Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Me there and Welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works in My Heart Radio and I love
Speaker 1: of all things tech, and today I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: once again about scams and hoaxes and efforts to separate
Speaker 1: you from your money and or personal information. So this
Speaker 1: episode is related to episodes I've done about fishing, and
Speaker 1: I'll likely tread some of the same ground, but I
Speaker 1: feel it's an important topic and while I have touched
Speaker 1: on it before, it always pays to go back and
Speaker 1: re examined this and to remind ourselves of how unethical,
Speaker 1: dishonest people might target us and how we might be
Speaker 1: vulnerable to them. Being aware means we're more likely able
Speaker 1: to avoid becoming a victim. And I say this is
Speaker 1: someone who has fallen for some of these scams before.
Speaker 1: It's not something I'm particularly proud of, but you know,
Speaker 1: it was one of those valuable lessons I learned. And
Speaker 1: fortunately it wasn't a super expensive lesson for me to learn,
Speaker 1: but it could have been. And uh, I thought, maybe
Speaker 1: to spare other people the same learning experience I had
Speaker 1: through experience, we could talk about this, and so this
Speaker 1: episode was prompted by something that I actually encountered while
Speaker 1: I was on Facebook the morning of the day that
Speaker 1: I'm recording this. So I'm actually one of those Facebook
Speaker 1: users who once in a blue moon, I will click
Speaker 1: through on an ad. Sometimes I see ads for stuff
Speaker 1: that I find really interesting, so I'll go ahead and
Speaker 1: investigate it, And sometimes it just turns out to be
Speaker 1: a waste of time, Like I'll figure out the thing
Speaker 1: that was being advertised and what's actually on the respective
Speaker 1: site don't quite match up, for example, and I'll realize, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this isn't for me. Or there was one case where
Speaker 1: I was seeing a preview for a show and it
Speaker 1: looked like a spectacular show, but I didn't recognize the
Speaker 1: name of the theater, and I clicked through and discovered
Speaker 1: that the theater is in Seattle, Washington. Well, I'm in Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 1: and those two places are not close to each other.
Speaker 1: They are on opposite sides of the United States, so
Speaker 1: it's not likely that I'm going to get around to
Speaker 1: seeing that show. So once in a while I'll click
Speaker 1: through if it looks interesting, but I realized, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of I could have saved myself some effort
Speaker 1: if I had just realized up front that this doesn't
Speaker 1: really you know, this isn't really relevant to me. So
Speaker 1: eventually you can get into some territory where things get
Speaker 1: a little questionable. Maybe it's not just this doesn't really
Speaker 1: represent what I was looking at, but this is an
Speaker 1: actual attempt to misdirect, to to capture, to trick someone.
Speaker 1: And what really gets my dinner up are the more
Speaker 1: brazen attempts to scan people or to pull a bait
Speaker 1: and switch. So the example that prompted this episode was
Speaker 1: for a silicone mask. Now, as I record this, Halloween
Speaker 1: is coming up. I'm recording this on October six, two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, so these scammers are jumping on that opportunity
Speaker 1: to showcase what are truly incredible masks. I mean, these
Speaker 1: are actual silicone masks that are really well made, and
Speaker 1: supposedly these online stores that are advertising on Facebook have
Speaker 1: these masks in stock on their sites. The mask I
Speaker 1: first saw was Belile the Demon. It's a silicone mask
Speaker 1: of a devilish looking creation, and the silicone allows the
Speaker 1: mask to conform closely with the face of the person
Speaker 1: who's wearing the mask, so the lips on the mask
Speaker 1: fit right around the wearer's lips, and that means you
Speaker 1: can actually open and close your mouth and the mask
Speaker 1: will open and close its mouth. It conforms so well.
Speaker 1: It looks very natural, and the mask looks and credibly lifelike.
Speaker 1: And they're great. I mean this, this Belial one is
Speaker 1: a great example of how a silicone mask can be
Speaker 1: a really amazing work, and uh, I was immediately intrigued
Speaker 1: by it. The ad had a video of a man
Speaker 1: trying on the mask. It was an unboxing video, and
Speaker 1: he had the mask on a mannequin head and he
Speaker 1: pulls the mask off of it and then he puts
Speaker 1: it onto himself and demonstrates how well it moves with
Speaker 1: his facial features. It was a great demonstration of the
Speaker 1: masks features and mobility. So I was curious. I clicked through.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, how much is the store selling this
Speaker 1: mask for? And what I saw immediately raised red flags
Speaker 1: in my head. So the price for the mask on
Speaker 1: this website was listed as thirty four dollars cents, marked
Speaker 1: down from around fifty dollars, and I knew immediately that
Speaker 1: could not possibly be legit. I've seen masks in Halloween
Speaker 1: stores that cost more than that, and we're not nearly
Speaker 1: as sophisticated as this particular mask was. So then I
Speaker 1: did a Google search for the mask and found the
Speaker 1: actual Bellal the Demon mask on several specialty mask and
Speaker 1: costume shops, and those prices ranged from around six hundred
Speaker 1: to eight hundred dollars, so thirty five bucks would be
Speaker 1: quite a markdown. Moreover, I found the unboxing video and
Speaker 1: the review video that was playing as part of this ad.
Speaker 1: I found it on YouTube and it was completely independent
Speaker 1: of the store. The guy who was doing the video
Speaker 1: had no connection whatsoever to the online store that was
Speaker 1: advertising this mask. In fact, the YouTuber had posted in
Speaker 1: the comments section and penned the comment that the video
Speaker 1: had been appropriated for these scam ads and said, don't
Speaker 1: believe what you see on Facebook, because those ads are
Speaker 1: four masks that look nothing like this one. They are
Speaker 1: cheap knockoffs, or maybe not even knockoffs. They're just terrible masks, uh,
Speaker 1: and you're getting a bait and switch. And it proved
Speaker 1: there was no connection between the video that played as
Speaker 1: part of this advertisement and the actual product that was
Speaker 1: being sold. Uh. And it's I'm sure incredibly frustrating for
Speaker 1: him to see a video he made being used in
Speaker 1: this way because it it sort of implicates him in
Speaker 1: this even though he has no connection to it. And
Speaker 1: I know that as a content creator myself, if I
Speaker 1: were to come across a piece of content where I
Speaker 1: appear to be advertising for something marketing something and I
Speaker 1: never agreed to that, I would feel really betrayed by that.
