I found Parkinson's Law of Data with 2 other Laws were the most true definitions on Jargon File.
I just liked the definition "Data expands to fill the space available for storage". I have felt it myself and seen all other people around me suffering for the same reason.
When I had my first PC, it had 3 giga harddrive, and I was really happy over it, I could watch movies, had several hundreds of music files and liked my PC and considered it to be a good and enough for me. Then the PC crashed and I was forced to get a new one. he new one had everything more, memory, harddrive, videocard etc... and I started to have more data. Windows itself took more and more space on C disc.
Then I got my first laptop - I just could not believe my happiness - I had 40 Gigabytes of harddrive, for me it meant thousands of files of music and after some time no stored movie on my laptop. This one also crashed, and unfortunately I did not get a laptop with bigger harddrive, but the same - I was really sad, for 2 years I basically could not include any new music files to my computer, because it was full - 30 gigas of music (I was even forced to remove some music from laptop, it was a traumatic experience) and a little bit other things.
Fortunately my luck changed :) and now I have 160 gigas of harddrive, I have had it for 2 months and half of it is full.
The more room there is the more things will be put inside (also applies to any living condition, it does not matter how big house someone has, it will be full of things anyway).
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Chapter 6 - internet scam
I will write about a scam that I recently got close with. My mother is a sign language translator, that means I have also communicated with many deaf people since I was a child.
Deaf people in Estonia are friends with all kinds of technical possibilities, they have mobile phones – no they do not call with it, but write SMS’s, really easy and quick way to communicate with each other or their sign language translator. Do you know that with some cases you can even call for Ambulance with SMS in Estonia ;)
But the ambulance is not what I wanted to talk about.
Couple of months ago my mother called me and asked that if I could help one of her deaf people with English. She told me that the man is good using internet and also understands some English, but this time he would like to have some help with a letter that is telling him that he has win several millions of pounds in a lottery. I understood right away that there is something fishy in it. But of course I was ready to help, especially a person that according to my mother seemed to believe this email.
So I told, that ok, he can forward me the email.
Of course I did not need to read more than half if the first sentence
„Transfer Options for the Immediate Transfer of your Winnings of the Sum of £750,000 Pounds Sterling with Transfer Identification code: ELPC/MWT/0143“
The rest of the letter had spelling mistakes in it, more fishy information, no mentioning real name of the receiver, let’s name him Jüri.
To make Jüri relize he is being tricked I sent him long explanation of these kind of scams, took details from this email to make him understand why it was a fake. I sent the letter to him and was sure he understands everything and is happy that he is saved.
Next day my mother called me and adn said Jüri vas happy to get my mail and understood everything, he agreed that contacting this email was not good. But... he had already sent a response to this email before. Which of course ment that later he got more mails and when he did not answer them then a new mail from new address came, claiming that he has won even bigger sum of money with somekind of Lottery that he had never took part in.
Deaf people get most of their information from written texts or TV (they watch a lot of TV), but it also means that for example in a bus, sitting alone, they never get some new information from people talking next to them.
Jüri had never heard about internet scams. So when the next letter came, he again contacted me about it. I, again, took time to answer him and was sure that this time he will understand and will delete all future messages like that without further reading. During the time he had already told my mother that he will buy my mother a car if she helps him with this. It was sad, how Jüri believed that he has really won something. His financial status is not good, so he really wanted to believe this luck.
After I got third letter from him I suggested to change his e-mail address, or at least make a google account and forward all emails from his hot.ee address to google and ignore spam mails.
The tricky thing was that he understood my explanations and believed me what he was not so good at making connections with new mails he got about his winnings and big sums – he did not get the big picture how to just get with a first glance to email that this is not a true one.
***
I had a really rough day at the office which continued with really bad internet connection from home (writing this offline right now), but during the workday I tooka look to www.whatsthebloodypoint.com and now writing about it makes me laught. It was just a really good idea to have a webpage like this. I right away thought that I should show this page to Jüri, maybe then he could form a bigger picture to keep himself from believing future fraud letters :P
Because I found the idea to trick the email-frauders into believing that they have a “real believer” on the other side, a really good one, it is quite hard to find ethical problems in it. Of course the whatsthebloodypoint-person was just doing some fun and keeping frauder away from new victims, but at the same time he was cheating as well. It is quite hard to actually detect the frauder. I think that if I would get the email and turned to Police with it, there would be nothing they could do about it. If I ignore the letters, then spammer has more time to find another victim. I looked at the mails bloodypoint-person had got and it really takes time to write them.
