#it's only monday and I'm over this week | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

In Q3 of 2020, 31% of US users access the Tumblr app daily.

#it's only monday and I'm over this week

starfleetwitch · 11 months

Text

That moment when you tell someone what will happen if they do a thing but they do it anyway and now they're fucking around and finding out and you're just sat there like...

Because you know you can't say 'I told you so' even though they're about to make it your problem.

#If he had have listened to me on Friday none of the bull shit would have happened and we'd be fine for the deadline #But what would I know? 🙄 I'm only the person who actually knows how this all works #And now I have to clean up a mess that literally didn't need to happen #Im so over it #It's only Monday but it's been a long week #Personal #Work related #If you're gonna make me do extra work cause you didn't listen atleast let me be petty for 5 seconds!

17 notes · View notes

theladyragnell · 2 years

Text

This week on letterstosestrilles, it’s the final episode, and time for everything to wrap up and for the future to play out. Featuring: rest, parental resurrection, planetary renewal, and a soft epilogue full of hope and happiness.

Thank you to everyone who came along for the ride.

As befits an episode that covers quite a span of time, there are four proper recaps and a supplement this week. Start with ONE, then TWO, THREE, FOUR, and the SUPPLEMENT (though if you would rather end on emotions than humor, swap the last two, it reads fine either way)! Or if, now that the campaign is over, you want to start reading Elyn’s adventures from the beginning, there’s no better time, and you can start them HERE.

#ponds have uses #to be clear this is DEFINITELY not the last godsfall content you are getting #there's at least one more song i'm trying to gear up the courage to post #at some point there's going to be an epic fandom primer powerpoint #and you KNOW there is going to be fic #but i am feeling so many emotions over the ending of the game #and of these recaps i have been doing nearly every week for five years now #i know they are not widely read #but i am so proud of them #and so glad i've been able to complement the campaign in this way #anyway whew sorry having a lot of emotions for a monday morning #only the most hinged of content here

17 notes · View notes

lambrinichampagne · 17 days

Text

log on to twitter for the first time in a week, immediately see vile antisemitism🙃

#I'm over this week already and it's only Monday

0 notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

Text

How I got scammed

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

I wuz robbed.

More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And then he tried to do it again, a week later!

Here's what happened. Over the Christmas holiday, I traveled to New Orleans. The day we landed, I hit a Chase ATM in the French Quarter for some cash, but the machine declined the transaction. Later in the day, we passed a little credit-union's ATM and I used that one instead (I bank with a one-branch credit union and generally there's no fee to use another CU's ATM).

A couple days later, I got a call from my credit union. It was a weekend, during the holiday, and the guy who called was obviously working for my little CU's after-hours fraud contractor. I'd dealt with these folks before – they service a ton of little credit unions, and generally the call quality isn't great and the staff will often make mistakes like mispronouncing my credit union's name.

That's what happened here – the guy was on a terrible VOIP line and I had to ask him to readjust his mic before I could even understand him. He mispronounced my bank's name and then asked if I'd attempted to spend $1,000 at an Apple Store in NYC that day. No, I said, and groaned inwardly. What a pain in the ass. Obviously, I'd had my ATM card skimmed – either at the Chase ATM (maybe that was why the transaction failed), or at the other credit union's ATM (it had been a very cheap looking system).

I told the guy to block my card and we started going through the tedious business of running through recent transactions, verifying my identity, and so on. It dragged on and on. These were my last hours in New Orleans, and I'd left my family at home and gone out to see some of the pre-Mardi Gras krewe celebrations and get a muffalata, and I could tell that I was going to run out of time before I finished talking to this guy.

"Look," I said, "you've got all my details, you've frozen the card. I gotta go home and meet my family and head to the airport. I'll call you back on the after-hours number once I'm through security, all right?"

