if I want to buy some obscure gadget from a Chinese company
Buy it from aliexpress for 1/4 the price.
Are those guys really any better than Amazon?
For sure. They’re not all great, but they’re all better than Amazon if you’re looking at things from a worker treatment or anti-monopolistic standpoint. I’ve never heard of best buy workers pissing in jars because they can’t take a long enough break to go to the bathroom.
This is just false. That thing you’re buying from Amazon? Just go to the manufacturer’s website and buy it directly. Or if it’s a no-name thing like a generic charging cable, just buy it from literally any other generic [category] retailer.
My wife and I got sick of paying for prime, so we decided to try going a couple months buying as much as we can directly from the brand’s website. It’s easy. Customer service is way better, selection is way better, I don’t have to worry about getting fake crap. Only downside is that shipping usually takes longer, but that’s a small price to pay.
Amazon sucks.
You’ve thoroughly demonstrated yourself to be entirely devoid of any real knowledge or experience in this area, and yet you’re continuing to pontificate. You’re clearly enjoying the sensation of having an audience to which you can monologue from a place of ignorance ad nauseam, and I’m depriving you of that. Trust me, you may not be intelligent enough to tell, but I’m doing you a favor. Like averting my eyes when the mentally ill transient defecates himself on the streets. He may not know it, but it’s a mercy not to observe someone in such a state.
Please, feel free to continue. And I’ll continue doing you the kindness of allowing you the uninterrupted company of the only person ignorant enough to think any of your unfounded claims are intelligent.
Not gonna read all that lol you are a goofy little guy aren’t ya.
At its root, it is a TEST
No, at its root, this is an educational article meant to teach about recognizing internet scams. It includes a quiz designed to help you determine your natural reaction to many popular scams, along with information about best practices for how to identify them.
This differs from a test, which is designed to quantify your current knowledge on a topic. Sure, the article used a quiz as a teaching aid, but the results of the quiz aren’t the point and don’t matter. Which makes it super weird how you and others are getting so butthurt about thinking you deserved a perfect score, but we’re robbed by an unfair test.
Unless specified any TEST provides in the question the information to determine the answer
This is a foolish assumption outside of the context of academic examinations. There’s no reason to assume that’s a requirement on an online quiz, where many of the explanations of the answers specifically tell you that the best way to identify some scams is to verify information with authoritative sources.
You and I both know if we create a test phishing email with no mistakes, it’s not a failure if people click on it. It’s a failure on our part for creating a BAD TEST.
The best test phishing emails realistically emulate actual phishing emails. Intentionally adding errors only serves to train employees to catch bad phishing attacks. Regardless, I’m not sure what your point is, since every one of the scam examples here does contain either verifiably false information, or obvious scam indicators.
I’m the CEO of an anti-phishing training corporation that services multiple Fortune 500 companies and has a yearly revenue of over 10m USD (I can also share unverified credentials to make myself seem more credible).
Someone could potentially build a website that makes their phishing attempt seem more credible, and maybe they could get that website ranked highly on Google (even though that is far from straightforward for a website presenting fraudulent information to do), but that’s a total red herring. The article didn’t recommend that people Google for a single random website that confirms the questionable information, the recommendation was that you should check multiple authoritative sources.
You are absolutely wrong. Not surprising that you’re (ostensibly) able to scam the technologically illiterate with such bad information, a little ironic that your scam involves getting them to think that you’re teaching them how to avoid scams.
Only thing keeping on my disk is fusion360, so annoying to have to deal with booting into windows just to use a single piece of software.
I haven’t had this happen in years, maybe it’s my config? I’m using GPT on a UEFI system (in UEFI mode), with systemd-boot.
I do remember having tons of issues back when I was using grub on an MBR system using legacy bios emulation.
The correct thing to do if you got that email would be to try to verify the information that it presents. Is Geek Squad Academy a real thing? How much does their antivirus cost?
Which is exactly what the article says to do, and what you should have done before answering the question. Of course the getting the questions right doesn’t matter, but the question and explanation are an excellent example of what they’re trying to teach.
Also, the grammar was just a little bit funky in that email. Could just be that the geek squad email writer has funky grammar, but it’s definitely a red flag that should make you want to double check the info in the email.
You (and half the people in this thread) are totally missing the point here.
No where does the article say that you’re supposed to be able to tell if it’s a scam or not just by looking at it. In fact, in multiple places it says that you’ve got to Google use a credible source to externally verify some information to determine that some of the examples are scams.
The point of the article is to teach people how to recognize scams, it would be totally useless if it imposed the constraint that you can’t look for context. If you’re actually trying to recognize scams IRL, you should be doing exactly what the article says and looking for authoritative corroboration of any information in the potential scam.
Yeah, but the point is that if you open a web browser and look that settlement up, you’ll find a ton of authoritative sources that link back to that URL.