Speaker 1: Then I went a step further. The shop that was
Speaker 1: linked through this Facebook ad had a contact page, so
Speaker 1: I clicked on the contact page. I wanted to see
Speaker 1: what was there, and then was an email listed there,
Speaker 1: which was already unusual that there was actually an email
Speaker 1: address where you could send a question or a comment
Speaker 1: or whatever. But the domain for the email address was
Speaker 1: different from the domain in the stores you are l.
Speaker 1: So the stores you are l was one thing, and
Speaker 1: the email address was totally not connected to that, And
Speaker 1: that's another red flag. You would expect a legitimate business
Speaker 1: to use email addresses that reflect the stores you are l.
Speaker 1: You would expect uniformity across that, or at least an
Speaker 1: email address of a parent company for an outlet, but
Speaker 1: none of that was the case here. So I did
Speaker 1: a Google search for the email. I highlighted the email address,
Speaker 1: and I did a Google search for that, and up
Speaker 1: came another dozen online stores that also included that email
Speaker 1: as the contact email. None of these stores appeared to
Speaker 1: be connected to each other. They all had different names.
Speaker 1: Some of the names were really weird, like there was
Speaker 1: one that was about yoga, supposedly, not that the store
Speaker 1: was about yoga, but that was what the name was.
Speaker 1: But they none of them had any connection to each other,
Speaker 1: and that was another big red flag. Then I decided
Speaker 1: I wasn't finished yet. I decided to use a tool
Speaker 1: called scam doc dot com. That's s C A M
Speaker 1: D O C dot com. This is a tool that
Speaker 1: analyzes website u r l s and email domains. And
Speaker 1: just so you guys know, I have no connection to
Speaker 1: that service. I'm recommending it as a user, but I
Speaker 1: have no you know, I don't know those guys. I
Speaker 1: don't have any other connection to it. I just used
Speaker 1: that tool myself. The tool assigns a reliability score to
Speaker 1: websites and emails, and the score is based off of
Speaker 1: several criteria for example, how long has the site been around.
Speaker 1: Younger sites are less trub worthy than older sites, And
Speaker 1: in the case of every site I checked, each one
Speaker 1: of those was younger than six months, so they hadn't
Speaker 1: even been around for six months. That's a warning flag
Speaker 1: right there. Also are the sites details such as where
Speaker 1: in the world it was registered? Are those details publicly viewable?
Speaker 1: Do you know who the registrar is? Do you know
Speaker 1: you know where it was registered? If not, that's another
Speaker 1: big warning flag there, and that contributes to the reliability score.
Speaker 1: So in case you're curious, the score I got back
Speaker 1: from this particular shop that prompted this entire episode was
Speaker 1: a hearty one percent, meaning the analysis tool concluded the
Speaker 1: site posed a serious risk of being a scam operation.
Speaker 1: It concluded that the site hadn't been around long, the
Speaker 1: details behind who registered it and where it was registered
Speaker 1: weren't public, and based off similar sites, the tool predicted
Speaker 1: that this particular shop wouldn't be around for very long.
Speaker 1: It was sort of a fly by night thing, which
Speaker 1: is not a good indication that you're dealing with someone
Speaker 1: on the up and up. Now, I reported the ad
Speaker 1: as misleading and a scam to Facebook there's a little tool.
Speaker 1: If you ever see a Facebook ad and you're thinking, well,
Speaker 1: this looks shifty and I want to report it. There
Speaker 1: are these little three dots in the upper right corner.
Speaker 1: If you click on that, one of the options there's
Speaker 1: to report an ad, and then you have different options
Speaker 1: on why you reported it. So I chose misleading and scam.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Now, remember when I said that
Speaker 1: searching that email address brought up numerous other websites, all
Speaker 1: of them similar shops to the one I had just visited.
Speaker 1: In fact, many of them were using the same web template,
Speaker 1: although they had different names. Well that's just a tiny
Speaker 1: sample of the bogus businesses that are all using this
Speaker 1: exact same tactic on Facebook. While I had reported the
Speaker 1: original ad that I saw, and while Facebook would then
Speaker 1: block that ad from appearing in my feed, ever again,
Speaker 1: Facebook couldn't block all the identical ads that were registered
Speaker 1: to different stores. So I kept seeing the same or
Speaker 1: similar ads for this mask or masks that were just
Speaker 1: like this one, maybe of a slightly different design, but
Speaker 1: they were also high quality silicone masks. I kept seeing
Speaker 1: these sorts of ads, one after another, and I would
Speaker 1: go through the process of blocking saying misleading or scam
Speaker 1: and then scroll through it and yet another one would
Speaker 1: pop up. So this doesn't stop me from reporting the
Speaker 1: bogus ads because I don't want anyone to fall victim
Speaker 1: to them if I can help it. But it's very discouraging.
Speaker 1: It's telling me that there are several people, maybe several companies,
Speaker 1: most likely in places like China, that are popping up
Speaker 1: and using this same approach to cast as wide a
Speaker 1: net as possible to catch as many suckers as possible.
Speaker 1: So I likened it to squishing a bug in a
Speaker 1: room that's teeming with thousands of bugs. Sure, there's one
Speaker 1: fewer bug in the mix, but there's still thousands more
Speaker 1: to deal with. Okay, So what's actually at stake here?
Speaker 1: Why am I so head up about this? Well, some
Speaker 1: of these sites actually do sell you something. It's not
Speaker 1: likely to look like the image or the video that
Speaker 1: was attached to the original ad, but it's something. It
Speaker 1: might be the wrong product entirely. It's almost certainly a cheap,
Speaker 1: poorly made product, and you might chalk it up as
Speaker 1: just a learning experience like I did in the past,
Speaker 1: and you might say, well, I won't let that happen
Speaker 1: to me again, and you'll think, well, I'm out however
Speaker 1: much money I spent. But that's as far as the
Speaker 1: the damage is gonna go. But you're still out of
Speaker 1: however much money the thing costs. And nobody wants to
Speaker 1: just throw money away. Maybe it's not that much money.