He was frustrated, but that was his problem. I hung up, got my sandwich, went to the airport, and we checked in. It was total chaos: an Alaska Air 737 Max had just lost its door-plug in mid-air and every Max in every airline's fleet had been grounded, so the check in was crammed with people trying to rebook. We got through to the gate and I sat down to call the CU's after-hours line. The person on the other end told me that she could only handle lost and stolen cards, not fraud, and given that I'd already frozen the card, I should just drop by the branch on Monday to get a new card.

We flew home, and later the next day, I logged into my account and made a list of all the fraudulent transactions and printed them out, and on Monday morning, I drove to the bank to deal with all the paperwork. The folks at the CU were even more pissed than I was. The fraud that run up to more than $8,000, and if Visa refused to take it out of the merchants where the card had been used, my little credit union would have to eat the loss.

I agreed and commiserated. I also pointed out that their outsource, after-hours fraud center bore some blame here: I'd canceled the card on Saturday but most of the fraud had taken place on Sunday. Something had gone wrong.

One cool thing about banking at a tiny credit-union is that you end up talking to people who have actual authority, responsibility and agency. It turned out the the woman who was processing my fraud paperwork was a VP, and she decided to look into it. A few minutes later she came back and told me that the fraud center had no record of having called me on Saturday.

"That was the fraudster," she said.

Oh, shit. I frantically rewound my conversation, trying to figure out if this could possibly be true. I hadn't given him anything apart from some very anodyne info, like what city I live in (which is in my Wikipedia entry), my date of birth (ditto), and the last four digits of my card.

Wait a sec.

He hadn't asked for the last four digits. He'd asked for the last seven digits. At the time, I'd found that very frustrating, but now – "The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue, right?" I asked the VP.

I'd given him my entire card number.

Goddammit.

The thing is, I know a lot about fraud. I'm writing an entire series of novels about this kind of scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

And most summers, I go to Defcon, and I always go to the "social engineering" competitions where an audience listens as a hacker in a soundproof booth cold-calls merchants (with the owner's permission) and tries to con whoever answers the phone into giving up important information.

But I'd been conned.

Now look, I knew I could be conned. I'd been conned before, 13 years ago, by a Twitter worm that successfully phished out of my password via DM:

https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

That scam had required a miracle of timing. It started the day before, when I'd reset my phone to factory defaults and reinstalled all my apps. That same day, I'd published two big online features that a lot of people were talking about. The next morning, we were late getting out of the house, so by the time my wife and I dropped the kid at daycare and went to the coffee shop, it had a long line. Rather than wait in line with me, my wife sat down to read a newspaper, and so I pulled out my phone and found a Twitter DM from a friend asking "is this you?" with a URL.

Assuming this was something to do with those articles I'd published the day before, I clicked the link and got prompted for my Twitter login again. This had been happening all day because I'd done that mobile reinstall the day before and all my stored passwords had been wiped. I entered it but the page timed out. By that time, the coffees were ready. We sat and chatted for a bit, then went our own ways.

I was on my way to the office when I checked my phone again. I had a whole string of DMs from other friends. Each one read "is this you?" and had a URL.

Oh, shit, I'd been phished.

If I hadn't reinstalled my mobile OS the day before. If I hadn't published a pair of big articles the day before. If we hadn't been late getting out the door. If we had been a little more late getting out the door (so that I'd have seen the multiple DMs, which would have tipped me off).

There's a name for this in security circles: "Swiss-cheese security." Imagine multiple slices of Swiss cheese all stacked up, the holes in one slice blocked by the slice below it. All the slices move around and every now and again, a hole opens up that goes all the way through the stack. Zap!

The fraudster who tricked me out of my credit card number had Swiss cheese security on his side. Yes, he spoofed my bank's caller ID, but that wouldn't have been enough to fool me if I hadn't been on vacation, having just used a pair of dodgy ATMs, in a hurry and distracted. If the 737 Max disaster hadn't happened that day and I'd had more time at the gate, I'd have called my bank back. If my bank didn't use a slightly crappy outsource/out-of-hours fraud center that I'd already had sub-par experiences with. If, if, if.

