Another fraud attempt

[12njoy]

@Jnbmom 

Sorry to hear that.  I feel like you have to really look at your statements these days down to the penny.  I've had some small unknown charges show up and when I call the credit card company they tell me the scammers are trying little charges that may go unrecognized and hoping to get all the credit card information correct (i.e. card number, expiration date and CCV).  It's a hassle for sure.  Just recently it happened to my PayPal Mastercard.  Some company called Advantage Health.  This was on this past Wednesday.  I certainly didn't use the card nor did I order anything through PayPal.  

[IsambardPrince]

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@xenon3030 wrote:

With the ways that banks, wireless companys and mobile systems work, such fraud attempts would even get worse by time. The customers have also limited options to protect themselves.

A few days ago, I opted out from Xfinity mobile to Verizon. For verification, they only asked my phone number and the last 4 digits of CC on file and they said that I am good to go

I got an iphone 16. While it is the latest technology, it reconnects itself to Wifi/bluetooth by its own at 5am to do its Apple works (translation: sending customer info to possibly HQ and leave my device vulnerable to bluetooth attacks) and it forgets to disconnect . So, it would be the heaven of bad guys to do whatever they want do, without the customer presence.

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Recently I've been having scammers in India fake area codes in Indiana and then add a bunch of real (260) and (219) people to a group RCS chat. Then there's always the fake Amazon, USPS, and FedEx "delivery failed" messages.

All you can really do is report them as spam to Google and block them. There's still a lot of MVNOs that aren't complying with SHAKEN/STIRRED to help scammers get around them for scam phone calls.

Eventually I just put my phone on Do Not Disturb all the time with the requirement that anyone not in my contacts has to call twice within 5 minutes to make my phone ring, and Google Assistant set to screen calls that even might be sketchy. My phone has been pretty quiet.

Most people out there, I just don't want to talk to them at all and I can call them back if I happen to miss it. Cell phones are just another opportunity to be annoyed wherever you are.

[Anonymous]

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@Zoostation1 wrote:

@AnonymousI take it you don't like DST? Going to year round DST would be a dream come true for me (I hate standard time and find it depressing).

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On the contrary I love DST and also wish it were permanent!  Just don't like hearing people complain about the switch twice a year.

[IsambardPrince]

I want to have the daylight at the end of the day so it's not dark at 4 PM. 

This is totally ridiculous. Indiana didn't even have DST until 2006. I knew other States did, but until I was 23 it didn't matter to me except half the year my shows came on when the TV Guide in the paper said they did, and half the year they moved back an hour. Which was less annoying than going outside at 4 PM and there's no more daylight.

But DST is a perfect metaphor for the government. Only the government could possibly steal something from you then give it back somewhere else and tell you "Gee we're doing so much for you, what would you ever do without us?"

And of course, they steal something you were using (the hour in the evening) and give you something you can't even use (an hour while you're asleep).

Maybe they want to get rid of DST because it reminds us all that they take $7 trillion a year from us, fritter it all away making us support people like that lady I worked with 20 years ago who have like 8 kids they can't pay for and the father is in jail except every once in a while they let him out long enough to make another one and miss the birth, and by blowing things up in a country I don't even care about that didn't do anything to me, and offering a $60,000 reward for the only murder they ever put any effort into solving (which was solved in three days) and it was a guy who runs a health insurance company and tries to end the lives of people like me.

It's a real spectacle, guys, and of course only $4 trillion of that is taxes. The rest is $3 trillion worth of inflation, crowding out the real economy which gets smaller and smaller every year, and causing everything to increase in price.

DST is a scam and you know it's a scam because it's the government saying you have to do something and what else could you possibly do... Then they inflict it on us at the absolute worst possible time of the year, when everyone has Seasonal Affective Disorder anyway and needs coffe to try to make it to 5 PM.

Out of the $7 trillion dollar federal budget, probably less than $2 or maybe $3 trillion of it, total, is something I'd actually miss if it went away.

