YarrMatey

YarrMatey , 4 days ago

This has nothing to do with MFA. Reread the article.

To understand these questions, you have to know how the scam works. Here’s what typically happens: One of my social media accounts goes down. Suddenly — in a way that feels too quick to be a coincidence, though it’s unclear exactly how they might get an account down taken down — a stranger contacts me via Twitter DMs or email. They promise they’ll get my account back if I pay a price. Sometimes, they claim they have an inside man at Meta.

Performer Abigail Mac has received these messages after losing her account. “It’s people that work at Instagram,” Mac says she believes. “[They’re] extorting them and just stealing their money.”

In her most recent ordeal, Mac says, Meta took down her account then she received a message from a scammer, offering to retrieve the account for $15,000. They swore the account would disappear forever if she didn’t pay them in 24 hours. She replied that she would get her account back herself.

“Then they asked me what my budget was,” Mac says. “Every day [they] would knock some money off. It’s such a scam.”

The scarier scenario occurs when someone messages you are saying, “Hey, save my stuff in case you lose your account.” Then, whoopsie doodle, lo and beyond, your account’s gone. Now, when I receive these messages, my stomach drops.

The worst part is when I’ve paid these people, it’s often worked. They’ve retrieved my account. I’m thankful for that, but it raises questions about how these people operate and what they know, not just about sex workers’ Instagram accounts, but everyone’s. How do they get the accounts back? Where do they work when they’re not retrieving sex workers’ accounts? How do they communicate with Meta to fix the problem? And why does your account get deleted over and over again once you pay these people?

“Once you pay, they know you will pay and keep doing it,” Mac says.

Girls have paid up to $20,000 and have not gotten their accounts back. It’s plausible these scam artists message a girl, report her account, and then contact her via another avenue, such as Twitter or email. But there’s no way to know for sure. For all the talk about the dangers of social media, from teenage anorexia rates to smartphone addiction, the public pays little attention to the harms sex workers face on these sites. (Unless a porn star is fucking a president, you’re not going to see her on the cover of the Wall Street Journal.) We need Meta to investigate the problem and identify what has gone wrong before more people get scammed.

YarrMatey , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

This is definitely a con of Lemmy for me. I like to be more privacy focused but Lemmy gives you 0 privacy on whatever you do on the website. Anyone who wants more privacy on Lemmy is told you have no right to privacy, don’t expect any privacy, everything you do is public on the internet, etc. A massive boner killer for me. I think basic things like deleting your own post or comments should actually get removed from all servers, PMs should not be viewable by anyone except the recipients, and what you vote on or subscribe to should be private. Lemmy doesn’t sell your data but that’s because anyone can take the data for free. I thought this stuff was because Lemmy is still new and will get to it eventually but the push back seems to say this was a choice or is not broken. I ended up exploring different social media alternatives but I like the style of Lemmy better since it is more reddit-like with an active user base plus has different android clients. I don’t like kbin because it shows who upvoted or downvoted something to everyone - it’s not accountability when it erodes your privacy.

I used to comment on Lemmy more but then I ran into this problem when juggling multiple accounts, Liftoff sucks ass at letting you know which account you are logged into (I use Summit now and it is better at it) so I ended up getting my accounts’ wires crossed when I thought using the drop down on your accounts changed your account but no you have to go to manage instances to switch which was not intuitive. I ended up abandoning the accounts when I couldn’t figure out how to actually delete the post from the server.

Edit: man I wish I saw this sooner, might be time for me to either stop posting again or look somewhere else.

YarrMatey , 5 months ago

Thank you for posting that link. I’m not fed up (completely?) yet I suppose but it was eye-opening. I’ll have to be a lot more careful about posting, possibly not post again.

YarrMatey , 6 months ago

I have to agree. I considered Standard Notes but I would have to pay for super notes in order to use images, even if I self-host. Same for code blocks, organizing notes into folders, spreadsheets, web clipper. Have to get the most expensive plan for offline access and being able to have local backups, although it is discounted if you self-host completely but why still pay a sub at that point? I would rather pay once and then be able to self-host using their super notes without paying more every month.

I liked Obsidian but wanted encryption that works on my android so I went with Joplin.

YarrMatey , 7 months ago

Is that you - Futa from hitman reborn?

YarrMatey , 7 months ago

I wish I could install lineage on my s10+ snapdragon. I just got this phone and now I just ordered a pixel to get grapheneos. I was willing to pay this guy on telegram to unlock my phone so I could try to get lineage to work or at least a custom rom, but my bootloader is one update off, I have v6 but he only supports up to v5. I hate ordering new devices when my current ones are still functional. I also am getting rid of my fitbit I also just got and replacing it with the amazon band 5 since it can connect to gadgetbridge. Degoogling is expensive, it shouldn’t be this bad just to get privacy. I’m not sure what to do with my devices I am replacing, but I hate that they had to be replaced in the first place. I also switched from google services to proton mail/drive/vpn.

YarrMatey , 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

I had to take the bus and it left at *7:00am so I was waking up around 6ish everyday. I was constantly tired and had trouble staying awake in school. Taking the bus back put me at arriving at 4pm home. It was awful tbh. I see grade school years, especially high school, as the worst years of my life followed closely by early adulthood in college.

YarrMatey , 8 months ago

Godamn that reminds me of college, I had a class at 7-8ish in the morning but the only bus that could get me there in time left around 5am so I was waking up at 4am to get ready. I would just find a bench to go to sleep until my class started at that point. I had classes throughout the day with hours in between each one so I would stay most of the day at college, spending a lot of time sleeping and trying to study / do homework. The bus is not free for students here. No trains here either. I am not able-bodied so I can’t just walk but it’s a 40 minute drive from where I lived to college with a long highway so I don’t think people are walking that anyway.

I can definetly sympathize with you, it sounds very rough. Just gotta hang in there!

YarrMatey , 8 months ago

Has anyone read their privacy policy?

We may be required to disclose Users personal data in order to protect our legal rights or where disclosure of Users personal data’s are required of us by the judicial authorities only when legal procedures are followed.

Files links that Users download are stored in a database for legal concerns and our internal use. All saved links are erased within 1 month for security reasons and service needs. However all requests made on our site are stored for 1 year, the legal retention period.

I would prefer they had a no-logging policy. This sounds fishy af like a honeypot.