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ABC reports about a worrying scam involving phone number porting. The attacker finds the phone number, name, and date of birth, and other easy-to-find information about a first victim and uses that information to port their number to a new service under control of the attacker. This enables them to access the victim's Facebook account, which is used in a social engineering attack against the victim's friends, who become new victims when they hand over their banking details, which are then used to transfer money and make purchases.
This attack obviously works better with the large amount of personal information people are putting on social networks. But how well would this kind of thing work against the average Soylentil?
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Telco Union Officials Lured Into Identity Fraud Scam
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* m2 stares at the monitor... it looks like a hamburger...
m2 - that's a bad sign
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 21 2017, @01:23AM
Home ownership is nice - when you don't owe the bank. No rent, no inspections, no claims for damages because the wife insists on keeping a cat that claws the walls, no claims for unruly children running a tricycle into a dryboard wall, no one tells you that you must mow the patch of weeds in front of your door - the list goes on and on. If the plumbing backs up, you deal with it, no need to discuss it with some asshole who first refuses to deal with it, then wants to blame you for destroying eighty year old rotten pipes.
Taxes, though. The assessor seems to believe that my home and property should be valued at downtown Manhattan rates, despite the fact that I live in Outback, Nowhere. I can make a case that my property is totally worthless - nobody else wants it.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Saturday January 21 2017, @02:04AM
Yeah, I know the benefits and would like to have my own home, but until I am more financially secure and able to put a significant down payment I'm not too interested in the gamble. Maybe if the world goes all Kumbaya and the threat of WW3 seems less likely.
Does the assessor value surrounding homes similarly? I'm sure you can push back by doing market research to show your property isn't as valuable as they'd like.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 21 2017, @02:51AM
The assessors office has been challenged a few times. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses. Partly, I think the laws are stupid. For starters, I pay a timber tax every year. I did the math one time - if I plant fast growing pine on my property, and harvest that pine every 16 to 20 years, the state has already taken about 20% of the value of that timber before I harvest. In actuality, I have some quite old trees, and a lot of scrub on the property. I pay a timber tax on greenery that will never be fit for timber, as well as those few old trees that should be preserved for future generations to admire. No timber here. But, the assessor's office still gets that tax every year.
Oh well - a bitching taxpayer is a happy taxpayer, right?
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:28PM
Such stories are when I agree that government can go too far, and it would be great if we had some sort of "common sense" law where you could appeal the application of stupid laws...
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday January 23 2017, @01:43AM
You pay a timber tax on trees you don't cut down? wtf
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 23 2017, @04:07AM
I went digging just a little bit, to see if I could explain and/or justify a timber tax. What I discovered was, I am actually paying a "land use" tax, under a subcategory, "timber". Apparently, I have to pay for the privilege of using the land I own, and each use that I put that land to comes under a different heading. The assessor's office has online satellite images, with little red blocks, delineating each little parcel of land, and how it is used. It turns out that I am paying less "timber tax" than I thought I was paying - and the balance appears to be for other uses and different taxes lumped under "land use".
So, despite the fact that the tax is less than I believed it to be, yes, I do indeed pay a tax on trees standing on my property.