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I got a fine for not getting my bus ticket stamped in Florence, Italy. Apparently if you paid it the same day it was one price and that price doubled after a week, month, etc.

Didn't matter the machine failed when I stamped it because it was out of ink. I even tried to stamp it in front of the officer. He said I could appeal it in person in court. They know tourists aren't going to appear in court to appeal. I felt scammed but after calming myself down and paying the fine the officer apologized and told me in a few words he hated his job.

I can’t wrap my head around how people can ignore all those red flags

They use threats and urgency to pressure people into paying faster that they realise it's a scam.

Yeah that's normal in Britain for council and government fines (as opposed to often unenforceable private parking charges). The shitty part is that if you try to dispute it they don't put the timer on hold so you essentially play double or nothing on how strong you think your case is. Lose and you have to pay the full thing. Not bitter at all.

Ha ha, my random text was really vague about what council had issued the bogus parking ticket. By contrast when I strayed into a bus lane one time I got a letter from my council, complete with a very clear photo of me driving my car in said bus lane. And yes, I got a discount for paying right away.

Discounts on speeding tickets are a thing in my country. Maybe they were from elsewhere and assumed it was a thing there too? 😂

DO NOT REDEEM THE CARD

Favorite type of scammer! Just calling out of the blue and unable to provide details beyond "Give us money!"

“Oh no, that’s terrible. Tell you what, I’ll hang up and call you back using the number on your website and we can continue this conversation.”

We don't get got. We go get.

Its really simple, after some brief paperwork, the loan company starts paying YOU for the privilege of servicing your mortgage.

Call 1-800-74257655 now!

I got one of those calls when I got in the car to go home from work. Since I'd be bored I kept him on the line, pretending I was a really old guy who had to walk to get to the computer and boot it up slowly. Strung him along for about fifteen minutes before traffic eased up and I had to focus more on driving.

When I told him I was bullshitting him he swore at me and hung up.

At least I kept two of them busy for about 20 minutes so they couldn't scam other people at the same time

They will scam other people anyway, just 20 minutes later.

"The last time my windows crashed was when the asshole neighbour's kids were playing baseball. It ended up being this whole thing where those kids and my kids got shrunk and I accidentally threw them out before I realized what had happened and everyone got pretty upset before everything was resolved and we became good friends. So you're saying that that happened because of a virus? If you get rid of the virus, will you also undo the whole shrinking thing?"

Or act like you have a real virus. Like it keeps opening ads every two seconds and bitch at them for adding so many ads to Windows. Like try to act like an amazing mark for them but make them work for your money--not because you aren't willing to give it to them but because you're so dumb you've left things in a state where work needs to be done before that can happen.

It Bitcoin gets mentioned, ask why anyone would want you to cut up a coin and send them the bits to an address your smart friend thinks is on Uranus or something.

I've seen videos of people that install the remote access software on a VM, I wonder if there's any where they've set it up to pop up new ads every 2 seconds. Even better if they make them wait while they look at each ad to decide if they are interested and insist some just get moved to the side instead of closed because they want to pursue them after the call. Cherry on the cake would be for the ads to be about things like penis reduction or softening pills or hiring a service to fend off all the local singles so you can get on with your day.

WHYYYY DID YOU REDEEEEM?

cybersecurity education for school-aged children isn’t doing a great job of talking about online safety

This sentence pretty much sums it up. School's give them a computer, lock it down and put them in a bubble of safe websites and only tell them "there's a virus boogyman who will get you if youre not careful"

I was shocked when my sister fell for a phishing scam that got her Steam account snatched. I thought for sure that her school taught her about those....

Valve will NEVER message you over Discord for any reason, ever.

This isn't even cyber security IMO. It's just social engineering and doesn't require any kind of technical knowledge to understand or avoid.

Unless you're dealing with mafia loansharks or something, there isn't often immediate urgency on any kind of payments. And even if it is a loanshark, you'll likely have an idea of the debt before being approached about it.

And government services take payments in the form of legal currency through direct means. Cash, cheques sent to a specific address (inside the country), bank transfers. Not gift card codes sent over the phone or chat.

If it's legit, they'll also know your name and other information. Though just because they do know information doesn't mean it's legit because they might have gotten your phone number with a name and other information attached. So use this as a way to rule out those who don't know (in my experience they tend to just give up if they ask your name and you point out they should already have that information if there's a warrant or whatever bullshit they are trying to tell you).