Potentially hacked, request for bitcoin. What now?

Oh dear…18 breached sites. I guess I really have been pwned.

I didn’t even know LOTRO was breached.

You guys are awesome. Thank you so much. I hope you like it.

I’m working on the next one, but it’s taking a long time.

What?! Ah, well that actually makes me feel much better. It’s weird, but if it’s a thing, then it’s a lot easier for me to ignore. In mine the name was Kev Pittman.

I checked ihaveibeenpwned dot com and my only breaches were the myspace one and these. No big deal. But the Stratfor breach reminds me how much I hate “Anonymous”.

Stratfor was a most excellent Foreign Policy/Affairs site.

Most of the ones on my list are pretty old. 2011-2014, so I’m not too worried. The only things I can’t live without are email addresses and bank passwords, and this thread reminded me that I haven’t changed those for awhile, so I’m off to get that done.

Yeah, that is my situation. When the Stratfor thing happened it WAS a pain in the ass. Credit card bullshit, the works.

I got four of these emails in the past month. They’re all bs. They use a password that I know was leaked, and make the same threat each time: pay within a day or we’ll release the video.

Hhahahahhaha yeah okay.

Thanks Brian. I appreciate it. Because you know if the video gets leaked, the animated gifs are sure to follow, and then it’s the end of all good things.

But you could be famous! A meme, even!

Not exactly related, but this reminded me of the other day and figured I’d share.

I got one of those voicemails from the “IRS” saying there is a serious problem that must be addressed or I could go to jail.

What the hell, I called the number. First time didn’t get through. Second time “Agent Kelly” picked up and answered “IRS criminal investigation”, with a vaguely East Asian accent.

“Is this John, about the truck?” I say.

“No this is the IRS…”

“About the truck? Is it ready?”

“No truck. This is the IRS.” She was getting annoyed.

“I don’t understand. When can I pick up my truck!”

“NO. THIS IS THE IRS, MUTHAFUCKA,” she yells, her accent coming through more and she hangs up.

Probably not smart to prank such unscrupulous people, but I laughed my ass off and thought it made a good story.

To really make it work you have to record them recording you!

I read where those guys that do the calling stuff try to get you to say “yes” to anything. Once you say that word, they capture it to a recording and your toast! They give the bank the context for the yes, and it doesn’t have to be anything you actually talked about. So they end up making a big withdrawal or an expensive charge and then they just play back you saying “yes!” to some other totally unrelated question. I can’t believe that’s even allowed. Like, some lawyer wrote a law that allows them to get away with this sort of thing is just crazy.

It really is best just to not engage.

Yeah I got one of those calls a while back. Automated message. Only reason I answered was because the number was NJ, and my companies US Hr is headquartered out of Jersey.

I didn’t call back to prank them, but I was pissed. I tried to report the number for fraud to the IRS, but their reporting system is such that unles syou have suffered monetary loss then nothing happens.

This Twitch streamer makes a comfortable living doing just that. He gets scammers on the phone and wastes hours of their time. He’s quite good at it.

IRS is pretty understaffed (thanks Republicans!). They don’t have the manpower to do their regular tax collection work, let alone bother with fraud.

Yeah, I am still not gonna feel sorry for them.

Wow, what a niche. Dude seems to be doing a public service. Hope he doesn’t get hurt. Who the hell knows what scumbags are organizing this stuff.

Only time to be worried is when your hard drive has actually been encrypted and you can’t access data.

For years, I swore that my PC would only ever be used for entertainment only; that I’d never have anything important on it, just in case this ever happened. I could then just wipe everything and start over. No real harm done.

Today, though, heh.
Pretty much everything important is on this thing. Still don’t know quite how that happened, but it sure did.