The next Friday night, at 5:30PM, the fraudster called me back, pretending to be the bank's after-hours center. He told me my card had been compromised again. But: I hadn't removed my card from my wallet since I'd had it replaced. Also, it was half an hour after the bank closed for the long weekend, a very fraud-friendly time. And when I told him I'd call him back and asked for the after-hours fraud number, he got very threatening and warned me that because I'd now been notified about the fraud that any losses the bank suffered after I hung up the phone without completing the fraud protocol would be billed to me. I hung up on him. He called me back immediately. I hung up on him again and put my phone into do-not-disturb.

The following Tuesday, I called my bank and spoke to their head of risk-management. I went through everything I'd figured out about the fraudsters, and she told me that credit unions across America were being hit by this scam, by fraudsters who somehow knew CU customers' phone numbers and names, and which CU they banked at. This was key: my phone number is a reasonably well-kept secret. You can get it by spending money with Equifax or another nonconsensual doxing giant, but you can't just google it or get it at any of the free services. The fact that the fraudsters knew where I banked, knew my name, and had my phone number had really caused me to let down my guard.

The risk management person and I talked about how the credit union could mitigate this attack: for example, by better-training the after-hours card-loss staff to be on the alert for calls from people who had been contacted about supposed card fraud. We also went through the confusing phone-menu that had funneled me to the wrong department when I called in, and worked through alternate wording for the menu system that would be clearer (this is the best part about banking with a small CU – you can talk directly to the responsible person and have a productive discussion!). I even convinced her to buy a ticket to next summer's Defcon to attend the social engineering competitions.

There's a leak somewhere in the CU systems' supply chain. Maybe it's Zelle, or the small number of corresponding banks that CUs rely on for SWIFT transaction forwarding. Maybe it's even those after-hours fraud/card-loss centers. But all across the USA, CU customers are getting calls with spoofed caller IDs from fraudsters who know their registered phone numbers and where they bank.

I've been mulling this over for most of a month now, and one thing has really been eating at me: the way that AI is going to make this kind of problem much worse.

Not because AI is going to commit fraud, though.

One of the truest things I know about AI is: "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

I trusted this fraudster specifically because I knew that the outsource, out-of-hours contractors my bank uses have crummy headsets, don't know how to pronounce my bank's name, and have long-ass, tedious, and pointless standardized questionnaires they run through when taking fraud reports. All of this created cover for the fraudster, whose plausibility was enhanced by the rough edges in his pitch - they didn't raise red flags.

As this kind of fraud reporting and fraud contacting is increasingly outsourced to AI, bank customers will be conditioned to dealing with semi-automated systems that make stupid mistakes, force you to repeat yourself, ask you questions they should already know the answers to, and so on. In other words, AI will groom bank customers to be phishing victims.

This is a mistake the finance sector keeps making. 15 years ago, Ben Laurie excoriated the UK banks for their "Verified By Visa" system, which validated credit card transactions by taking users to a third party site and requiring them to re-enter parts of their password there:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090331094020/http://www.links.org/?p=591

This is exactly how a phishing attack works. As Laurie pointed out, this was the banks training their customers to be phished.

I came close to getting phished again today, as it happens. I got back from Berlin on Friday and my suitcase was damaged in transit. I've been dealing with the airline, which means I've really been dealing with their third-party, outsource luggage-damage service. They have a terrible website, their emails are incoherent, and they officiously demand the same information over and over again.

This morning, I got a scam email asking me for more information to complete my damaged luggage claim. It was a terrible email, from a noreply@ email address, and it was vague, officious, and dishearteningly bureaucratic. For just a moment, my finger hovered over the phishing link, and then I looked a little closer.

On any other day, it wouldn't have had a chance. Today – right after I had my luggage wrecked, while I'm still jetlagged, and after days of dealing with my airline's terrible outsource partner – it almost worked.

