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choufspace · 4 years

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5 tips on how to collaborate while stuck at home

This is not something we thought would be possible. Yet, here we are, confined in our homes, unable to visit our favorite coworking spaces and/or coffee shops. Does this mean we’re doomed? Absolutely not!

Thanks to our digital tools — and our nomad friends, we are now able to work from wherever we need to be; computers are light and powerful enough to be carried around, the internet is ever faster — even on wireless networks.

But, as you might already know, this is only part of the equation. Getting things done needs more than just tooling. Collaboration is an essential part of our work life and shouldn’t be hindered by the lack of physical contact.

Mastering the art of collaboration is no easy task, and few can claim to have done so. Especially when physical proximity is out of the question. So, getting some help is needed to make things easier.

That’s why we decided to make this guide: a selection of some tips collected all over the place. Of course, every situation is unique; this is only meant to be a source of inspiration — not an authoritative guide. Also, this is by no means yet another list of 500 collaboration tools. It’s more of a framework that you can apply regardless of the tools you favor.

Tip 1. Make sure your communication is clear

Relying on electronic tools to communicate can be a blessing: the asynchronicity of email and even instant messages means that we are less interrupted and can better focus on tasks on hand. This, however, is not with its own risk. In our efforts to be efficient, we sometimes use fewer words to communicate. But such brevity can mean that the rest of the team wastes time trying to interpret your messages … and then misinterprets them anyway.

To avoid obfuscating the true meaning of your communication, “don’t assume that others understand your cues and shorthand,” says Erica Dhawan and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic in an article published on Harvard Business Review. “Spend the time to communicate with the intention of being ultra-clear, no matter the medium. Indeed, you can never be too clear, but it is too easy to be less clear than you should,” they cared to add.

Tip 2. Stop bombarding people with messages

As stated above, the asynchronous nature of most of the communication we do online is an advantage in and by itself. This allows people to respond to requests as they see fit, without being interrupted … or risk interrupting other people. This, of course, is not how we used to communicate most of the time. In in-person discussions, we expect people to respond and to interact with us in real-time. Delays, as you may no, often result in awkward, uncomfortable moments of silence. It is then understandable that some people struggle with text-based communication.

They expect an immediate response to their requests, which does not show up as fast as they wished more often than not. Failing to adapt to the new collaboration-from-afar reality, some people just bombard their team members with messages, requiring instant responses (“Isn’t this why we call it instant messaging, to begin with?” they might ask). Don’t do it. Abusing the sanctity of the async communication may be regarded as “a form of digital dominance, a relentless and uncomfortable form of harassment”, wrote Dhawan and Chamorro-Premuzic on their HBR piece. “Choose your digital volume wisely,” they added.

3. The right medium for the right message

Just like how your voice conveys feelings and underlying hints, the tool you chose to communicate, and collaborate, with other team members is also a part of the message.

Gal Dubinski explained, in an article posted on Shopify’s blog, it is important to choose wisely. Let me quote him on how to make that choice:

As you’ll quickly learn, email isn’t always the best — especially when it leads to an inbox backlog. Not only does this overwhelm workers, but it can also be a time-sucking distraction.

In this case, chat tools are better for quick back-and-forth conversations because they’re faster and more efficient.

Here’s a simple breakdown of how you can use each platform to benefit your remote team and ease communication for remote work:

- Email: Use this for after-hours and more in-depth conversations your team can refer back to

- Real-time chat: Best to use for quick interactions and asking urgent questions

- Video chat: Ideal for interviews (for visual cues), complex or constructive feedback, and live training for a better understanding of a topic

- Voice over IP (VoIP): Perfect for when you need to explain something that would take too long via email or instant messenger

- Project management tools: Effective for segmenting conversations based on the assignment so there’s no overlap or confusion

- Short pre-recorded video: Excellent for training using screen captures and slideshows

Now you know.

4. Video is a powerful tool. Use it with care.

Chatting over instant messaging is now part of who we are as a species. Millions of people use it every day to communicate with their significant others, family members, coworkers or even complete strangers.

The versatility of IM comes from its ease of use and the ability to get in touch with people in a wide variety of situations. This also comes from the fact that speech bubbles do not have enough space to accommodate feelings. Messages are cold, faceless and impersonal — even if the message they convey is not.

And here where video conversations come in handy. They help create a much more human interaction between team members. It is the closest we can get to in-person interactions — at least until VR takes on. With this power, you probably guessed it, comes responsibility. So, let’s try not to abuse it.

Video calls are time-consuming as the other party is expected to dedicate their full attention to the conversation. This might work for brief, focused exchanges, but can turn into an annoyance if it extends beyond that. Also, being filmed is, for some reason, really uncomfortable. So try to make video calls as predictable as possible. If a meeting is not planned beforehand, try to ask for permission before initiating a video call.

