Why internet scams are so poorly written

I just received two emails supposedly from the Geek Squad, the name of the technical assistance group of the Best Buy store. The first one was from a Brooke Lola who told me that my account had been auto-renewed and that my card had been charged the annual subscription fee of $349.99. If I didn’t authorize this, then they gave me a phone number to call but I had to do so within 24 hours. Then a few minutes later I got the identical message, except that it was from someone named Vernon Jarbine.

I have never dealt with the Geek Squad so of course I immediately suspected a scam and I checked my bank and credit card accounts to make sure that no such charge had been made. According to this article, this is one of seven variants of Geek Squad scams that are currently making the rounds.

The Geek Squad scam is just one example of the widespread tech support scam trend that cost Americans nearly $350 million in 2021 alone, according to the FBI [*].

Scammers prey on victims seeking technical help, or they use the names of recognizable companies (like Best Buy, Amazon, or Apple) to fool you into giving them money, personal information, or remote access to your computer. 

If you need help with your computer or other electronic devices, the last thing you want is to end up getting scammed. So how can you tell if you’re dealing with the real Geek Squad and not a scammer? 

In this guide, we’ll show you how to recognize and avoid the most common Geek Squad scams.

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Brace ourselves for wall-to-wall Queen Elizabeth coverage

[UPDATE: She has in fact died.]

You may recall the massive coverage given last April to the death and funeral of Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth, with the BBC pre-empting coverage of all other programming. This was a bit much even for some Britons, who complained that their favorite programs were being replaced with endless blathering about him. The idea that the whole nation was in mourning for a long time over the death of a 99-year old man was always preposterous.

If that was done for her husband, imagine what the coverage will be like for Elizabeth when she dies. We already have in place what looks like a death watch because she seems to be having some health issues, which is not surprising for someone who is 96 years old.

Elizabeth has had a remarkably long reign. She seems to be physically tough and one wonders what she thinks of newspeople eagerly anticipating her death. It would be nice if she recovers from whatever currently ails her and lives for some time, just to spite these ghouls.

But if and when she eventually dies, we can be sure that the US media, inexplicably devoted to covering the minutiae of the lives of a family that has no discernible connection to the US, will follow the British media in going with over the top coverage for days on end, displacing much more important and relevant news, even if there really is no public appetite for such excess.

The assurance of an extreme right winger

I am heading back in Monterey today after spending a wonderful two weeks with my grandchildren and their parents. Much of my time was spent just hanging out, going to playgrounds, playing games, and reading books with the children but I did take the opportunity to visit some friends and relatives in the area.

One day, I visited my cousin and his wife for lunch and it turned out that his brother and his wife were also visiting from Canada and it was great to see all of them after a space of about seven years. While we were chatting, a neighbor of my cousin’s dropped by the house, a man named John. He was about my age, and my ever-hospitable cousin invited him and he came in. He immediately started talking. What astonished me was that he began making the most extreme right-wing pronouncements. These included things like the US is no longer a country because under Biden, it has an open-door policy that lets anyone in (and he clearly meant the refugees at the southern border) and gives them handouts. He said that we should have walls like Israel does. He said that people in the US do not want to work anymore because they too get handouts from the government. He said that the current economic inflation was entirely due to Biden’s policies. He said that young people today are lazy and do not want to study or work hard because they expected the government to take care of them. And on and on.

What was astonishing was not that he had these views. These are quite common in the US. It was that he felt free to utter them as incontrovertible truths in the presence of strangers whom he had met for the first time. One is familiar with the dictum that one should avoid discussing politics and religion in social settings because those topics can generate great passion and animosity. But he sailed right past that taboo.
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Trump’s methods for avoiding accountability for his actions

Trump is not a clever person. But he does have a strong sense of cunning whenever anything involves his self-interest. This is evident in the way that he avoids leaving a paper trail that will enable authorities to pin crimes on him. One of the ways he does this is by avoiding putting things in writing. It is reported that does not use email and avoids as much as possible giving written instructions to his underlings, instead issuing verbal orders. This allows him to deny that he ever did so, leaving others to take the rap. He will likely eventually blame some poor sap for the recent revelations of top secret documents being sent to Mar-a-Lago.

In addition to all the investigations into presidential wrongdoings ,we should not forget the investigations into possible tax fraud involving his private businesses. One of the charges is that he inflates the values of his properties when using them as collateral to obtain loans but hugely reduces their value when filing his taxes. Forced to give a deposition recently during this investigation, Trump invoked the fifth amendment over 400 times in his efforts to avoid answering the questions posed to him by New York’s attorney general Letitia James.
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Trump needlessly alienates the allies he needs

Donald Trump is facing difficulties on many fronts, with many former allies and people who worked for him distancing themselves from him, though his hard core base seems to be intact, if possibly getting smaller. In such a situation, you would think that he would try to retain as many allies as possible.

But he is so thin-skinned that even the slightest perception of a criticism of him causes him to lash out. The latest target is Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the US Senate. It is McConnell who blocked many of the actions taken by Congress against Trump, such as the two impeachments. Trump should be grateful to him
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Parkland killer and the M’Naghten rule

In the penalty phase trial of the person who has pleaded guilty to carrying out the massacre of 17 people in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018, the defense has argued that he should not be executed but instead serve life in prison without parole because “his brain was irretrievably broken, through no fault of his own,” by his childhood and even while in his mother’s womb because she was a drug and alcohol addict, and thus he should not be held responsible for his actions.

The prosecution meanwhile has argued that he deserves to die for the “goal-directed, planned, systematic murder – mass murder – of 14 students, an athletic director, a teacher and a coach”. Note the word ‘deserves’. This raises once again the strong retributive strain that runs through the US legal system, the backward looking view hat people should be punished harshly because of who they are and what they have done, not for any benefit the punishment might provide for society. The defense is arguing that the killer was not acting because of decisions made freely by a normally functioning brain but was following the compulsions of a brain that was ‘broken’. In other words, both prosecution and defense are using ideas of free will but the defense is arguing that in this special case, he did not have it.
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Who knew that Finns were like Americans?

Some of you may be familiar with the recent fuss in Finland about the behavior of their prime minister Sanna Marin. She became prime minister in 2019 at age 34, becoming the youngest ever chief executive of a country.. Recently a video was released on social media of her dancing at a private party and clearly having a good time.

Then questions were raised in parliament about the appropriateness of her behavior and some even suggested that she may have taken drugs other than alcohol.
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