People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
My elderly mother has her phone locked down so that you can't contact her unless you're in her contacts.
We need to rethink how we let random people contact other random people. The upside of letting random people call anybody isn't that large, and the downside is like billions of damages in scams and people losing their retirements.
No. What we need is freaking DNS for phone numbers. I don't get why this isn't a thing.
So you can actually register a bunch of numbers under the same name. If DoctorSocks.med calls, you know it is them regradless whether it's the front desk or what not.
If DrJoana@DoctorSocks.med calls, you know it's the number of that particular person.
In that way you can even establish curated lists. On a govermental, but also on a community level.
That would help, but the bigger problem is that the trust model has inverted in a fairly short time. I'm in my 30s and I can remember a time where 80% of calls to a home phone were legitimate non sales calls, and cell phones were basically 100% legitimate. Those numbers have become about 90% illegitimate calls within about a decade, it's hard to train people that have lived for half their life or more with trustworthy calls to adapt to that.
Hello it's me Bill Gates at rnicrosoft.com I will help you do the needful to fix your device.
See. This is exactly what would not happen.
Because granny's phone white lists the curated list from her government, her family, and, well, her individual phone. Guess what? Rnicrosoft.com is not on there. Plus, it would not work like real DNS. It's merely an anology.
I mean there is something like that. It's called a phone number. Problem is, that the way it was thought out is not the way it works today.
(My knowledge is a few years old, so please correct me if I'm wrong) That said, the way it works is like this:
Your phone connects to your phone provider with your number and says: "Here I am, please route calls to me." Or "Please route this call to number XYZ." The provider then forwards it either to the next hop in the direction of XYZ or directly to XYZ's provider. In the end the call lands at XYZ's phone and the call begins. Great stuff.
But today it works a bit differently due to the way those companies "just trust" each other.
A malicious actor with a weird (malicious) provider just says: "This is my number, route a call to XYZ." And then just provides a wrong number and instead of stopping them, the provider just routes it. And all the other providers trust them and just route the call normally. If phone providers would just block list all traffic of malicious providers, all of this would last maybe a month and there would be no more scam calls from spoofed numbers. And afterwards providers could say to other providers "there is scam traffic coming from you with number XYZ, stop that or I won't route your traffic." and then call scams would just cease to exist in a year.
Even worse, malicious actors can register your number with one of those providers. Then the provider will tell the others and they will be like "well if you say so..." and just forward your calls to the wrong person.
(Yes, there is lots of wishful thinking in this comment, but let me dream of a better world)
Trump got rid of all of the protections that were already set up, very early on this term.
The upside of letting random people call anybody isn’t that large
That really does depend on the person. My grandma can barely use email and doesn't know the difference between her Contacts app and Gmail, nor does she even understand how to add a contact. She'd just accidentally isolate herself from people without realizing, and would also never get any of the phone calls she gets from her bank, charities and organizations she works for, etc.
Those examples you mentioned aren't random people. They're people she knows and organizations that she associates with. I am suggesting that we rethink the system to specifically disallow randos.
Have you ever had food (or package and furniture even) delivery where they need to call, or gotten a call from a pharmacy, or had to call a plumber, or lost a pet? There’s tons of reasons why people need to call a random person.
It makes sense to have the option to lock down a phone to just contacts, like for kids and the elderly, but not for everyone.
For me it's calls from medical professionals regarding my wife. There's no way to know ahead of time the entire list of numbers all of these organizations - each facility, each provider, each insurer, each pharmacy.
Definitely! And if you’re someone’s emergency contact, forget about it.
People and organizations that:
That's why I'm saying it isn't for everyone. Sure, maybe you can find someone that does have a bank, medical providers, insurance providers, etc, that uses only one number for all phone-based communication and uses no third-parties, but that's not the norm, so for her, that would result in constantly missing bills, follow-up texts, fraud alerts, customer service callbacks, etc.
Again, my suggestion was that we rethink the system, not that we keep the current system exactly as it is except that everybody locks down their cell phones. If we rethink the system, then those examples you thought of would be use cases for contacting people under the new system.
I considered doing this, but then the Pixel phones started doing a much better job at just filtering out spam calls so it hasn't really been an issue.
I've been saying for decades we need to switch phones to a white-list by default contact restriction.
Only approved numbers can get through. Contact should require consent.