Speaker 1: Maybe you decide you're going to eat the cost and
Speaker 1: you'll just deal with it, but no one wants to
Speaker 1: do that some. In fact, many of these sites that
Speaker 1: are up there say they offer free refunds, but that
Speaker 1: itself comes with a set of caveats. So I saw
Speaker 1: one of these sites that listed uh product like this
Speaker 1: and said refunds are free within the first thirty days
Speaker 1: of purchase. But then and another part of the exact
Speaker 1: same site, I saw a discussion that explained that all
Speaker 1: refund requests must first go through a verification process, they
Speaker 1: have to be reviewed by a team, and that you
Speaker 1: have to submit your refund request within seven days of
Speaker 1: having received the product. There's no indication of how long
Speaker 1: that process is supposed to last either, So it may
Speaker 1: be that, oh, yeah, you get a free refund within
Speaker 1: thirty days, but if the review process lasts longer than
Speaker 1: thirty days, then maybe the company argues, well, it doesn't
Speaker 1: fall within that thirty day period, and so you're not
Speaker 1: entitled to a refund. In addition, while the refund might
Speaker 1: be free, return shipping is almost never uh an included benefit.
Speaker 1: So in other words, if you want a refund, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to pay to ship the thing back to
Speaker 1: where it came from. And because these items are mostly
Speaker 1: being shipped from places like China, you know, primarily China,
Speaker 1: you're looking at shipping costs that can be much higher
Speaker 1: than what you paid for the product in the first place. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get a refund. You could send the stuff back,
Speaker 1: but it's actually going to cost you more money to
Speaker 1: send it back than it did for you to purchase it.
Speaker 1: So you would be losing money on the refund. And
Speaker 1: that's assuming the company actually refunds your money. So there's
Speaker 1: no incentive to actually pursue a refund. It would cost
Speaker 1: you more money than you would get. Moreover, since many
Speaker 1: of these companies are overseas and again mostly in China,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot you can do legally to go
Speaker 1: after your money. You can't really hold the company accountable.
Speaker 1: There's very little chance that the Chinese government's going to
Speaker 1: jump in and say, oh, you're you're cheating people overseas
Speaker 1: out of their money. Bad, that's probably not going to happen.
Speaker 1: So the bogus businesses are protected and can generate revenue
Speaker 1: by depending upon naive customers who take the bait, and
Speaker 1: thanks to Facebook's algorithms for serving up ads, those ads
Speaker 1: can reach a pretty big base of potential customers. So
Speaker 1: even if you only get one bite out of a thousand,
Speaker 1: if millions of people are seeing the ad, that still
Speaker 1: adds up. And this brings me to another red flag. Though,
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty safe to say we've established from
Speaker 1: this example that I'm citing that it definitely was not
Speaker 1: a legit business. When I visited the shop by clicking
Speaker 1: through the ad, I decided I would also look at
Speaker 1: their home page to get a look at the types
Speaker 1: of stuff that the store sold. If all the stuff
Speaker 1: on the store had been thematically linked, let's say that
Speaker 1: they were all like Halloween or cost supplies, or maybe
Speaker 1: even party supplies, I might have felt like it was
Speaker 1: a more legitimate business that perhaps engaged in some bad
Speaker 1: marketing decisions, primarily snagging someone else's video without their permission
Speaker 1: to act as part of their ad. But instead I
Speaker 1: saw an eclectic mix of products across all sorts of
Speaker 1: different categories. They had wigs, not not costume wigs, but
Speaker 1: fashion wigs. They had kitchen items, they had automotive items,
Speaker 1: and more. There's stuff from you know, no rhyme or
Speaker 1: reason to what was on there, the stuff from every
Speaker 1: conceivable category, unless you happen to know how Facebook's algorithms work,
Speaker 1: in which case you would see a rhyme and reason
Speaker 1: to this approach. See Advertisers can tag their ads with keywords,
Speaker 1: and this is important because Facebook can then use that
Speaker 1: in order to serve the ads to the most receptive audiences,
Speaker 1: in other words, to pair up ads to potential customers.
Speaker 1: So your activity on Facebook and on the web at
Speaker 1: large teaches Facebook what you like and what you don't like.
Speaker 1: So if you've liked certain pages on Facebook or images
Speaker 1: on Facebook, or you've engaged in conversations, or you've shared
Speaker 1: certain posts, all of that activity is logged and analyzed
Speaker 1: by Facebook, and Facebook starts to build a profile of you.
Speaker 1: What are the things you're interested in, What are the
Speaker 1: things you like? What are the things you tend to
Speaker 1: ignore or or you seem not to like. That way,
Speaker 1: Facebook can say, well, let's serve up the ads that
Speaker 1: are most likely going to be relevant to this person,
Speaker 1: and that way you get ads that most closely aligned
Speaker 1: with your interests. So if you've liked a lot of
Speaker 1: posts about cars, for example, you're more likely to see
Speaker 1: ads related to car stuff. Similarly, if you've been browsing
Speaker 1: the web for certain types of products, you're more likely
Speaker 1: to see those types of products advertised to you as well,
Speaker 1: due to web tracking tools that lots of advertisers and
Speaker 1: web page administrators use. So if you're running a scam company,
Speaker 1: one in which you send out cheap products for low prices,
Speaker 1: but they're presented to look like incredible deals on high
Speaker 1: quality items, it behooves you to have a wide selection
Speaker 1: of crab to pedal. On Facebook, you can arrange for
Speaker 1: ads on multiple categories of products. So some people will
Speaker 1: get that Halloween mask ad I was talking about because
Speaker 1: their interests happened to fall in that kind of category.
Speaker 1: Some other people might get hair care products I rarely
Speaker 1: see those for some reason. Or they might get automotive
Speaker 1: accessories or computer peripherals or kitchen gadgets. One online store
Speaker 1: might have dozens of ads running on Facebook, with each
Speaker 1: ad served to a different segment of the population that
Speaker 1: has been predisposed to shopping for those items, as indicated
Speaker 1: by their online behaviors. Now, I want to be clear here,
Speaker 1: I don't think the actual process of matching ads to
Speaker 1: users is totally awful. I do think it tends to
Speaker 1: be pretty invasive, But then I also think it's nice
Speaker 1: to encounter ads that align with my interests as opposed
Speaker 1: to seeing ads that have no real relevance to me.
