even newer, when it’s new.
Sometimes information is outdated as soon as it’s announced!
My rant - dentist today, just a cleaning & a checkup. I don't mind nails on a blackboard but metal scraping inside your head...
I hate when the dental hygienist uses the metal pick against my teeth. That scraping is so unpleasant.
Got a new one (at least for me). Supposedly my Social Security Statement is ready to download, except the site is not a .gov and the download is from a Brazilian website. So into the trash it goes. Give them a ‘D’, it’s not a bad idea for a bulk scam, but you have to disguise it better.
Press on.
D’oh. That second part was supposed to be in mini-rants. She did most of it with the water jets but finished up with the hand pick.
My broke-ass son got scammed by an orthodondist yesterday.
Started out as a referral from his dental hygienist for a tooth growing in sideways. The orthodontist said he needs braces (he’s 25). Showed him the x-rays and explained that without the braces his jaw would end up destroyed. The true sign of a scam was he had to decide right f’ing now. His insurance expires in six months so if he didn’t make the $500 deposit right then and there, there was no assurance his paperwork could be processed in that time. Even a delay of 24 hours might kill the deal. Of course he never bothered to ask me because he hates when I tell him about reality. But he talked to his mom after the fact explaining he needs these braces.
The Economist had a special report on scamming. Apparently scam farms prefer for-pay scammers, because of the hassle and risks of forced slave labor. So both types exist.
The very best thing to do is waste their time. This website offers a free service where you foward your scam emails to them, and they have AI engage the scammer in a never-ending conversation. I haven’t tried it yet. Do you know anything about this @Mangetout?
I suspect the bad guys will start using AI to tee up their vics, resulting in endless 2 way conversations. Simple Chat-GPT will apparently go on endlessly in response to some fairly rudimentary chat-bots.
Re:scam has been around for a long time (since before the rise of generative AI) and it disappeared a while back - I am surprised to see it back.
It never seemed to get past the sort of announcement of concept phase - I think there was a mailbox where you could submit spam, but there was never any fresh news on what they were doing with it - I’d think if they invented a way to annoy scammers with automation, some funny scambaiting content might have come out of it.
I’ve seen some evidence that they are pasting in bits and pieces of their responses from generative text solutions, or maybe just the free version of grammarly. The standard of writing has gone up quite a lot in some of the scam emails I have seen, especially the scams that are not the advance fee type (phishing scams and other fraud like that).
There is a popular hypothesis that scammers were always writing their scams badly on purpose, because that’s a way to disengage timewasters - the logic being that anyone who looks at it and laughs at how poorly-written or implausible is the scam, was never going to be a paying victim; scammers want people to respond who are going to go all the way through the process and give them money.
I’m not sure I believe that scammers did that on purpose; I tend to think that probably just evolved - there is a selection and reward cycle in the whole thing (scammers who are successful in completing scams are more likely to stick at it), as well as replication with alteration (scammers buy/sell/steal/copy scam templates from each other, and adapt them) - so it’s entirely possible that the whole thing of ‘scams so bad, they filter out and discard anyone insufficiently gullible’ could have evolved all on its own, rather than being designed.
More than that, there are examples of the AI being the sole communicator. Here’s an example someone posted of a WhatsApp conversation they had, where they keep asking random questions and the AI just keeps answering and then attempting to get back on track.
Spoilered for length
They write their scams badly because English isn’t their primary language. If I tried to write scam emails in Russian or Chinese just using a crude machine translator it would probably be at least as bad as what you typically see.
Scammers are often from out of the country because it makes sense for them to be; it’s difficult for someone in the US to go after someone in a country that’s not only outside of the jurisdiction of any law enforcement that they’d contact, but is also in a country that won’t cooperate with the US government in the first place. The poorly-written scam messages are the indirect result of scammers being smart, ironically.
(Which is also partially a result of evolution; the scammers that aren’t operating out of places effectively immune from reprisal don’t last as long.)
I posted in the minirants thread about a package that was supposedly delivered, but was gone by the time I got home, an hour after I got the email saying it had been delivered. They refused to refund my money or send me another one. I did a little googling, and it seems like they make a habit of using shady delivery companies with drivers who steal the packages after taking photos to prove the package was delivered. 
I was looking at my credit card statement to do a chargeback, and I found out that the same company charged me two other times! 
My credit union has given me my money back and a shiny new credit card, and I’ve learned not to buy anything from random websites. Which is very inconvenient, because I don’t want to use Amazon and I live in a place that doesn’t have many stores. I have to go to the next county over to do any real shopping, and it’s still hard to find the weird things I want in stores.
I’m reminded of a bit in one ST:TNG episode where the Enterprise is visiting a base whose commander is a notoriously longwinded bore. Somebody (Riker?) gets the idea of maneuvering Data into practicing “small talk” with him to keep him occupied.
Here or mini-rants? Here or mini-rants? Both?
Got an email from a state rep, but not my state rep; basically Trump is EVIL & you can counteract that by donating money to me.
AFAIC, there are two main political parties in this country, the Scumbags & the Slimeballs; my issue that I frequently forget which one represents the Left & which one the Right. I have never donated to any scumbag, slimeball, candidate. I’m not even a registered member of your party (because see previous sentence); I’m officially Independent. What list am I on that you bought that you’d think it’s good to send me a request for my money?
Thank you for that bit of False Equivalency.
I got an unsolicited email looking to part me from my money; if I do send money in I will surely be added to a ‘sucker list’ which will be sold over & over resulting in more emails trying to part me from my money. This is from a candidate who is already in office in a city with something like a 6:1 D to R registration advantage; IOW, if he wins the primary he’s pretty much guaranteed a Nov win. My giving him money helps him not the D’s in general.
Not false equivalency at all
False equivalency, part MMMMMMMLXVIII. One wants to end our 240 year experiment with democracy. The other does not.
You are correct that political fundraising solicitations are ridiculous. I get a fair amount of them, and while the Republican ones are a greater insult to your intelligence, both are bad. You are also correct that donating to a campaign will produce spam and junk mail.
Spam from political parties is reduced with an unsubscribe button. It works. You can also use an email address that you don’t care too much about.
Junk mail is trickier. Last year I bought a stamp saying, “Remove Me From Your Mailing List”. I haven’t used it for long enough to see whether it works.
Generally speaking, it’s best to research the charity (whether it be political or nonprofit) rather than just responding to mail pitches, which are useless. For political donations, you want to emphasize swing districts, as well as longstanding grassroots efforts on the ground. Here are 2 resources:
This guy assembles ActBlue funding pages during elections. Very helpful:
Classic article by historian Rick Perlstein on the quality of junkmail when you subscribe to conservative publications. The liberal junk mail publication list really is less scammy than the conservative one: But the National Review is different than donating to eg Marco Rubio.
The side that is discouraging people from voting is the side you support when you claim “both sides do it”.
How do you get that out of me saying all politicians are dirtbags?
I voted in Nov, just like I do every Nov. I held my nose when I voted but I voted.