I can’t wrap my head around how people can ignore all those red flags. 2-3 days ago I just got a text from a random number about some parking fine. Not just that, but it said that that day was the last day I could get a 50% DISCOUNT on the fine. A fucking DISCOUNT! What’s next? I can use my Nectar card? Do I get a loyalty card with a stamp on it? But it’s not even the fact that I wasn’t contacted by mail, or there was no other contact given; I don’t even have a fucking car. Or a driving license in this country.
I got a fine for not getting my bus ticket stamped in Florence, Italy. Apparently if you paid it the same day it was one price and that price doubled after a week, month, etc.
Didn’t matter the machine failed when I stamped it because it was out of ink. I even tried to stamp it in front of the officer. He said I could appeal it in person in court. They know tourists aren’t going to appear in court to appeal. I felt scammed but after calming myself down and paying the fine the officer apologized and told me in a few words he hated his job.
They also can’t force a tourist to pay a fine. And it’s not a criminal matter, so they’ll never be able to deny you visa on these grounds.
When the same happened to me I laughed into their faces, they wrote down my passport data and address and kept sending me snail mail with threats for years till I moved. I’m still waiting for the day they’ll force me to pay the 30€ or whatever that was.
I was told in no uncertain terms If I didn’t give them my passport info they would arrest me.
Yes, yes, give them your passport, and address, and a phone number, and whatever else they need. What are they gonna do with them? Send debt collectors from Rome to the middle-of-nowhere, Teneese?
When you face a system that was clearly designed by morons, you should remember that they will be just as dumb when it comes to actually enforcing the system.
(Just PSA, if you do live in, Rome, and repeatedly ride without a ticket, after repeated offenses, you’ll eventually catch a fine of 1k€+ and if you won’t pay that, they’ll put you in jail for a few weeks.)
This is a legal advice.
On a separate note it’s the same with traffic violations. If you refuse to identify yourself, or your vehicle has been caught speeding and you refuse to give information on who was the driver, you’ll get arrested in no time. Otherwise it’s a 20-50€ fine, and you can probably not pay it, if you’ll never catch another one.
This is a legal advice.
Well, that’s rather reassuring.
Discounts on speeding tickets are a thing in my country. Maybe they were from elsewhere and assumed it was a thing there too? 😂
I wouldn’t be surprised, considering the accent of scammers calling me with phone plans and stuff.
Parking tickets too here. Though they don’t call it a discount, it’s basically the price and if you wait too long the price goes up.
Ha ha, my random text was really vague about what council had issued the bogus parking ticket. By contrast when I strayed into a bus lane one time I got a letter from my council, complete with a very clear photo of me driving my car in said bus lane. And yes, I got a discount for paying right away.
I am redeeming the card now
DO NOT REDEEM THE CARD
yes I’m redeeming the card❓
DO NOOOTTTT REDEEEEMMM
I got a call from “my bank” saying there was a problem with my account and if I give them my account number and details now we can resolve it. I was like "you’re the bank and you called me so you have my account number and info. What’s your name and employee number? And dude just cussed and hung up on me lol
“Oh no, that’s terrible. Tell you what, I’ll hang up and call you back using the number on your website and we can continue this conversation.”
For me it was always Microsoft support service. With a very bad accent some guy told me I have a virus and just have to look how many entries are in my event log for proof.
As I didn’t immediately ended conversation to see where it goes, I was handed to another support guy who told me I have to download their expensive anti-virus tool and need to pay by credit card.
Somehow I was kicked out of the line without warning as I was probably considered too stupid to follow their orders.
At least I kept two of them busy for about 20 minutes so they couldn’t scam other people at the same time.I got one of those calls when I got in the car to go home from work. Since I’d be bored I kept him on the line, pretending I was a really old guy who had to walk to get to the computer and boot it up slowly. Strung him along for about fifteen minutes before traffic eased up and I had to focus more on driving.
When I told him I was bullshitting him he swore at me and hung up.
“The last time my windows crashed was when the asshole neighbour’s kids were playing baseball. It ended up being this whole thing where those kids and my kids got shrunk and I accidentally threw them out before I realized what had happened and everyone got pretty upset before everything was resolved and we became good friends. So you’re saying that that happened because of a virus? If you get rid of the virus, will you also undo the whole shrinking thing?”
Or act like you have a real virus. Like it keeps opening ads every two seconds and bitch at them for adding so many ads to Windows. Like try to act like an amazing mark for them but make them work for your money–not because you aren’t willing to give it to them but because you’re so dumb you’ve left things in a state where work needs to be done before that can happen.
It Bitcoin gets mentioned, ask why anyone would want you to cut up a coin and send them the bits to an address your smart friend thinks is on Uranus or something.
I’ve seen videos of people that install the remote access software on a VM, I wonder if there’s any where they’ve set it up to pop up new ads every 2 seconds. Even better if they make them wait while they look at each ad to decide if they are interested and insist some just get moved to the side instead of closed because they want to pursue them after the call. Cherry on the cake would be for the ads to be about things like penis reduction or softening pills or hiring a service to fend off all the local singles so you can get on with your day.
cybersecurity education for school-aged children isn’t doing a great job of talking about online safety
This sentence pretty much sums it up. School’s give them a computer, lock it down and put them in a bubble of safe websites and only tell them “there’s a virus boogyman who will get you if youre not careful”
As someone in gen z, I find that most get scammed trying to buy stupid shit. Discounted v bucks, expensive clothing for stupid cheap, stuff like that. Oh and temu, of course. They also get phished pretty easily as well.
I teach IT to seniors and in the last ~3 years the types of digital trouble my students find themselves in has shifted.
We used to spend a lot of lessons talking about phishing scams, link safety, URL verification, etc. Our pop up sessions would involve lots of calling banks to get cards cancelled after mistakes were made.
But now my lessons are on “oh, that one is a real Toll text, you should have paid that, I know they used to send them in the mail and this text looks like a scam, but that’s how they do it now, and you really do owe that money to the police, that’s why you’re getting phone calls from the police, it’s not a spoofing scam, you missed a real toll notice, I’m so sorry, it was buried in your spam folder”
Older people got the memo about scams and they got block happy, now they ignore real notices.
I’ve done the same thing, I was getting texts for parking fines and permit renewals and I don’t have a lisence because I’m visually impaired so obviously a scam.
Only I forgot that when I was 16 grandma gave me her old car, I was like “the fuck do I do with this” so I gave the keys to my little brother and moved out.
15 years later, turns out the car has been in my name the whole time, which makes sense, I don’t remember signing anything about the car ever. My brother had no idea his permit was even expired because they were sending the text to the owner contactvia the car rego, not the drivers contact details my brother provided, and because I’d been ignoring the texts it took a while to iron out with the council, especially because my brother and “my” car are not just in another state, but another territory.
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hey 3 squares a day and never a dull moment. jail it is.