Speaker 1: I don't need to see ads for childcare products and services,
Speaker 1: for example, because I don't have kids, But if you
Speaker 1: serve me up ads for doggy toys, I'm all over it.
Speaker 1: So that part I don't really object to that much,
Speaker 1: though I recognize it gets pretty creepy when you realize
Speaker 1: how well Facebook knows its users based on the massive
Speaker 1: amounts of data we users provide every time we're online,
Speaker 1: even if we're not currently using Facebook while we're online.
Speaker 1: What I really object to is Facebook's failure to vet
Speaker 1: advertising in any meaningful way. I think as users, we
Speaker 1: each have a responsibility to use critical thinking and to
Speaker 1: protect ourselves and I'll talk more about that later in
Speaker 1: this episode. But I also think Facebook and other platforms
Speaker 1: have a responsibility to be good stewards of their platforms
Speaker 1: and to weed out scams that target users. I don't
Speaker 1: subscribe to the philosophy that Facebook should be just a
Speaker 1: passive platform that allows this to happen, because the company
Speaker 1: is getting paid by these hoax shops to post ads.
Speaker 1: Facebook is benefiting from this arrangement. It profits from the
Speaker 1: whole process. To me, that makes them at least partly
Speaker 1: responsible for the perpetuation of scams. I've got a little
Speaker 1: more to say about Facebook's role in this, but first
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break for you know, a real ad.
Speaker 1: In the UK, Facebook was hit by a defamation lawsuit
Speaker 1: by Martin Lewis, who is a financial expert who runs
Speaker 1: a financial advice service. Lewis sued Facebook because there were
Speaker 1: ads running on Facebook that feats Lewis's image or it
Speaker 1: implied that he had endorsed various services with which he
Speaker 1: had no connection. He successfully argued that these services were
Speaker 1: profiting off of his reputation and his image without his permission,
Speaker 1: and that Facebook was letting it happen. Moreover, after reporting
Speaker 1: the issue, Facebook continued running the ads for some time.
Speaker 1: Facebook responded by rolling out a tool that lets users
Speaker 1: report ads for various reasons, including for being misleading or
Speaker 1: a scam. That's similar to the tool I used when
Speaker 1: I reported the ad, and I'm in the United States,
Speaker 1: not in the UK. And yes, that is a positive step,
Speaker 1: it's a good one, but it's also a reactive step, right.
Speaker 1: It only works after people have either noticed something hinky
Speaker 1: is going on, or they didn't notice it in time
Speaker 1: and they were victimized, and then they respond to Facebook.
Speaker 1: That's really too late, you know you you would prefer
Speaker 1: to see an approach that prevents this stuff from ever
Speaker 1: reaching an audience in the first place, as opposed to
Speaker 1: reaching an audience. And now it's the audience's responsibility to say, hey,
Speaker 1: this doesn't look right to me. So by the time
Speaker 1: someone on Facebook actually takes that step, the ad has
Speaker 1: already been served up to potentially millions of people. I
Speaker 1: suggest that perhaps Facebook should develop some sort of process
Speaker 1: to try and catch these things before the ads are
Speaker 1: accepted to run on the site, to verify that the
Speaker 1: party that's purchasing the ad is in fact what they
Speaker 1: say they are and granted this is way more work
Speaker 1: for Facebook, but it would go a long way to
Speaker 1: improving the reputation of the company, which has been under
Speaker 1: fire recently for multiple reasons, not just the dodgy ads
Speaker 1: appearing on the site. Now, since I started writing up
Speaker 1: these notes, Facebook has sent me a few notifications telling
Speaker 1: me that their teams are reviewing the various ads I
Speaker 1: have flagged as being misleading or a scam. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't have a high level of confidence that this is
Speaker 1: going to result in very much other than maybe Facebook
Speaker 1: telling me to chill out. I'm fairly sure the review
Speaker 1: teams won't take the steps I took to investigate those instances.
Speaker 1: At the time I'm writing this, I must have reported
Speaker 1: at least fifteen or twenty ads, all using similar video
Speaker 1: many of them using the exact same video clips and
Speaker 1: the same images, and all marketing items for far less
Speaker 1: than what they go for elsewhere. And when I say
Speaker 1: far less, I'm talking in the hundreds of dollars less
Speaker 1: like the too good to be true level of a sale.
Speaker 1: Facebook has posted some tips to help users avoid these scams,
Speaker 1: and they include making sure that the posted ad or
Speaker 1: corresponding product page includes clear details about the product, like
Speaker 1: its dimensions or its weight, as well as its quality,
Speaker 1: and that there should also be your photographs of the product. Now,
Speaker 1: while fuzzy photos are pretty much a dead giveaway that
Speaker 1: it's a fake, I also counter that it's very easy
Speaker 1: these days to lift good images online and there's no
Speaker 1: shortage of high res photographs of tons of different products,
Speaker 1: particularly for stuff like the mask I was referring to earlier,
Speaker 1: and so it doesn't take very much to steal those
Speaker 1: images and then use them for another purpose on another site.
Speaker 1: And you can always do a reverse image search as
Speaker 1: a user to see if something you're looking at has
Speaker 1: been nicked from somewhere else, but that's yet another step
Speaker 1: that the user has to take. The onus falls on
Speaker 1: you so that you aren't made into a victim. Another
Speaker 1: tip that Facebook gives is that the seller should include
Speaker 1: clear information about the amount of time it will take
Speaker 1: to ship items to the customer, how long will it
Speaker 1: take to get from door to door, and also whether
Speaker 1: or not the seller offers up tracking information so that
Speaker 1: users can track orders as they go through the shipping process.
