hello, you ornery critters

sci fi + fantasy, nature, animals, art, video games & science. in my 30s. white gender-questionable lesbian in aotearoa. i tag directly for most triggery things ie 'guns', 'teeth', etc. flight rising blog is @dragonbouquet.

[chinesewednesday]

[weaselle]

I know i've said it before, but if you are concerned it could be real and not a scam, the best way to avoid getting scammed is to return contact separately.

Here's how that works:

say you get a text from your internet provider, let's say it's Comcast (whom i hate). So you have this text that says it's from Comcast about your bill with a contact number and a clickable link -- could be real, could be a scam.

Don't touch anything about this text. Open a web browser and look up the customer service number for Comcast. Or get the number from the bill they send you. However you do it, get the contact info for Comcast from a trusted source, like an official phone directory or the Comcast website itself.

Get in touch with them using that information.

So. Let's run the example both ways it could go.

If it IS a scam: you reach out to Comcast and tell them you were contacted about a problem with your bill, they look you up in their customer database, and they tell you there is no problem with your bill.

If it's NOT a scam, you do the same thing, they look you up, and they explain the problem. In this case, neither Comcast nor the employees involved give a single shit whether or not you clicked the link in the text vs. going through their official website.

This works the same for the your bank, the IRS, Amazon, political causes, charities, everything.

By handling any questionable incoming calls to action this way, you significantly protect yourself from scams and malware and shit

[cozyandconcerned]

You can do this with phone calls too!!! If a company calls you asking for some info or about a problem with you card/account/whatever you can ask them for a reference number for your case and call back later. You don't have to give a reason but if you feel awkward you can just say you have a meeting in 2 minutes but can call back another time to deal with it.

If it's not scam they'll be like sure, here's the reference number. Then you follow the instructions above, call the separate number you find yourself on a reputable website and give that person the reference number. And they'll help you resolve the issue.

Don't let scammers scare you over the phone into giving them sensitive information!!!!

[weaselle]

great addition ^^^

[greenycrimson]

Also: always call them back using a different phone.

There's tricks scammers can do to impersonate the real company if you call from your own phone, but this stuff is much harder to pull when you phone from a different device.

E.g. they tell you they'll hang up and you call the number (that they've given you) straight away; this usually comes with a time pressure to create what is called a 'hot state' in the victim, so maybe they tell you that someone's trying to steal something from your bank account and they need to act urgently to stop it, so you follow the instructions given, upset, worried, not realising that they've hacked your phone and are sitting on your line waiting for you to make another call, ready to impersonate a call centre.

So yeah - look up the number yourself, but call them from a different phone. Every air gap you create helps keep you safe.

[txttletale]

really enjoying calling chatgpt a 'magic 8ball' because while far from a perfect analogy i feel like it is a very good deflationary weapon against both hype and antihype that helps bring things into perspective by detaching the actual thign from the cultural object it's attached to. "this magic 8ball is going to become sentient" i dont think thats true. "if you talk to a magic 8ball it will kill your soul" that one doesnt sound true also to be honest

[nepofledgling]

happy pride month from sápmi! ❤️💚💛💙 I want to show you the sámi pride flag, it’s a rainbow version of the sámi flag (bottom left picture) and I think it’s really beautiful

[nepofledgling]

happy pride month from sápmi again!

[kosmogrl]

“I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy” I would, next

[iphisesque]

my dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called “early 2000s harry potter livejournal forum” 😳 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd 💯

me: yeah whatever. i don’t feel shit.

5 minutes later: dude i swear i just saw cassandra clare post an incest fic

my buddy angua9 pacing: msscribe is lying to us

[chaifootsteps]

[sagacious-sdaughter]

"Hey there pepperhead, legal isn't super exited about this tweet"

[catchymemes]

[lowerroad]

it's a good thing mensah is already married with kids by the start of all systems red because can you imagine trying to make a new longterm relationship work when you have to explain to potential partners that murderbot will be there. no not romantically or sexually. but it is there.

[kosmogrl]

[estro-boi]

we gotta get back to torrent distribution, i just watched someone eat eight grand in bandwidth charges because they ran a direct-download piracy site with local file hosting through cloudflare. torrents were invented literally for this exact reason

[estro-boi]

torrents work like this

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

please learn to torrent

[macleod]

How to Use Torrents (with Pictures) - wikiHow

An expert guide to get started using torrentsTorrents are one of the most popular forms of file sharing on the internet, accounting for over

always use qbittorrent, do not use bittorrent or utorrent.

[deepdwellingsteamboat]

#pretty much what he said (insp.)

[salmon-n-hazel]

Clover and daisy

My print shop: INPRNT

[dark-spirit-tamamoland]

they're still terming random transfems as i type this i see which does make quite a statement doing this today specifically

[puppetstuffing]

watched three girls who reblogged its new blog mutual aidpost (made literally 15 minutes ago) already disappear from its notifs. transfems are not included in their pride :/

[puppetedlove]

:)

[puppetvictim]

:)

[all-vampires-are-gay]

Every glasses-related poll honestly needs to be separated into diopter ranges like wrestling weight classes bc every timeeeeee these +1.25 bitches are in the notes like "OMG why would you wear glasses in the shower!! why would you wear glasses having sex!!" because without them i am functionally blind. you may as well turn the lights off at that point bc i am feeling my way to the pussy like Velma. those are my eyes, bitch

[itsjunetime]

clowngirl getting an orchiectomy and the surgeon just keeps removing ball after ball after ball after ball after

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

clown nurse standing by solemnly adding each successive ball to the ones she's already juggling

[hotvampireadjacent]