Think about it. The government has a "shutdown" every year or two when they go back to fighting about paying bills none of us got to vote about whether to take on. Nobody in the real economy even notices until the air traffic controllers walk out after about 6 weeks.

[House1204]

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@IsambardPrince wrote:

I want to have the daylight at the end of the day so it's not dark at 4 PM. 

This is totally ridiculous. Indiana didn't even have DST until 2006. I knew other States did, but until I was 23 it didn't matter to me except half the year my shows came on when the TV Guide in the paper said they did, and half the year they moved back an hour. Which was less annoying than going outside at 4 PM and there's no more daylight.

But DST is a perfect metaphor for the government. Only the government could possibly steal something from you then give it back somewhere else and tell you "Gee we're doing so much for you, what would you ever do without us?"

And of course, they steal something you were using (the hour in the evening) and give you something you can't even use (an hour while you're asleep).

Maybe they want to get rid of DST because it reminds us all that they take $7 trillion a year from us, fritter it all away making us support people like that lady I worked with 20 years ago who have like 8 kids they can't pay for and the father is in jail except every once in a while they let him out long enough to make another one and miss the birth, and by blowing things up in a country I don't even care about that didn't do anything to me, and offering a $60,000 reward for the only murder they ever put any effort into solving (which was solved in three days) and it was a guy who runs a health insurance company and tries to end the lives of people like me.

It's a real spectacle, guys, and of course only $4 trillion of that is taxes. The rest is $3 trillion worth of inflation, crowding out the real economy which gets smaller and smaller every year, and causing everything to increase in price.

DST is a scam and you know it's a scam because it's the government saying you have to do something and what else could you possibly do... Then they inflict it on us at the absolute worst possible time of the year, when everyone has Seasonal Affective Disorder anyway and needs coffe to try to make it to 5 PM.

Out of the $7 trillion dollar federal budget, probably less than $2 or maybe $3 trillion of it, total, is something I'd actually miss if it went away.

Think about it. The government has a "shutdown" every year or two when they go back to fighting about paying bills none of us got to vote about whether to take on. Nobody in the real economy even notices until the air traffic controllers walk out after about 6 weeks.

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Are you ok?

[IsambardPrince]

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@House1204 wrote:Are you ok?

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I may be the only one who is.

In a sane world, taxes would look like this. You save what you owe them and pay it every month. Every month at the end of the month you'd see the IRS as another bill instead of a "pile of crash cash so that I could buy another television set" at the end of the year.

My last ex fell for this "tax refund" thing like so many do. Nobody ever explained how the tax code works to him, so like many Americans he figured it was "money the government sends you because it wants you to be happy".

When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act required employers to make a better estimate of taxes withheld, people got to the end of the year and complained that their tax refunds were smaller. What they were actually complaining about was that they sent the government several thousand dollars too much, and let the government have it at 0% interest all year, and then they saw it as a huge pile of cash for discretionary purchases and vacations.

Even when they plan to do something useful like eliminate some credit card debt, they still paid a bank 30% APR all year with money they would have just had, as the Treasury has it and pays them nothing for using it.

When you see almost no refund or a bill at the end of the year, you get a lot less excited about taxes and start looking into what this thing is that takes so much money and never seems to give you much of anything.

With taxes, or DST, it's the same thing that leads to it sticking around. A very poorly informed public. "That's the way we've always done it. Shouldn't we just keep doing something ridiculous even when it's hurting us?"

DST has no benefits in the modern world, it may never have had many, but what we do know about it is that every time the clock changes, people die for weeks due to stroke, heart attack, car crashes, and accidents spiking until the circadian rhythm catches up, then it's time to change the clock again.

A tax or a program or a requirement that people do things is dangerous, in that once established, it can be impossible to get rid of it even if it doesn't work very well.

[GreatLife]

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@IsambardPrince wrote:

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@House1204 wrote:Are you ok?

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I may be the only one who is.

IMO your critical thinking skills are A-OK. 🤗