Speaker 1: Companies only list something like a dispatch time. That's another
Speaker 1: warning flag. Also legitimate companies should have a clear way
Speaker 1: to contact customer service. So in the pages I looked
Speaker 1: at the morning and that I'm recording this, I saw
Speaker 1: email addresses for some unnamed person who is supposedly the
Speaker 1: customer service representative. But the email address didn't indicate that
Speaker 1: in of itself right. The email address wasn't like customer
Speaker 1: representative at store dot com. Instead, it would be something
Speaker 1: seemingly random like l f U r Z three one
Speaker 1: one at b E r Q dot shop, and it
Speaker 1: has no connection to whatever the U r L for
Speaker 1: the website is at all. That's not exactly a confidence booster.
Speaker 1: In a couple of other cases, I saw an online
Speaker 1: field into which you would type your email address, and
Speaker 1: it would include a promise that a customer service rep
Speaker 1: would get in touch with you, quote unquote soon. I
Speaker 1: have no clue how honest that claim is. And in
Speaker 1: a few cases there was no contact page at all,
Speaker 1: so there's no obvious way for you to get in
Speaker 1: contact with the company. That is another clear warning. While
Speaker 1: these tips from Facebook are helpful, they still place the
Speaker 1: responsibility of not getting scammed on the end user. There
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be much acknowledgement that Facebook shoulders at
Speaker 1: least some of the blame here, and that the site
Speaker 1: has to find a better way to evaluate businesses before
Speaker 1: accepting ads from them. The company has stated that bad
Speaker 1: shopping experiences hurt everyone, not just the user but also Facebook,
Speaker 1: and that's true, so you would think the company would
Speaker 1: have a pretty strong incentive to prevent these ads from
Speaker 1: going onto the platform. But I guess that money all
Speaker 1: spends the same, whether it's from a legitimate business or not.
Speaker 1: And yes, I am bitter about this because I hate
Speaker 1: when people get scammed out of their cash or their
Speaker 1: personal information. Now there's an opinion and the Harvard Business
Speaker 1: Review that I feel really gets to why this has
Speaker 1: become such a troubling issue for Facebook users. The article
Speaker 1: is titled Facebook's oversight board is not Enough, and it's
Speaker 1: by Dipayan Gosh And I apologize for doing a terrible
Speaker 1: job pronouncing that name. That's entirely due to my own ignorance,
Speaker 1: So I apologize for that. But the article is really good.
Speaker 1: It points out that Facebook's business model is such that
Speaker 1: depends upon ads, and I'm going to quote a passage,
Speaker 1: so here's the quote. The same model lies at the
Speaker 1: center of the consumer Internet as a whole, and is
Speaker 1: based on maximizing consumer engagement and injecting ads throughout our
Speaker 1: digital experience. It relies on collecting personal data and on
Speaker 1: sophisticated algorithms that curate social feeds and target those ads.
Speaker 1: Because there is no earnest consideration of what consumers wish
Speaker 1: to or should see in this equation, they are subjected
Speaker 1: to whatever content the platform believes will maximize profits. These
Speaker 1: practices in turn generate negative externalities, of which disinformation is
Speaker 1: only one end quote. And in this case, the article
Speaker 1: was more about fake news and propaganda and how Facebook
Speaker 1: is incented to share that because it's part and parcel
Speaker 1: with its business model. That wasn't Facebook's intent when they
Speaker 1: built that business model. That's a reflection of how people
Speaker 1: recognized how Facebook's business model works, and then they gamed
Speaker 1: the system. By knowing how the system works, they took
Speaker 1: advantage of it, and that's the issue. Now. I didn't
Speaker 1: really go into other problems with Facebook ads, such as
Speaker 1: it's shifting policies with regard to political ads, which is
Speaker 1: a huge can of worms here in the United States
Speaker 1: right now, But that's because it is really another kettle
Speaker 1: of fish, I said, ken of worms, kettle of fish.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna mix metaphors left and right, come at me.
Speaker 1: Ultimately it gets wrapped in a bigger discussion about propaganda,
Speaker 1: and frankly, I am exhausted over the concept of political
Speaker 1: ads for the moment, probably for the next year and
Speaker 1: a half. So I'm going to spare all of that
Speaker 1: discussion for some future episode when I'm not as irritated
Speaker 1: by it. Instead, let's talk about other common scam techniques. Well,
Speaker 1: will slowly ease off Facebook here for a second. And
Speaker 1: I've touched on this next topic in the past because
Speaker 1: I remember getting really upset about it when I chatted
Speaker 1: about the topic with my then co host Chris Pallette.
Speaker 1: So this was an old, old episode of Tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: and it's about hiring scams. So these scams target a
Speaker 1: very vulnerable population, people who are looking for a job.
Speaker 1: Maybe they are out of work and they're looking to
Speaker 1: actually find job so they can make ends meet. Maybe
Speaker 1: they're just looking for a better opportunity. They're in a
Speaker 1: job already, but it's not a great one. They want
Speaker 1: a better chance. Now, as I'm sure many of you know,
Speaker 1: hunting for a job is exhausting, and it can get
Speaker 1: pretty discouraging if it starts to take a while. And
Speaker 1: I've been in that situation myself. I worked for a
Speaker 1: company for seven years and that company then eliminated my position.
Speaker 1: I wasn't fired, I just didn't have a job anymore.
Speaker 1: That the the definition of that, and the difference between
Speaker 1: being fired and not having a job was kind of
Speaker 1: lost on me at the time. For three months, I
Speaker 1: worked hard trying to land a gig that I really
Speaker 1: wanted to do. I thought, this is my chance to
Speaker 1: not just do something I can do, but do something
Speaker 1: I really want to do. I had stars in my eyes.
Speaker 1: Well that didn't pan out after three months, so then
Speaker 1: I spent the following three months trying to land a
Speaker 1: decent gig at all. I ended up working for a
Speaker 1: company not that different from the one that let me
Speaker 1: go in the first place. This was very rough on
Speaker 1: me and my psyche, but I had been out of
Speaker 1: work for nearly six months at that point. It was
Speaker 1: really tough on me. Well, scammers know that people who
Speaker 1: are looking for jobs are in that vulnerable space, and
Speaker 1: by promising a little, the scammers can get what they're after.
Speaker 1: They might be after the person's money, they might be
Speaker 1: after their personal information, or they might be after their cooperation.