5. Meet in person

As soon as this whole thing is over, don’t let the temptation to work from home take over. Leave the damn house and meet with your team members. Because nothing beats human interaction. If you elect to do so, don’t forget to visit choufspace to find the perfect workspace for your needs.

Stay safe and see you soon!

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marvolord · 6 years

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I’ve put your submitted post under the read more, so it will be easier to read on here

and to reply to your text, you would be surprised if you knew how common it is that those who committed a crime offer themselves as witnesses etc in order to a) keep up with the status of the investigation, b) to seem not guilty. So that is no indication of whether Lee Seunghyun is guilty or not

just because the Police does not state what they have found is also no indication on whether he is giulty or not, I am personally unfamiliar with the police stating step by step what evidence they have and who their suspects are, which would also be not very intelligent since this is a crime ring we are talking about with political figures as well as a police chief involved.

there seemed to have been misinformation yes, but let’s not stop believeing the media altogether. you seem to distrust the news and have also linked the girl that offered top a joint to the situation which in all honesty borders on a conspiracy theory, we have to believe someone or we will misinterpret everything until we see it the way we want

Lee Seunghyun’s lawyer said they had given an interview to a press media but did not specify which one, which is odd in my opinion

also, Lee Seunghyun’s explanation to the ‘police chief’ comments in the chat (which were real) was that they had been simply bluffing and he lied about all the money. And that right there could easily be a self-serving declaration, which is a) allowed in court, b) common. and please note that he was aware and part of the chats otherwise such a statement would not make sense.

And anon, that was in no way a normal way to talk about those women, it is not normal to look for a nice woman who you then treat like a sister that is complete Bullshit

and to be honest your last 2 sentences sum it all up: that was your opinion, no proof whatsoever. It is an ongoing investigation and that the police is not openly sharing their evidence is normal. The other guys who were ‘found guilty’ actually admitted their crimes.

Hello, different anon. I just saw the masterlist you just reblogged and I wanted to inform you that it is actually full of inaccuracies and miss many things.

I have been following the case very closely on twitter so I want to correct what that post is reporting wrongly and missing.

I have to submit this as a post because it will be long.

First of all, Mr Kim. Kim Sang Kyo

He indeed claimed that he was trying to protect a woman from being sexual assaulted and that for that he was beaten by the security/police (the reports vary on this point) but actually it came out later that the guy was indeed an assaulter himself as claimed by four women.

(Also, one of the many screenshot that were around showed mr Kim talking with BS CEO and saying “I will take you down using Seungri’s name.” Keep that in mind for it will be relevant later)

Here is the petition to investigate him: https://t.co/ecEhmGmKhs

The video of the girl “being pulled away for being assaulted by security” was actually a video of a female costumer that was drunk and was causing problem in the local, stealing drinks from other tables and bothering other people. Security had to bring her out forcefully as she didn’t want to leave and while doing that she broke a computer.

She acknowledged the fact and confirmed that she was very drunk and causing problems and apologized in an instagram post for her behavior.

Seungri was never a suspect in the first place, he went to the police station for answering questions to help police dig into the situation and to submit samples for the drug test that came out negative.

YG shredding documents was just a regular thing that happens every month/every two months. Noone was trying to cover proofs, it was just regular business. Also, the police never found links between YG and what happened in BS so they didn’t see why this became an issue.

Seungri was made a suspect on his own request, so to accelerate the investigations.

Now the chats.

There are different chats.

Seungri’s and JJY’s.

First thing to clarify is that Seungri WASN’T in the chat where JJY shared his illegal videos of women. Police never confirmed it as they said yesterday 21/03/19 (https://twitter.com/RiTaeDaeGTOP/status/1108668237607329792). It was all a baseless rumor and fruit of manipulation of the screenshot by SBS (that already confirmed to have been manipulated other screenshots to make them look like group chat when actually were 1:1 chat.)

The police confirmed the EXISTENCE of the group chats and so that they weren’t fabricated, meaning the people in them indeed talked but never confirmed that the messages in them were as the screenshots showed.

New informations were retrieved from JJY’s phone and after that he admitted to have shared the videos and other people in the chat admitted to have seen them so everyone just assumed that the messages were indeed as showed by various reporters.

But, as I said, the Police never confirmed Seungri’s presence in the chat with the molka videos.

Seungri’s chats that were around accused him only of prostitution. That’s what he has been charged of with the alleged gambling and tax evasion.