So much fraud is a Swiss-cheese attack, and while companies can't close all the holes, they can stop creating new ones.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to post about it whenever I get scammed. I find the inner workings of scams to be fascinating, and it's also important to remind people that everyone is vulnerable sometimes, and scammers are willing to try endless variations until an attack lands at just the right place, at just the right time, in just the right way. If you think you can't get scammed, that makes you especially vulnerable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #social engineering #phishing #ai #swiss cheese security #infosec #finance #fraud #carding

10K notes · View notes

prettycottagequeer · 1 month

Text

ok maybe I'm a little late to this BUT I'm gonna do a to-do list motivation thingy because I've had the worst two weeks since I started college :)

SO these I should start on asap:

50 I make the snack I really want but I haven't had the motivation to make

100 I clean my dorm. another thing I've been meaning to do for a week

150 I do the presentation about mid-victorian fashion I've been putting off (due Monday)

200 I start memorizing the monologue that was due a week ago (now due Tuesday)

these can wait longer:

300 I spend time outside. It's so nice but I'm getting stuck scrolling because I feel like shit. vicious cycle ect

500 I start setting a better weekend routine (aka getting up before noon)

1k I start working out again. I was doing a routine to get more masc and build muscle and I liked it but life hit me like Crowley driving the Bentley and I've missed like 3 weeks

2k I buy my first binder. I've been coping with sports bras for almost a year now and I haven't been able to justify spending $50+ on a binder even though I know I'd love it and use it everyday.

Do I tag people? I don't know but I'm going to. @the-globe-theatre-maggot @weirdly-specific-but-ok @howmanyholesinswisscheese

here's just some context if you want to read, feel free to skip. some of this I've talked about in the maggot server, some I haven't, but I really just need a place for this to go that's out of my head. tw homophobia, transphobia, car crash(??)

How I Have Been Run Over By The Bentley Going 90 In Central London What Feels Like 50 Times In The Last Two Weeks

I'm going to college about 4 hours away from my parents, and it's been really nice. They.. suck, to say the least. transphobic/homophobic ect, super traditional conservative catholic, racist, all of it. so i tried to move somewhere where I wouldn't have to think about them and I could be myself and do what I can to be happy. March 1st was the start of my spring break, which meant going home because the dorms close. I was already not excited, but I was prepared. the problem with being away from home is I forget just how bad they are. My optimism gets the better of me and I think maybe this time they'll be better. so I decided to not hide my septum piercing.

that was a mistake. it starts a whole fight where they say we know you're trans, you're actually a girl and you always will be, we have the bones argument, they think I'm being influenced by demons or something (if only they knew about crowley) because I want to change my name, and they tell me that going on t will completely ruin my body and give me cancer and other things. They're also mad about my dyed hair, septum, and general style, and say I'm setting a terrible example for my (5) younger siblings and make it a point to tell me just how much of a disappointment I am. I think I'm pretty cute and fun but y'know, whatever. very fun time. I lie so much, don't give them any more details about my identity, and say I'm not planning to go on t to save my ass. which is all on instinct which makes me feel worse because if I'm really trans I should be able to stand up for that, right? maybe I'm faking the dysphoria.

the next morning I wake up really sick, and spend the rest of the week sick and feeling like shit because I'm home and back in the same place and situation I was a year ago that I thought I escaped. at one point I pretty much lose my voice but also kind of get gender euphoria from it. it's weird.

On Friday it's time for me to drive back 4 hours to school, and I make it about 3/4 of the way when google maps takes me on a random gravel road and I crash my car, really crash my car, like sideways-in-a-ditch-windows-broken-crawling-up-out-the-door crash it in the middle of nowhere. (I was fully paying attention to the road, it was raining and super slick) I call my parents because I have no one else to call and I sit in a Subway for 3 hours while they drive to get my car. when they get there they're (understandably) really mad, and they tell me that I'm not mature enough to be going to school so far away and I need to get my shit together and stop depending on them. which. is probably true. but made me feel even more stupid about the fact that I crashed my car. I get back to school and I'm still Very Sick with no energy or motivation to do anything. So I've spent the last week trying to get better and honestly to do anything. it hasn't really worked. I'm a lot better health-wise (Not emotionally), still sick but I have a lot of work due, so I really need a push to get started