Speaker 1: And one amounts to an illegal operation, and they're probably
Speaker 1: not upfront about that. They're probably not telling the applicant, hey,
Speaker 1: just so you know, what we're doing is illegal, So
Speaker 1: the applicant becomes an unwilling participant of a crime. This
Speaker 1: practice also gets me really angry. I hate seeing folks
Speaker 1: who are trying to get a job be targeted like that.
Speaker 1: Often these are people who can least afford the hardships
Speaker 1: that could follow if they're tricked by the scammers. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the scammers are profiting off people who are just trying
Speaker 1: to improve their own lives. It is gross. So these
Speaker 1: schemes tend to fall into a few broad categories, and
Speaker 1: some of them fall into just outright theft. So a
Speaker 1: common example of this is a payment representative scam. And
Speaker 1: here's how the scam works. The fraudsters identify a mark.
Speaker 1: This could be a totally cold call on their part.
Speaker 1: You know, they're just pulling off email addresses and sending
Speaker 1: out emails hoping to get a hit. Maybe they're using
Speaker 1: some job hunting sites to have a more targeted approach
Speaker 1: to their marks, or they might even post a job
Speaker 1: on a site to see if they get any bites.
Speaker 1: However they do this, it doesn't really matter whenever they
Speaker 1: make that first contact. Here's how the supposed job pans out.
Speaker 1: So let's assume you are the person who has been
Speaker 1: targeted by these fraudsters. They claim that the company they
Speaker 1: represent needs someone in your home country to handle some
Speaker 1: financial transactions because for some reason, the company itself has
Speaker 1: difficulty working within the financial institutions in your country. So
Speaker 1: this is a company that exists outside your country and
Speaker 1: needs to be able to process payments inside your country.
Speaker 1: Your job is to accept payments from this company, typically
Speaker 1: for really large sums of money. You're meant to deposit
Speaker 1: those payments in the form of checks. Check comes to you,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to deposit that check into your own personal account.
Speaker 1: Then you're meant to send on a payment from the
Speaker 1: amount that was given to you to some other entity,
Speaker 1: and you deduct your representative fee from that amount. So
Speaker 1: let's use an example because this gets confusing otherwise. All right,
Speaker 1: So you have accepted the job of payment representative from
Speaker 1: this company. The company tells you you get a ten
Speaker 1: percent fee off of all the transactions you process. The
Speaker 1: company sends you a check for fifteen thousand dollars, and
Speaker 1: you deposit the check into your account, and the company says,
Speaker 1: we need you to then send a payment to this
Speaker 1: other entity. And you pay out thirteen thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars because you deducted your ten percent your fifteen hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: so fifteen hundred dollars of that fifteen thousand dollars is
Speaker 1: yours to keep. You send out the other thirteen thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred and then the scam becomes apparent because the
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand dollar check bounces. Meanwhile, you've already paid out thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars from your own account to that person
Speaker 1: that the company indicated. You're on the line for all
Speaker 1: of that money. In the United States, the Internal Revenue
Speaker 1: Service the i r S would want to talk to
Speaker 1: you about that fifteen grand. The bank would expect you
Speaker 1: to cover the amount of money you paid out, and
Speaker 1: the fraud sters get away with your money and your
Speaker 1: left holding the bag. It is a pretty awful scheme.
Speaker 1: Another scheme is the re shipper scam. This scam seems
Speaker 1: to ask a pretty simple favor of the employee. Your
Speaker 1: job is to accept packages that are sent to you.
Speaker 1: Then you either forward those packages onward to another address,
Speaker 1: or you might even have to open up a package,
Speaker 1: pull stuff out of the package, pack it into smaller boxes,
Speaker 1: and then send those packages on their way. But this
Speaker 1: raises a question, why would any company need a middleman
Speaker 1: to do this? Why not just send the packages directly
Speaker 1: to the customers. Well, the most common reason for this
Speaker 1: is that the packages actually contain illegal or stolen materials. Typically,
Speaker 1: it means the fraudsters have used stolen credit cards to
Speaker 1: purchase items online and then they use your address as
Speaker 1: the shipping address. You are then responsible for reshipping these
Speaker 1: packages to some other destination, frequently to an overseas address,
Speaker 1: where the goods will enter the black market and be
Speaker 1: sold for a much higher markup price. By accepting the package,
Speaker 1: you effectively become an accessory to the crime, and when
Speaker 1: you forward it on those packages came from you, not
Speaker 1: the original criminals. It's a way for the criminals to
Speaker 1: get illegal goods to a destination while insulating themselves from prosecution,
Speaker 1: and when the credit card gets reported as stolen, the
Speaker 1: point of contact for those fraudulent charges is you because
Speaker 1: you're the person that the fraudsters were using for the
Speaker 1: shipping address. Yeah. I've got some more job hiring scams
Speaker 1: to chat about in a second, but first let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. Okay, So the previous examples I gave
Speaker 1: of job hiring scams that you'll typically find line are
Speaker 1: all about involving you the mark in crimes that ultimately
Speaker 1: rest on you while the real criminals continue their illegal activities.
Speaker 1: But many job hiring scams are more about harvesting personal
Speaker 1: information from people, often to do stuff like open up
Speaker 1: credit cards in those those employees names, or to get
Speaker 1: access to those employees bank accounts, or otherwise exploit them
Speaker 1: in some way. And you might encounter these scams on
Speaker 1: social media platforms like Facebook or linked In, or you
Speaker 1: might get targeted by them in an email that's attempting
Speaker 1: to phish the data out of you. The job postings
Speaker 1: typically use a few common tactics in an effort to
Speaker 1: get you to lower your guard and to respond quickly
Speaker 1: without thinking too much. For example, there's often a sense
Speaker 1: of urgency that goes along with these messages. That is,
Speaker 1: if you don't respond quickly, the opportunity is going to
Speaker 1: go away. Frequently, the job description will sound pretty simple
Speaker 1: and yet could have of a really generous salary range
Speaker 1: quoted as part of the gig. The message might also
Speaker 1: state that there's no experience necessary, which, if you think
Speaker 1: about it, undercuts the whole argument that you are the
Speaker 1: ideal candidates, since if no experience is necessary, you'd figure
Speaker 1: lots of people would qualify for the job. Another warning
Speaker 1: sign is if there's no interview as part of the
Speaker 1: whole process. Maybe the supposed recruiter says that the interactions
Speaker 1: across something like instant messenger or email exchanges are enough
Speaker 1: to forego the need to have an in person interview.