The prostitution accuse though have been fallen piece by piece as new development came out:

- The police has questioned two women identified in the chat of December 2015 but they denied the allegation. They said they were indeed present but there was nothing like prostitution, they were just there to entertain the investors (NOT in a sexual way). They are called “mulge”, someone attractive in a club to attract guests. (https://twitter.com/RiTaeDaeGTOP/status/1107751725987975168)(https://twitter.com/RiTaeDaeGTOP/status/1107751732786970624 )

The article (Soompi) though also said that police had evidence about the accusation of prostitution but again today 21/03/2019 the police itself denied it. (https://twitter.com/RiTaeDaeGTOP/status/1108668237607329792)

- Seungri and his lawyer via Sisa Journal showed actual photos (NOT screenshots that can be manipulated) of Seungri’s phone that showed the real conversation with CEO Kim. In this conversation CEO Kim told Seungri he was going to Indonesia and meet the king and wanted a woman to accompany him. CEO Kim clarified in the chat with Seungri that he wasn’t asking for a sexual escort but just company.

CEO Kim actual words as translated by @/modeMichellers on Twitter: “for your reference, I don’t have the time to date with woman, I don’t have the interest to do so, I’ll just treat them as little sister, I plan to bring them to join my friend’s gatherings. (https://twitter.com/modeMichellers/status/1108452963381583872)(twitter.com/RiTaeDaeGTOP/status/1108668073622552578?s=19)

In the end, anyway, CEO Kim went to Indonesia without any woman but with Seungri himself.

Also, the screenshot about this conversation that were first reported were faked by CEO Kim to blackmail Seungri since he (SR) invested 2 billion won in Kim and never got it back. Same thing happened with Shin Eusung back in Janury 2016. The singer got 2 billion won from Seungri and then disappeared. Seungri filed an injunction against her but then retrieved it as the two finally made contact and Shin returned the money to Seungri. (https://twitter.com/GottaTalk2V1212/status/1108003303248420864

- SBS itself said they couldn’t be sure about the screenshot related to Seungri’s accusations.

- Another story of prostitution actually was Seungri searching for female companion for his female Singaporean friend (that’s very close to him) that at the time was in Seoul alone. Since he couldn’t be there to keep her company himself he searched other females to do so. (twitter.com/RiTaeDaeGTOP/status/1108668073622552578?s=19)

Seungri and his lawyer addressed the gambling part always in the interview via Sisa Journal saying he never gambled abroad in Las Vegas with CEO Kim.

The police has investigated on this point and again came out with nothing.

As for the tax evasion in Monkey Museum: KBS reported that Seungri was aware that reporting the club as a “retail store” could have been legally problematic BUT it was established last month by a Gangnam district rep that there weren’t violations. (bit.ly/2UPjDfh)

And again I want to underlying that yesterday 21/03/2019 police stated that they don’t have any evidences to back up any of the allegation made against Seungri. (https://twitter.com/RiTaeDaeGTOP/status/1108668237607329792)

The only thing they could came out with was that he wore a police uniform as a Halloween costume back in 2014 as it is illegal to impersonate a public officer and could lead to a fine up till 15 mil won. Today Police confirmed that the uniform was indeed a costume, having found the store that sold it, so also this accuse should have been taken down.

In the end, it actually seems Seungri is innocent as of now.

Now, I want to put light on some things that are suspicious about his case:

- Seungri asked himself to be investigated and to be made a suspect. A guilty person usually wouldn’t do that.

- He has been investigated for two months and questioned by police for a total of almost 24h and always claimed himself innocent and police haven’t found anything on him in all this time while with JJY the proofs were found and he was named guilty in around a week. This should make you reflect.

- When Seungri went to be investigated the second time, after 16 hours of questioning, his lawyer confronted the media and said that they (he and Seungri) had released their part of the story days prior with a leading press media that asked for it but that press media choose not to publish for some reasons. (https://twitter.com/RiTaeDaeGTOP/status/1106616423470776332)

- Many reporters (including Soompi from which that masterlist mostly take sources from) had lied in regard of things Seungri and Police said. They claimed Seungri apologized and said he didn’t submit his phone to the police when actually he didn’t apologize and said he submitted his phone. They said the Police had proofs against him when actually they didn’t. Between this proof was that a secure source (that though didn’t know neither the place nor the time) informed police that Seungri did Coke and so the police wanted to conduct another drug test on him. This “secure information” came out after Seungri did TWO drug tests already (one after because of BS and another for the report of him inhaling from a “happy balloon” at a party) and both came out negative. So I wouldn’t believe at everything they say (also for reasons that I will explain in a bit).

- Seungri was and is used as face for every articles regarding the case, even for those one that didn’t talk about him at all.