The point of this wasn’t to see if you could tell if each thing was likely to be a scam in the context that you would genuinely run into them.
If my grandma approached me with the class action website and asked if I was a scam, I’d tell her “it looks really suspicious, let’s see if we can find anything from a credible source that will link to this website.” Which is exactly what the article tells you to do. Of course nobody could just magically know if a screenshot of a webpage is scam just by looking at it.
The other options all either give you enough information in the screenshot to be able to Google a couple things and say “it’s a scam” confidently (class action, geek squad), or they’re full of super blatant red flags (Zelle bike).
How weird. My sample size is now 2, I think I’m ready to draw a conclusion and only consider evidence that confirms it going forward.
Hmm well if an object passed through that portal and it wasn’t moving ~2236mph relative to the surface of the moon, then I guess the question from the OP has been answered already haha.
Yeah sounds very similar. And weird coincidence, but the guy I’m talking about is also German. Lives in the US now, but his parents don’t speak English, he came here as a kid I believe.
No that’s a totally valid question and I’d wonder the same thing.
But he definitely is all of those things, he’s got a dozen published nonfiction books that are easy to find, with a picture of his face on them haha. Listed as faculty/former faculty at Utah State University, CSU Chico, two BYU campuses, University of San Diego, University of Malaysia. Reasonably high profile on LinkedIn.
I used to go on family vacations with this guy’s family as a teenager, his whole family are genuinely some of the best people I know. But he’s a perfect example of the incredible power of the confirmation bias. I just try to remember that someone like him can have such seemingly obvious blind spots, I definitely can too.
I would imagine that the relative motion between the entry/exit portal would be more important than the absolute motion of the two portals.
I’ve known a guy for like 20 years, currently in his 60s, who firmly believes that anthropogenic climate change is entirely false.
He has a bachelors degree in physics, a bachelors degree in mathematics, and a Ph.D in economics. He’s written a handful of high level Econ textbooks, he’s worked as a professor off and on at 3 or 4 respected universities here in the US. He was most recently employed at a supply chain consulting firm, making an ungodly amount of money.
By all accounts, he’s an extremely smart, well-educated, well-read guy. But holy shit if that boomer isn’t constantly reposting the most transparently fake anti-science nonsense on his Facebook page. Think, “New research proves that Climate Change is a liberal myth” - The Religious Conservative Storm.
Just demonstrates how it doesn’t matter how educated someone is if they don’t think critically about information that confirms their expectations.
Oh yikes sorry for the hostility, I definitely did mix you up with OP.
I was a dedicated Android user from the Galaxy S2 to the Pixel 3, and was on Google phones since the nexus 5. I always had my phone rooted, and until it became too inconvenient, I was really into ROM hopping.
When I got the nexus 5, I vowed not to get another Samsung phone because of how hard they were making it to unlock your bootloader. Then on the pixel 3, Safety Net kept realizing I was rooted and breaking the apps I needed for work, and I realized I was having to plug my phone into my computer to fix things way more than I wanted to. I ended up just running stock because I didn’t want to worry about not being able to log into my mobile banking when I was out of the house.
When I was looking at replacing my pixel 3, it was clear that Google was no longer as root friendly as they once were, so I started looking at other Android options. I wasn’t impressed. It occurred to me that the main reason I’d always avoided Apple was because of the lack of root support
So I went out on a limb and got the iPhone 12 Pro, and to my surprise, I loved it. If you’ve already accepted the idea of leaving the FW stock, it’s perfect. I get updates the day they roll out, the hardware is so much nicer than anything I’ve seen from Android (that’s partially subjective), the software/hardware integration is so good that it blows me away. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so much as a UI stutter, I still get a solid 2 days/two nights of battery life on a >2 year old phone. The 3rd party apps are more consistently high-quality, and the native apps actually feel consistent and thought out, rather than feeling like the work of 10 different teams throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. And a lot of people don’t care about this, but it’s a huge deal to me; Google is an ad-tech company that sells user data to advertisers. Apple is a hardware company that sells devices to users. The difference in their policies on user privacy are stark, which means I no longer have to worry about every website I visit knowing what prescriptions I’m taking.
Siri is useless, especially compared to Google assistant. Notifications are better on Android. Ecosystem integration is a huge selling point for Apple products, IT really can’t be overstated how well things work together, but that only matters if you are open to owning an Apple Watch, AirPods, AirTags, an iPad and a MacBook. I miss the *variety * of apps on the Play Store, especially free ones.
I’m not a loyalist for either team, they’ve each got pros and cons, but my best effort at an objective analysis makes me feel that the iPhone is a lot better of a fit for someone like me.
Dude you had to bring up Fry’s, every time I think about that place a single tear rolls down my cheek.
Walking into that store used to feel like waking up in Christmas morning.