Comments on: A new twist on paying for Internet porn

A new twist on paying for Internet porn

Samuel Farrow — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 06:52:27 -0800

A new twist on paying for Internet porn Although no mention of porn in the CNN story. Anyone ever been threatened like this?

By: nthdegx

nthdegx — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 06:54:52 -0800

Idiot tax. I'm all for it.

By: jon_kill

jon_kill — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 07:15:57 -0800

And people actually pay this? How many of them? Why? I mean, if the bully is holding you up by your collar asking for your lunch money... but, I would think my first reaction, if I didn't know enough to just hit delete and despair civilization, would be to go the the "computer guy" and tell him someone was threatening his network. Or something.

By: a3matrix

a3matrix — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 07:28:42 -0800

How many AOL users are going to fall for this I wonder?

By: XQUZYPHYR

XQUZYPHYR — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 07:33:56 -0800

What I find more disturbing is how a widespread epidemic of this scam could end up benefitting actual child pornographers. If enough people start hearing about this scam, then there's just as much plausibility in some co-worker being caught with kiddie porn on his workstation thinking quick and saying to the boss, "see? It's that damn virus again!" If you don't buy that, believe me, I've seen enough bosses ignorant of how the internet works to believe that "it's some kind of virus" when, umm, someone, you know, let's say a friend of mine, forgets to delete the hack of Unreal he put on the network during lunch hour or something.

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 07:33:57 -0800

Idiot tax. --nthdegx Yeah...I have to agree.

By: alms

alms — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 07:45:34 -0800

It's not an idiot tax, it's a public health problem. The 0.0001% of recipients who fall for this make it a very profitable business, thereby increasing the amount of spam that all of us get.

By: twine42

twine42 — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 07:46:00 -0800

Erm... and why exactly is broadband making this easier for extortionists?

By: mischief

mischief — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 07:47:15 -0800

I wonder how many of these get deleted as spam unwittingly rather than opened and read.

By: dabitch

dabitch — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 08:03:13 -0800

I've received a bunch of similar emails, childporn and credit card charging threats. I laugh and spamcop them.

By: Blue Stone

Blue Stone — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 08:03:39 -0800

"They prey on the nice secretary who wouldn't do anything wrong. When she gets one of these e-mails she thinks 'Oh, my goodness what am I going to do?' So she puts it on her credit card and transfers the funds to the (suspect's online bank) account and hopes it goes away," a British detective specializing in cyber-crime told Reuters. As opposed to telling her boss? Maybe they should put something like this in the interview process for new recruits? Y'know to sort the wheat from the retards?

By: pmurray63

pmurray63 — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 08:03:49 -0800

Pay me or I'll tell your boss you read Metafilter!

By: strangeleftydoublethink

strangeleftydoublethink — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 08:36:24 -0800

Do they accept checks?

By: skallas

skallas — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 09:04:10 -0800

I'm sure once they've paid them, the scammers will forever leave them alone. I wonder what step 2 is after they've paid up. "Download this to remove our virus." Which would actually download a real trojan? Also, whats with the attack on porn webmasters in the FPP? Porn pioneered ecommerce and in general the industry has to keep its nose extra clean because of privacy concerns, state laws, and anti-porn zealots.

By: nthdegx

nthdegx — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 09:23:34 -0800

I worked in a company where some people might be concerned about receiving an email like this. Often, I'd refer someone to an explanatory website to calm their fears. The problem with this is that a lot of people are unable to understand relatively simple written sentences, especially when they are strung together to form paragraphs containing more than one concept or idea. Then they come back with some assumed notion about the content of the explanation that has managed to increase their fears rather than helping them. This is what frustrates me most when British people have a perception of Americans as stupid. Idiocy is rife in Britain - especially in the office.

By: tomplus2

tomplus2 — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 10:19:28 -0800

Idiot tax? I don't think so. Ignorant tax, maybe.

By: billsaysthis

billsaysthis — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 10:57:11 -0800

Idiocy is rife in Britain - especially in the office. Of course it is, we've seen The Office over here you know!

By: tommasz

tommasz — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 13:20:46 -0800

My company has a facility in Britain. They're at least 2 years behind in system upgrades because management there was afraid giving them Win XP would be too much for them to handle. My experiences have been that they're not at all like that, but I can't claim to have interacted with anyone other than engineers.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 23:00:01 -0800

XQ: Trojan horse found responsible for child porn, this last August, the 2nd such exoneration in Britain.