I do agree from ethical point of view that making this: http://www.whatsthebloodypoint.com/pics/g1-5.htm is not really a honorman thing. But would playing a trick like this on your friends be unethical – I do not think so. So I also do not think that answering spammers emails, is unethical – I just can’t think seriously about that.
Deaf people in Estonia are friends with all kinds of technical possibilities, they have mobile phones – no they do not call with it, but write SMS’s, really easy and quick way to communicate with each other or their sign language translator. Do you know that with some cases you can even call for Ambulance with SMS in Estonia ;)
But the ambulance is not what I wanted to talk about.
Couple of months ago my mother called me and asked that if I could help one of her deaf people with English. She told me that the man is good using internet and also understands some English, but this time he would like to have some help with a letter that is telling him that he has win several millions of pounds in a lottery. I understood right away that there is something fishy in it. But of course I was ready to help, especially a person that according to my mother seemed to believe this email.
So I told, that ok, he can forward me the email.
Of course I did not need to read more than half if the first sentence
„Transfer Options for the Immediate Transfer of your Winnings of the Sum of £750,000 Pounds Sterling with Transfer Identification code: ELPC/MWT/0143“
The rest of the letter had spelling mistakes in it, more fishy information, no mentioning real name of the receiver, let’s name him Jüri.
To make Jüri relize he is being tricked I sent him long explanation of these kind of scams, took details from this email to make him understand why it was a fake. I sent the letter to him and was sure he understands everything and is happy that he is saved.
Next day my mother called me and adn said Jüri vas happy to get my mail and understood everything, he agreed that contacting this email was not good. But... he had already sent a response to this email before. Which of course ment that later he got more mails and when he did not answer them then a new mail from new address came, claiming that he has won even bigger sum of money with somekind of Lottery that he had never took part in.
Deaf people get most of their information from written texts or TV (they watch a lot of TV), but it also means that for example in a bus, sitting alone, they never get some new information from people talking next to them.
Jüri had never heard about internet scams. So when the next letter came, he again contacted me about it. I, again, took time to answer him and was sure that this time he will understand and will delete all future messages like that without further reading. During the time he had already told my mother that he will buy my mother a car if she helps him with this. It was sad, how Jüri believed that he has really won something. His financial status is not good, so he really wanted to believe this luck.
After I got third letter from him I suggested to change his e-mail address, or at least make a google account and forward all emails from his hot.ee address to google and ignore spam mails.
The tricky thing was that he understood my explanations and believed me what he was not so good at making connections with new mails he got about his winnings and big sums – he did not get the big picture how to just get with a first glance to email that this is not a true one.
***
I had a really rough day at the office which continued with really bad internet connection from home (writing this offline right now), but during the workday I tooka look to www.whatsthebloodypoint.com and now writing about it makes me laught. It was just a really good idea to have a webpage like this. I right away thought that I should show this page to Jüri, maybe then he could form a bigger picture to keep himself from believing future fraud letters :P
Because I found the idea to trick the email-frauders into believing that they have a “real believer” on the other side, a really good one, it is quite hard to find ethical problems in it. Of course the whatsthebloodypoint-person was just doing some fun and keeping frauder away from new victims, but at the same time he was cheating as well. It is quite hard to actually detect the frauder. I think that if I would get the email and turned to Police with it, there would be nothing they could do about it. If I ignore the letters, then spammer has more time to find another victim. I looked at the mails bloodypoint-person had got and it really takes time to write them.
I do agree from ethical point of view that making this: http://www.whatsthebloodypoint.com/pics/g1-5.htm is not really a honorman thing. But would playing a trick like this on your friends be unethical – I do not think so. So I also do not think that answering spammers emails, is unethical – I just can’t think seriously about that.
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