2K notes · View notes

skellydun · 1 year

Text

Actual Phone Conversation I Had With A Girl Absolutely Going Through It This Morning:

me very quickly: hi this is dylan from x. how are you today? is now a good time to talk?

girl on the phone: what? oh you know! it's just work, work, work.

me: haha yeah! Just another busy Monday :)

girl on the phone i have known for exactly 11 seconds: sometimes i wish it would just stop. it's relentless. and it's every week! how many mondays can someone go through?

me trying to do my job: ha ha i know right? so I'm calling--

girl on the phone i have known for exactly 16 seconds: i'm so tired. i'm soooooo tired. shelby kept me up all night again. she will not get over keegan. they keep calling each other just to yell i swear to god.

me: only 4 days till the weekend and some sleep! :D

girl: yeah. but she's sleeping with me. at my house. didn't he tell you? who is going to get the dog? or the fucking 300 dollar blender I got them?

me: unfortunately no! so i would love to know more but the reason i'm calling is to get you scheduled for x job interview are you still interested?

girl whispering: what?

me awkwardly: it's...i'm dylan. from x. the x job you applied for. we would like to interview you for it.

girl: oh my god. no. oh my - I am so sorry. I thought you were my friend--I cannot believe--I told you work was relentless. I don't really mean that! I talked about blenders!

me: no, no I totally get it. It can be. But that's why you're interviewing for somewhere better! Tell Shelby to apply too! Do you have any availability on Thursday?

#JUST KNOW IF UR EVER AWKWARD ON THE PHONE ITS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD #She was my first call of the day and I was like Girl please let me cancel all my other calls so I can learn more about u #Ur interviewing in TN but lets be friends #sometimes my job is funny #and then the rest of the day i kept thinking how relentless is this day #and then some douche hole sent me a demeaning email and i was annoyed so it's really ups and down of the office world

18K notes · View notes

genderqueerdykes · 2 months

Text

physically disabled schizophrenic homeless trans person about to lose hotel room

hello, i know i have other posts out right now, but i'm in a very terrifying situation right now and i am scared shitless. it is sunday, 2/25/2024. i got a call back from the government waitlist apartment that i've been approved for, and need to Uber over to their office tomorrow morning to sign paperwork to get moved in later this week. they said the absolute earliest they can move me into my unit is tuesday. my hotel stay runs out on tomorrow, monday morning at 11 am and i am currently waiting on my deposits from my art business to hit my account- they take several days to process, and aren't coming in fast enough. the rest of the money i had on my person went to paying for my hotel up until now and my storage unit bill.

i hate to make another post while i have others circulating, but if i do not get at least monday night paid for before 11 am on 2/26, i will be completely without housing right before i'm able to move into my new place. i don't have anywhere else to stay right now and i can't afford any setbacks with this apartment, as i've been working with them since october. i need to be able to afford my current hotel until they are able to move me in, and uber to and from the complex.

my hotel is currently $38/night:

please note these are the only payment gateways that will get to me fast enough so i can book more nights in my hotel & afford an uber to and from my new apartment:

cash App: $glitterGraphix venmo: @ Equinoxian pay pal: glittergraphicnightmare@ gmail.com

thank you to everyone who has already helped- your contributions will be able to go toward getting us moved into our new place, buying necessities like appliances, transportation and more. thank you for all of your help. again, sorry for making another post but we are literally down to the wire and i'm anxious as all hell.

3K notes · View notes

Last Seen Blogs

anonymousumiko

sumiko’s playroomღ

anthropoperipherism

roki12

You died

kyreebroach

Kyree Broach

read-in-the-name-of-your-lord

Isa Ibn Yaq'ub