Speaker 1: That's often a way for the scammer to avoid the
Speaker 1: pitfalls of you getting wise and asking some tricky questions.
Speaker 1: They just sidestep that entirely, and they appeal to your vanity. Oh,
Speaker 1: you're so amazing, we don't even need to have an interview.
Speaker 1: You're hired. Well, it's a very flattering thing to hear.
Speaker 1: Often these scammers will say they came across your resume
Speaker 1: on a job recruiting site. Sometimes it will be a
Speaker 1: site that you've never even visited, or heard of and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a warning sign. Or they might even claim that
Speaker 1: you actively applied for the job, and they're counting on
Speaker 1: the fact that maybe you you feel like you forgot
Speaker 1: about it, maybe you were applying to a lot of
Speaker 1: jobs and so I don't know, maybe I did, or
Speaker 1: maybe you're just thinking, oh, shut up. They this is
Speaker 1: an opportunity, don't question it a dead giveaway in these circumstances.
Speaker 1: If it is. If there's an email contact for you
Speaker 1: to reach out to and the domain on that email
Speaker 1: contact doesn't match whatever the company is that's supposedly reaching
Speaker 1: out to you. Some scammers like to use recognizable, real
Speaker 1: companies when they reach out. They know that it will
Speaker 1: get more hits than if they just make a company
Speaker 1: out of whole cloth. Plus, if you rely on an
Speaker 1: existing company as your cover, you can trade upon that
Speaker 1: company's reputation as well as it's pre existing presence of
Speaker 1: the company online. Right if I say that I am
Speaker 1: coming from X y Z company and it's a real company,
Speaker 1: there's already a website out there. I don't have to
Speaker 1: create anything. If you make up a company, you need
Speaker 1: to go through some extra trouble. It's pretty suspicious to
Speaker 1: come across a company that's using the Internet to recruit
Speaker 1: people when that same company doesn't have a web page.
Speaker 1: So scammers typically have to make a choice. Do you
Speaker 1: pose as someone from a reputable company that really exists,
Speaker 1: or do you create a fake company complete with a
Speaker 1: website to help lure in job hunters. Those posing as
Speaker 1: representatives for an existing company are often found out when
Speaker 1: their emails do not match that company in question. They
Speaker 1: also run another risk. You could always reach out to
Speaker 1: the real company to confirm that a message actually did
Speaker 1: originate from within that company, and if you get a
Speaker 1: negative response, if you say, hey, I got this job offer,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that it's legitimate, and the
Speaker 1: response you get is this is the first we've ever
Speaker 1: heard of it, you know it's most likely a scam
Speaker 1: making up a company can get around that problem, right,
Speaker 1: because now you're controlling the whole lie. It's not just well,
Speaker 1: hopefully they don't reach out to the real company because
Speaker 1: there is no real company to reach out to. So
Speaker 1: in this case, if you are the one targeted, you
Speaker 1: have no other authority to turn to in order to
Speaker 1: confirm that a message is legitimate. But this also requires
Speaker 1: a lot more work on the part of the scammers.
Speaker 1: Several years ago, a friend of mine was job hunting
Speaker 1: and got an offer that seemed too good to be true.
Speaker 1: So that was a warning right there. So she asked
Speaker 1: for my help to investigate to make sure it was
Speaker 1: a legitimate offer and not just a scam. You know.
Speaker 1: She thought that it sounded like a really promising job,
Speaker 1: but she was a little worried. So she forwarded a
Speaker 1: message that she received and she sent it to me,
Speaker 1: and I did some digging, and it turned out her
Speaker 1: suspicions were very well placed. The company was a supposed
Speaker 1: architectural firm that was looking to hire someone in an
Speaker 1: in the straight of position. And I can't even remember
Speaker 1: what the name of this fake company was anymore. This
Speaker 1: happened years ago, but I do remember the process. The
Speaker 1: message referred my friend to the company website, and so
Speaker 1: I visited the website and it was pretty slick. It
Speaker 1: looked nice and had a decent design to it, and
Speaker 1: it included photographs of supposed construction sites that this company
Speaker 1: claimed were official projects. So they're saying, you know, we're
Speaker 1: responsible for building this amazing building at the x y
Speaker 1: Z address, but none of this looked legit to me.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the website actually looked a little template ish,
Speaker 1: as if the person who had made the site had
Speaker 1: used a web hosting service that comes with templates for
Speaker 1: web pages, and then they built out a few web pages,
Speaker 1: but they didn't go too much trouble to customize it
Speaker 1: beyond the generic template. I also looked at the address
Speaker 1: for the supposed construction site and I plugged it into
Speaker 1: Google Maps to take a look at it from there,
Speaker 1: and that presented a very different image than what was
Speaker 1: on their web page, and it was clearly not the
Speaker 1: same location despite the claims. That's when I knew something
Speaker 1: was up. Then I did something that proved to me
Speaker 1: that this was a total scam. I found a paragraph
Speaker 1: of text that I found to be a little odd.
Speaker 1: The wording was just a little off and and unusual,
Speaker 1: So I highlighted the text and I searched Google for
Speaker 1: that text. Now, if this were a legit site for
Speaker 1: a local business, maybe one where the web administrator doesn't
Speaker 1: have the best way with words, but otherwise it's completely legitimate.
Speaker 1: The only response I should have seen from Google would
Speaker 1: have been that one web page, but instead I got
Speaker 1: seven or eight different hits, two different web pages, all
Speaker 1: with the exact same wording. Going to those links, I
Speaker 1: found duplicates of the website that I had just visited.
Speaker 1: The company name was different from site to site, but
Speaker 1: all the content was exactly the same. They're all located
Speaker 1: in different cities, and they even all had pictures of
Speaker 1: that same construction site, but the address had been localized
Speaker 1: to whatever site, you know, whatever place the company was
Speaker 1: claiming to be in. So there was one for Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 1: there was one for Phoenix, there was one for Helena, Montana.
