#tech scams

[thoughtportal]

El Salvador knows Bitcoin is a scam

The Hammer is a weekly newsletter from Tech Won’t Save Us. This week: Bitcoin’s botched rollout in El Salvador faced opposition and Amazon’s Tijuana warehouses has pretty dystopian vibes.

[marasfanfics]

For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, there's a scam going around for getting free versions of things like Office or Spotify.

If a video tells you to execute a command on your system - especially in Powershell - don't.

This is downloading malware directly from a website, and will quite possibly bypass your anti-virus/anti-malware software.

Windows Key + R is a short cut to run things.

If you don't know how to use Powershell, don't.

Look up what the commands you're being told to run will do.

Are they including websites that end in uncommon top level domains like .run, .ai, etc? (IANA have a full list of top level domains here)

A top level domain is the bit at the end of your website - .com, .ca, .net, .co.uk, .eu, etc.

What is the website they're adding into the script?

One example in the video is:

iex (irm WEBSITE)

This is telling your computer to download and execute.

And because it's a piece of fileless malware you're using admin privileges via Powershell to pull directly from the internet, it can bypass any protections on your computer.

Do not trust random posts on Tumblr.

Do not trust random posts on Instagram or TikTok.

If someone's telling you that you can get X software for free, there's a catch. And that catch is probably malware.

Instead, look for open source versions of that same software online.

Use GIMP instead of Photoshop.

Use Libre Office instead of Word.

Not to sound like a Linux bro, but Linux instead of Windows, lol.

There are a bazillion tried and tested versions of open source software that you can use.

Shit, don't even trust me. Go look into things. Use your search engine of choice, dig into it.

Stay safe online.

[fancytrinkets]

[thoughtportal]

Why a Little-Known Blockchain-Based Identity Project in Ethiopia Should Concern Us All

There is already evidence of identity information being used to target populations in the Tigray conflict. Imagine the implications of a national ID scheme built on an immutable ledger, driven by commercial incentives and operated from offshore.

The project, known as Cardano, is actually run by a cluster of offshore entities — the Swiss-based Cardano Foundation, Hong Kong-based development arm IOHK and Japan-based venture arm EMURGO. Founded and led by the 34-year-old Charles Hoskinson, who previously co-founded Ethereum, Cardano raised more than US$62 million in an offshore initial coin offering from 2015 through 2017 designed to evade the reach of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Hoskinson, whose ultimate ambition is to build a national ID system for Ethiopia, recently struck a deal with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education for a blockchain-based ID pilot involving five million secondary school students. As he describes it, “Every one of these students will have a digital identity — a DID. That DID carries with it information — metadata — that will travel with them throughout their academic life, and follow them into the economic world.”

At present, Ethiopia lacks a national ID system. Instead, it has a highly decentralized system whereby foundational IDs provided at the municipality level known as “kebele cards” can be used to obtain tax IDs, passports and other functional identity documents. It is perhaps ironic that blockchain promoters such as Hoskinson, who aggressively evangelize “decentralization,” would aspire to build a centralized ID scheme on top of a distributed ledger technology. But distributed computing and decentralized power are not the same thing — far from it. In the case of Cardano, a proof-of-stake consensus protocol allows coin holders to vote and influence how the protocol evolves. Ethiopians, of course, have no say. Moreover, rather than decentralize power, the Cardano network itself becomes a single point of failure — if the network goes down, so do all ID systems.

[milwaukeeaccountant]

Don't fall for tech support scams

Don’t fall for tech support scams

Identity thieves use all different types of tactics to gain access to your personal and financial information — including posing as tech support companies. They often do this by using popup messages alerting people browsing online that their computers have viruses but can be “fixed” by contacting a (fake) security company.

If you ever see a popup message about a free security computer scan,…

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