My entire card details got stolen recently, including my name, address and phone number. The first I knew of it was when an email came in with a verification code for a multi-thousand £ purchase for a hotel reservation. I was just thinking it's an odd looking phish when my phone rang. I ignored it as I always do and then it immediately rang again, so I answered it:
Them: Hello, is this Mr Zanzibar?
Me: Yes
Them: This is Amex fraud dept. We've noticed some odd activity on your card, did you make a purchase at x for y in the last few minutes?
Me: No.
Them: OK, great. It's been flagged and declined on our end so your money's safe. Just so that I can get this closed off, can you confirm the code that was sent to you?
Me: ......Nnnnnooooooooo?
Them: immediately hangs up
Obviously then had to then call the real fraud dept and cancel my card, but I was annoyed by how little of a shit they seemed to give. No curiosity of where they could've got every detail of my card, no advice of what to do next, just cancelled the card and issued a new one. Thank you, next caller please.
Spent the rest of the day both relieved that I didn't fall for it but also furious at myself because the best response I could come up with in the moment was "no". I could've at least told them to get fucked!
get fucked!
My favorite response to scammers and people ringing doorbells selling religion (scam).
The only time I've spoke with one of these (because who answers a phone anymore), was about a decade ago. Told me my insurance was expiring on my car. I started to grab my card to read the numbers and renew. This stuff wasn't widespread and well known at the time.
I had a moment of clarity and asked, "what kind of car do I have?" Line went dead. I got pretty lucky as this was long before the internet had a bajillion reports of exactly this.
I'll prolly fall for something eventually. On a long enough timeline…
I would have given them random numbers 🙂
Yup, that's one of the other things I wish I'd had the foresight to do.
That's actually quite devious. Wtf
My ex fell for a "credit repair" scam over the phone. They said they'd charge a certain amount every month to her credit card and invest it in an account she could access in a year, and that it would look like she was paying off a debt.
She told them she didn't have a credit card, just a debit card. "That's fine," they said.
I asked her how she thought that would work and she said she didn't know.
I asked her how she thought that would work and she said she didn’t know.
Fun fact, this is actually a real thing you can do, and the real ones aren't scams. (unless you consider paying a fee in exchange for quickly building solid credit history without spending money on goods a scam)
They're called Credit Builder Loans.
Essentially, you're not technically "putting money in an account", you're being given a loan at a future date, after you've made your payments. (basically just a reversed loan schedule) If you miss a payment due date, it hurts your credit just like missing a regular loan payment for money they already gave you.
Some charge interest (basically any given by for-profit companies/banks), some don't (mostly just the occasional credit union). They do exactly what the credit system is supposed to indicate, which is show that you can make payments consistently and on-time, regardless of if you got the money upfront or after.
Personally, I almost always would say secured credit cards and credit-building "debit" cards are a better option. (e.g. the Chime's and Step's of the world where your card limit is always your current balance and never more, except for overdrafts) If you look at a big credit builder loan provider like Self, you can see their plans result in you paying pretty large fees overall just to boost your credit score, like paying $600 in and getting $511 back on their cheapest plan. Ideally, you'd have a credit union that wouldn't charge a fee, but might just offer a low or no interest rate compared to investing it in a CD in exchange for them having to effectively hold that money for you instead of being able to offer it out for loans. (and even then, the term is fixed, so they can still loan it out as long as they know they'll get it paid back by the time your term ends)
no wait what? the bank is basically borrowing from me, and yet i can be charged an interest and be punished if i don't lend them money on time?
that, sir, sounds like a scam.
It's only a scam if they tell you one thing and charge you another. If the terms are laid out in plain English and everyone agrees to the terms, it's not a scam, no matter how bad those terms are for you.
yet i can be charged an interest and be punished if i don’t lend them money on time?
Yes, that's one of the reasons they work so well at quickly building up credit history for people with really bad credit to begin with. The credit bureaus see an actual loan, with actual interest, and actual required payments. If they didn't ding you for missing payments, then the credit bureaus wouldn't count it as a loan in the first place. There has to be some kind of pressure, consequence, and real-world stakes to missing payments to actually make it valid in their eyes, otherwise it's no different than a regular savings account you put money into whenever.
The entire point of it is to measure if you can be trusted to responsibly borrow or pay back money, they have to give conditions closer to actual loans to actually be considered in your credit score.
The trade is pretty simple, you give them some of your money, your credit score goes up. It might not be a good deal if you already have the ability to earn off a credit card, but these are mostly targeted at people who get rejected for any card they apply for. They're so low-risk for the company and so guaranteed that it's why they can offer them to basically anyone regardless of credit.