Speaker 1: They all mysteriously had the exact same content, same staff
Speaker 1: working for the company, and exact same construction site, just
Speaker 1: in different parts of the United States. I alerted my friend,
Speaker 1: who was glad that I had caught the scam, but
Speaker 1: she was obviously discouraged that what initially seemed to be
Speaker 1: a real job offer had turned out to be a trap.
Speaker 1: Now fortunately she found out before it went any further,
Speaker 1: but was still a discouraging thing to happen when you're
Speaker 1: in the middle of a job search. Now. I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to pat myself on the back here about uncovered
Speaker 1: ring this one. It was a pretty sloppy attempt when
Speaker 1: all things are considered too. I was able to go
Speaker 1: about this investigation because I could think critically about it.
Speaker 1: I care for my friends, but I was not as
Speaker 1: emotionally invested in this opportunity as she was. I had
Speaker 1: fewer blinders up because I wasn't counting on this being
Speaker 1: a real offer. If I had been hunting for a job,
Speaker 1: if I had been in my friends position, I might
Speaker 1: very well have totally bought that scam, hook line and sinker.
Speaker 1: The investigation I did was pretty simple stuff. It didn't
Speaker 1: require any advanced search techniques. Had just involved looking at
Speaker 1: the information that was presented and then doing my best
Speaker 1: to fact check it. When things didn't match up, I
Speaker 1: figured I was onto a trick and that's it. And
Speaker 1: the fact that there were several duplicate websites told me
Speaker 1: I had hit upon some sort of scheme. There's one
Speaker 1: other type of job scam I should mention. This one
Speaker 1: is harder to spot, but it's also a crappy thing
Speaker 1: to do to people. And this is the old bait
Speaker 1: and switch. This is when a company advertises a particular
Speaker 1: position in order to get applicants, but then when someone
Speaker 1: actually does apply and perhaps comes in for an interview.
Speaker 1: The company reveals that the position that the applicant is
Speaker 1: interested in isn't actually available, maybe it doesn't even exist,
Speaker 1: maybe it was never available. Instead, they're offering a different
Speaker 1: job that is available. Most likely it's a job that's
Speaker 1: not nearly as desirable as the one that was advertised.
Speaker 1: It might be grunt work for low pay. It's the
Speaker 1: type of job that could be difficult to fill on
Speaker 1: its own if you were to list it, so they
Speaker 1: might not get any applicants if they had listed the
Speaker 1: real job, or maybe they would only get people that
Speaker 1: the company isn't keen on hiring in the first place,
Speaker 1: So the bait and switch might bring in, you know,
Speaker 1: a better class of applicant. And all it takes is
Speaker 1: being dishonest to trick someone into coming in for an interview.
Speaker 1: Companies that do this know that people who are looking
Speaker 1: for a job might be tempted to say yes to
Speaker 1: a less desirable position because it's still represents an opportunity,
Speaker 1: even if it's for a job that they wouldn't normally
Speaker 1: apply for if they just saw it online by itself.
Speaker 1: Don't fall for this one, either, folks. If you wouldn't
Speaker 1: apply for the job if you saw it listed online.
Speaker 1: Don't take it just because it's offered to you. No
Speaker 1: one will end up being happy with that decision in
Speaker 1: the long run, and you don't ever want to work
Speaker 1: for a company that depends on tricks to get people
Speaker 1: to work for them. Now, I don't think I can
Speaker 1: really go into stuff like multi level marketing businesses or
Speaker 1: pyramid schemes, which are not necessarily the same thing, but
Speaker 1: frequently an MLM can turn into a pyramid scheme. The
Speaker 1: two can share a lot of qualities. I think that
Speaker 1: is better left as a subject for a different podcast,
Speaker 1: because it's not as dependent upon technology as the variations
Speaker 1: I've been speaking about today. Once again, I gotta put
Speaker 1: forth the argument for critical thinking. It's all about asking
Speaker 1: important questions and looking for the most truthful answers. It's
Speaker 1: about not taking things at face value and digging a
Speaker 1: little deeper. This is particularly important when you've got a
Speaker 1: strong motivation to believe the story being told to you.
Speaker 1: If you have a predisposition to believe, you really got
Speaker 1: to employ that critical thinking. If you're a person looking
Speaker 1: for a new job, or you're someone who's really hunting
Speaker 1: for a bargain, You're more liable to believe the lie
Speaker 1: because lie is telling you what you want to hear,
Speaker 1: So you've got to really use that critical thinking. The
Speaker 1: motivation for believing is what these con artists are counting on.
Speaker 1: Your motivation is doing the work for these con artists,
Speaker 1: whether it's an ad on social media, a job listing,
Speaker 1: or a crowdfunding campaign for a seemingly incredible idea. It's
Speaker 1: always good to check your expectations and do some research first.
Speaker 1: You may find that everything is totally legit and then
Speaker 1: you're good to go, or you might save yourself some
Speaker 1: money or your credit score, your bank account, or other
Speaker 1: things that are equally important. So it pays to be
Speaker 1: a critical thinker. And that wraps up this episode. Totally
Speaker 1: inspired by my Facebook experience this morning. It's something I
Speaker 1: really am very passionate about. I do not want people
Speaker 1: to be taken advantage of. I want a world where
Speaker 1: con artists don't get any opportunities and they realize that
Speaker 1: they need to spend their efforts doing something else rather
Speaker 1: than tricking people and making their lives more difficult. So
Speaker 1: let's make it hard for those jerks, shall we. If
Speaker 1: you guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: send me an email. The addresses tex stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. If you want you learn more
Speaker 1: about the show, go to our website that's tech stuff
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. We've got a list of every single
Speaker 1: episode that has ever published. We have links to our
Speaker 1: online store, where every purchase you make goes to help
Speaker 1: the show. We greatly appreciate it, and we have links
Speaker 1: to where we are on social media. You can reach
Speaker 1: out to me on Facebook or Twitter and I will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Y text Stuff is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from i heeart Radio, visit the I heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.