Flight attendants need to shut the fuck up and stop interrupting the first five minutes of Zootopia when we’re taking off. Nobody cares who’s piloting, nobody cares how the flight is going to go, nobody cares about anything anymore, we’re just praying if we crash we die quickly.
Just encountered one of the most convincing Google account takeover scams I’ve seen.
Perfect American accent. Calm. Professional.
They start the call by saying someone tried to hack your Google account using a fake death certificate, then ask if you recognize a recovery email or phone number.
They ask if you’ve received any recent Google emails about an account you don’t recognize trying to recover access.
And sure enough, there’s a legit Google security email.
Here’s the trick.
The attacker isn’t trying to hack your account.
They create a throwaway Google account, set your email as the recovery email, then try to recover that account. Google sends you a real security email.
The scammer calls you live, references the email, and even tells you to verify the headers since it comes directly from Google.
The headers are real. That’s the point.
Then they tell you they’re locking down your account and that you’ll get a recovery prompt on your phone. You just need to approve it to stay safe.
The giveaway was the device and location in the prompt didn’t match me. When I pushed back, they claimed it was from their servers, which obviously makes no sense.
At that point I hung up. I have a personal rule to never approve anything I didn’t initiate, especially while on the phone.
Extremely well executed social engineering. I’m sure this works on a lot of people.
And if someone calls you about account security, assume it’s a scam
Almost everyone I intellectually respect, and admire, ends up with this view -- either via Eastern mysticism, stoicism, Catholicism, etc.
They may not always pull it off, but they understand contentment in this life (and sometimes even fulfillment) requires a humility.
This is different from a nihilistic fatalism, because you can impact your immediate surroundings, and change your own circumstances, but there are forces far larger than you (both in the here and now, and beyond) that you cannot change.
Or, to be less egg-headed about it, you really don't need to have a take on every twitter fight, or engage in every outrage.
This girl just told me she’s been buying chicken stock every week for years. I asked her how many shares and in what company and she said “What? No I just get it from Costco.” We’re so cooked
mental illness tiktok and a subculture that valorizes victimhood are actually memeing a lot of vulnerable people into far worse mental health than they’d otherwise have.