That said, I still would say secured cards are a better option, as nowadays there are cards where instead of it being like "give us a $200 payment and we'll give you a $400 credit limit with chances for increases later", it's "give us a $200 payment regardless of your credit score, and you can spend up to exactly $200, and maybe if your score goes up enough we'll give you the real deal".
The main problem with secured cards is that the way your credit score is calculated also calculates the % of your credit utilized. Higher is generally worse. So if you get a secured card, and the company offering it only allows you to start with $200, if you spend all $200, you'll actually get a smaller boost to your score than if you'd spent $50 out of the $200 and no more over the entire month, or spent $200 on credit builder loan payments, which counts as a full, outstanding debt, just one that you're regularly making payments on.
Again, this is why they are marketed to people looking to increase their score faster. You might spend more overall in interest, but you get a larger impact on your score than other options that factor in utilization, and they also tend to result in much larger increases over the same period for people that don't already have a line of credit, which is obviously good for... people who don't have access to credit and want to increase their score fast to get that access.
I wouldn't personally choose one, it makes no sense for my situation, but they are a good option if you are, generally speaking, unable to get other lines of credit, will spend close to the limit of a secured card, and/or need a higher score faster than you could otherwise slowly build it up.
The American credit system is so bonkers
The bonkers part is the power people put in the score. The system largely takes care of itself, pay on time and score goes to good. Don't pay on time, score goes down. Have bankruptcies or foreclosures recently, score goes way down. If you have a reasonable income the score can go to great, if you have a mortgage or massive income you can get excellent.
Can you name one thing in the US that isn't?
I'm aware of these, and have done one myself. This isn't what they described, though, or at least not how she described it to me. Credit building loans are, well, loans, and as such have a specific "principal amount", pay off date, etc. This was supposed to just be an ongoing thing she could stop at any time and just have a fat chunk of change that's been growing with the stock market to stick in her pocket whenever she wanted.
In other words, a very obvious scam.
I think this is what people are neglecting to point out. Sure scammers tend to target the elderly more but in all honesty, as per your example, all you need is one idiot.
My parents are in their 70s and have never fallen for this and they have been called a few times with these scams. my Dad will just tell them to fuck off and my Mom will essentially do the same but in a more polite British manner. Hell my mom is better at using her smartphone than I am, she just embraced that shit when it came out. My Dad has been using computers since the 70s and now runs Slackware of all distros on his PC. he loves it. So both are technologically savvy. I don't have to worry about them falling for scams. They've even gotten the scam call where someone claimed to be me or know me saying I was arrested and needed bail. they laughed them off because they KNEW I would never do something like that.
I don't believe you.
When I lived in Florida in the '90s, there was a big story in the news about a woman who was contacted by scammers claiming to be the FBI. They told her they needed her help to catch some criminal, and that they needed her to take out $5000 in cash from her savings account and give it to them in a public place. She did this, and they contacted her again and said they almost had the guy but they needed her to take out another $5000, which she did. She only got suspicious and called the cops after they tried this a third time but nobody showed up to receive the money. Apparently they assumed she was on to them and that the third time was a trap set up by the police.
I got scammed with a phishing email a few years back. I'm still pissed at myself. Motherfuckers got lucky. I had lost a credit card so I canceled it and got a replacement. I had several subscriptions on that card and I was going through changing my card info on them. I just so happened to get a scam "unable to process your payment" email for Netflix before I had changed the card info for it. I did what you never do. I clicked the link instead of going directly to Netflix and changed my payment info. Didn't notice anything was wrong until they bought a plane ticket with it. sigh
That's how those scam emails work, they know that some percentage of people will have just changed cards or something that day so they'll be inclined to believe the email.
my dad almost fell for a chase/credit card phishing scam, luckily hes very poor and remember passwords. and asked us for advice we told him its a scam.
Being old is not an excuse for being dumb.
I’m not talking about knowing stuff, but the inherent knowing-that-you-don’t-know.
It kind of is. There is are a lot of people in the early stages of dementia or Alzheimer's who get easily confused and are aware that they can't trust their own memory. It's very easy to see how they could be talked into trusting someone they shouldn't.
Idk I think everyone is dumb somewhere and I dont think people can generally identity where that is.
And those kinda people are occupying all the high paying jobs lol