Interesting Links for 14-07-2021

[andrewducker]

What Black Widow's $60 Million Disney+ Haul Actually Means

(tags:business movies streaming Disney marvel )

I believe many of you would subscribe to the Marple Cinematic Universe

(tags:funny satire marvel crime video viaSwampers )

On a scale of 1 - 10, how cute are yawning snakes?

(tags:cute snakes comic )

Lightning-strike selfie lands siblings in hospital

(tags:lightning selfies )

The UK government is breaching human rights commitments under UN racism treaty

(tags:UK racism OhForFucksSake )

British travellers with India-made AZ vaccine turned away by Malta

(tags:vaccine travel Europe India UK )

Commons scraps "English votes for English laws"

(tags:UK law Scotland )

Government plans to end prosecutions for Northern Ireland Troubles

(tags:NorthernIreland law )

Prestigious US film schools charge a fortune and don't deliver

(tags:movies Education usa business )

Covid in Scotland: Restrictions to ease but face masks remain

(tags:scotland pandemic )

Reaching people on the internet in 2021

Personally, I use RSS to keep up.
(tags:facebook internet history )

10 ways to befriend a misanthropic cat

(tags:cats )

North's first female Muslim council leader targeted in firebomb attack on car

(tags:islam terrorism uk )

Why don't adults take teenager's problems seriously?

(tags:adult teenagers problems comic )

If your bank calls you, hang up and call them back (on a number you got from them directly)

(tags:Banking fraud )

Comments

If your bank calls you, hang up and call them back (on a number you got from them directly)

[jack]

What stands out to me when something goes wrong is that *most* scams are really blatant, so if someone phones you and sounds professional, it's easy to assume that its legit, and it probably is because high-quality scams are rarer, but if you're used to thinking of scams as obvious it's easy to think that you know the difference when you don't. I try to keep in mind (albeit imperfectly) what they've actually told me and if it would check out if someone described it rather than hearing someone authoritative say it

[simont]

Yes. The analogue in email is that most email spams / scams / virus vehicles fail the Turing test in a really blatant way (either saying things like "the government of your country" without making a commitment to what country, or else straight-up getting it wrong like mailing the whole world in the hope that one of them will be a customer of Obscure US Bank #6316). So when one manages to contain an identifiably correct detail of your own situation, it's easy to put it on the wrong side of the line.

The one of those I came closest to being defeated by was actually formatted as a reply to an email I had genuinely sent the previous year, including the full quoted text of my actual message – but it said something fairly generic in the followup text, and had a Word document attached containing a macro virus. I guess the organisation in question must have been hacked in a way that gave the attackers access to their email archives.

Re: If your bank calls you, hang up and call them back (on a number you got from them directly)

[jducoeur]

Yep. The one time I almost got caught was by a really, really well-designed spearphishing attack. Hackers had broken into one of my vendors, and sent a very legit-looking alert to all of their customers. I literally had typed in my password and had my finger poised to press Submit before I stopped myself and asked, "Why do they need my password for this?"

Fortunately, I had a friend in the company, so I emailed him, described what I was seeing, and about three minutes later got a reply of, "We've been hacked". And about two minutes after that, got a mail blast to the entire customer base telling them what had happened and to ignore the previous email.