15 Hitting Mailboxes with Baseball Bats

The Computer Exorcist Podcast

Today Marc calls out and shames legal companies that in reality are diabolical scams. In one of them, a company mails you a letter asking for $125 to fill out a simple $9 government form. In another, a company asks $289 for domain hosting, which is normally $14 ... oh yeah, and they also end up controlling your website name as an added bonus.

Not illegal, but still evil.

It's like driving around with a baseball bat sticking out of your car. Nothing illegal about that alone, but we know the intention is to knock over some mailboxes.

We then talk about a guy running around telling people to put antivirus products on their computers or phones, not realizing that hasn't protected anyone against anything since 2013, and cannot protect you against links that people email you. We then explain how modern threats ACTUALLY work: Since nobody can actually "hack" a computer or phone anymore, bad guys now call you and convince you to LET them into your machine, employing fully legalized remote support tools to do so.

We then discuss that one week where Apple users could hear and see the person they were calling before the person answered the call! I bet a lot of people overheard the recipient yelling out, "WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY WANT NOW?"

We finish up reading an article from the Free Software Foundation discussing an ideal world where people were actually taught a little bit about technology. It'd be harder for Big Tech to spy on us or dupe us into things we don't need, or lure us into "metaverses" where they can control us. Imagine if people had an ounce of awareness.

AWARENESS, folks.

"Technology without culture doesn't work." -Moonhaven