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  • Geebo 8:00 am on August 23, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Reddit, , ,   

    Scam takes advantage of stolen car victims 

    Scam takes advantage of stolen car victims

    By Greg Collier

    It wasn’t too long ago when we made a blog post about scammers who try to extort money from people who have a missing pet. In that scam, scammers will contact someone who has posted about their missing pet on social media. The scammers will claim they have the pet, and will either ask for a reward or try to extort some sort of fee from the victim. In reality, they do not even have possession of the missing pet. Now, it seems, there is a similar scam involving missing vehicles.

    A man from Albuquerque recently had his car stolen. Instead of just waiting for police to recover his car, the man decided to take matters into his own hands. He took to several social media platforms to ask how he can go about finding his car on his own. It was on Reddit, where the man received a private message suggesting he go to a certain Instagram account that supposedly helps people find their stolen vehicles.

    The man sent a message to the Instagram account and received a message back within hours saying that they located his car. He was also sent a grainy image of what was supposedly his car. However, to get his car back, he would need to pay $400 to the people running this Instagram account. Thankfully, the man did not pay the $400. He felt that even if this wasn’t a scam, it was at least a predatory practice, since he wasn’t told of any fee upfront. The police were able to find his car, although it did sustain damage.

    Truth be told, this was, in fact, a scam. In this scam, the scammers claim to be ethical hackers who can track down your stolen vehicle faster than police using some form of technology that doesn’t even exist. After a short while, the scammers will say they found your vehicle, but will ask for a fee before giving the owner its location. As with most scams of this type, the scammers have no idea where any stolen car is, and are only looking to get the victim’s money.

    If your vehicle is stolen, the first thing you should do is call the police. You can post pictures of your car on social media in neighborhood groups asking for residents to keep an eye out for it. Some people have had their cars recovered using this method, but do not try to recover the vehicle yourself. Let the police know where the car was reported.

    We’ve even seen instances of a similar scam on this very blog. Occasionally, we’ll receive a comment from someone who used some amazing company who helped them recover their money after being scammed. These supposed recovery companies can be scams as well.

    So, if you’re going through a situation like this and someone recommends some random social media account that can help you, be very skeptical.

     
  • Geebo 8:00 am on June 28, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , r/The_Donald, Reddit   

    Is Reddit’s quarantine of r/The_Donald censorship? 

    Is Reddit's quarantine of r/The_Donald censorship?

    For those of you who may not know, Reddit is a website that calls itself ‘the front page of the internet.’ It’s essentially a repository of message boards that discuss just about every subject imaginable broken down into what they call subreddits. For example, if you were to be a pro-wrestling fan then the subreddit called SquaredCircle is said to be the premier place to discuss sports entertainment with other fans on the internet. However, as with most internet communities, with the good comes the bad.

    Reddit is also home to the largest group of supporters of President Trump. Their subreddit is known as ‘The_Donald’ and is said to be the largest subreddit on the site. This past Wednesday The_Donald was quarantined by Reddit. This means it was effectively suspended by the site. How long it will remain offline is unclear. The reason it was reportedly taken offline was that a number of the group’s members threatened violence against police.

    Some users had apparently encouraged violence against law enforcement, angry that officials in Oregon were trying to bring back GOP state senators who fled the state to avoid voting on a climate-change bill.

    This is not the first time that Reddit has had to quarantine or outright ban some of their more tasteless or controversial subreddits.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uJBaGB_JDE%5D

    Since President Trump was elected there has been a theory among conservatives that social media outlets have been actively censoring conservative speech and ideas. Is this another instance of conservatives allegedly being silenced? To put it bluntly, no. First off, Reddit is a privately owned company and is free to choose what language it considers objectionable. Secondly, Reddit is not a branch of the government so your First Amendment Rights are not being violated. You are free to go to any other website that may tolerate such kind of speech. Lastly, even under the First Amendment, threats are not a form of protected speech. You may have heard the phrase ‘yelling fire in a crowded theater’. It’s a lot like that.

    So maybe if the r/The_Donald’s members could have better behaved they wouldn’t have had these problems.

     
  • Geebo 9:41 am on October 26, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Reddit   

    No, you can’t vote in the US election online 

    No, you  can't vote in the US election online

    What started as a joke turned out to be a full-blown hoax that have resulted in allegations of voter fraud.

    A section of Reddit, known as a subreddit, that is supportive of Donald Trump shared a graphic between each other that appeared to be a pro-Hillary Clinton ad that jokingly advised Hillary supporters that they could vote online from the comfort of their own homes on election day. It suggests all you need to do to vote for Hillary Clinton is to write ‘Hillary’ on Facebook or Twitter with the hashtag ‘#PresidentialElection’.

    Of course Reddit is full of internet jokesters and trolls, and before you know it, this joke leaked out to the rest of the internet where of course there were people who believed it. This included a Republican councilman from Pennsylvania who shared it on Twitter. The councilman later deleted the tweet claiming that he knew it was joke.

    One of the major problems with the internet is, while we can access the world’s information, we can also spread misinformation to the world and a large group of internet denizens will believe it. If you happen to see some one attempting to ‘vote’ on Twitter or Facebook, please remind them there is no online voting in the United States.

     
  • Geebo 10:56 am on June 24, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Casey Nocket, Creepytings, Reddit,   

    Off Topic Friday: Reddit gets a vandal banned from the National Parks 

    Off Topic Friday: Reddit gets a vandal banned from the National Parks

    The collective hive mind at Reddit assisted in the apprehension of a wanted criminal, but as the saying goes even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile. After infamously accusing the wrong people in the 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon the armchair sleuths at Reddit finally got one right, except the mystery wasn’t exactly on the same level as say finding D.B. Cooper.

    A graffiti artist (read: vandal) was tagging various natural formations in a number of National Parks. The so-called artist was using acrylic paint to display their handiwork in such parks as Yosemite and Death Valley. The vandal in question signed each of their works with the signature of ‘Creepytings’ and some of their work was posted to Redddit. Pictures of the vandalism made it to Reddit where it was spotted by a National Parks official. It only took a quick Google search of the name ‘Creepytings’ to link the vandal to an Instagram account of the same name that had posted pictures of the vandalism in question. The account holder tried to delete their social media account but by then it was too late. The accounts had been linked to one Casey Nocket, aka Creepytings.

    Ms. Nocket was recently sentenced for her acts and received a two-year ban from all National Parks and she has to pay an undisclosed fine, but this being the internet that’s not all she had to endure. Some of Reddit’s more anti-social users took it upon themselves to ‘dox’ Ms. Nocket, that is they discovered and made public her personal information such as home address and the like. Even in success Reddit acts like the petulant child of the internet.

     
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