- Seungri has been accuse of various things that still don’t have real proofs and was treated as a criminal for just allegations while real criminal Kim Sang Kyo that assaulted 4 women is still free and even went on tv crying like a baby because he was sorry for all the situation that was happening (and not for his crimes).

Always about Kim SK: as I said, he said in a conversation with one of BS CEO “I will take you down using Seungri’s name.”; in a recent post on Instagram that seems to show him in England, he posted a photo of an english newspaper discussing the “Burning Sun Gate” with a photo of Seungri, under it Kim wrote “Impossible. He will never win.” Also, it seems that Han Seohee, the girl related to Seunghyun’s 2016 case follows Kim on instagram. All things are kinda strange if you think of it.

- Seungri tested negative two times for drug usage but still reporter said police wanted to investigate him again meanwhile CEO Moonho of BS tested positive to drugs but he hasn’t been arrested yet.

Other VERY IMPORTANT things you have to know:

Right now S. Korea is facing other big scandals:

- The 10 years old suicide of actress Jang Jayeon. The case resurfaced as it was going into prescription but thanks to a petition online president Moon approved the reopening and continuation of it.

She committed suicide after leaving a letter where she revealed that her company forced her to sexually entertain 31 high-profile entertainment figures and journalists.

Between this people seem to be CEO of Chosun Journal Bang Sanghoon, Vice-President of Sport Chosun Bang Myunghoon, Chosun Central Journal’s Director of Advertising – Lee Jaeyoung, Chairmain of Kolon Lee Woongryeol, Chairman of Lotte Shin Kyukho, Former KBS PD, CEO of Olive 9 Go Daehwa, Producer of KBS’s “All My Love” Jun Changgeun. Producer for KBS, MBC, SBS Jung Seho, Producer for KBS’s “Boys Over Flowers” Jun Gisang and Broadcasting/Music PD of “Payfull Kiss, Boys Over Flowers”, “Perfect Couple”, “Goong” Song Byungjoon.

As you see Chosun Journal (that particularly targeted Seungri after the reopen of the case), KBS, MBC and SBS have people allegedly involved in this case.

Also this same TV News have been focusing on BigBang in general lately bringing out again Jiyong’s “special treatment” and also Seunghyun “special treatment” for their sick leaves. The one regarding Seunghyun is particular upsetting as the reporters followed him inside his work place, filmed him and forced him to talk with them and to admit about his panic disorder. They also went so far to go to the clinic where Seunghyun is being treated to look at his clinical documents. (https://twitter.com/yangjinman0819/status/1108780964749008896 )

- Another scandal that seems to be reopening is that of a former minister, Kim Hakeui, accused of rape, receiving sexual favours, bribery and narcotics who has been cleared by prosecution twice despite clear recorded evidence of him and other official drugging and raping over 30 women in a villa in some ‘orgy/banquet’.

Both crimes involve high figures of the korean society and given the whole situation (the media continuous lies) seem that BigBang (Seungri included) are being used to cover them.

This is just an opinion but it’s shared also between other korean reporters that have no deal with those cases.

In the end, I advice you to look up Fresh Illumi that is a south korean lawyer that is following the case and providing his point of view about the news in english

#seungri #lee seunghyun #burning sun #burning sun scandal #jjy #the read more button did not work so im reposting it #submission #anon #replies

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writingblankspaces · 6 years

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Super-Liked

Baekyeol

Chanyeol accidentally Super-Likes Baekhyun via dropping his phone on his face.

Ever since Sehun had convinced Chanyeol to make a tinder profile, his face became acquainted with having a phone dropped on it in the dead of the night when Chanyeol stayed up swiping through people.

Chanyeol, however, wasn’t a quick learner and on a particular night, he found himself interested in this one guy’s profile. In fact, he stared at his pictures for nearly ten minutes before he moved to swipe left because the guy looked too far out his league.

As Chanyeol moved his finger, his phone fell from his hands and onto his face. When he opened his eyes, he saw the match screen, along with a blue star in the middle, signifying that not only had he dropped his phone on his face, but he’d also super-liked the Baekhyun guy on accident.

He debated going and unmatching to save himself some face, but when he didn’t get a message in the five minutes Chanyeol stared at the match in disbelief, he figured that maybe Baekhyun would just ghost him and he wouldn’t have to bother unmatching.

Despite how levelheaded he was when he came to that decision, his heart skipped in his chest, and his stomach lurched.

Why would someone like Baekhyun be interested and swipe right on him? The guy seemed entirely too intellectual and gorgeous even to want to be bothered with someone as tall, lanky and corny as himself.

After all, his profile consisted of nothing but a list of his hobbies and a few dad jokes here and there, whereas Baekhyun’s spoke about how he desired to find a person to have deep and meaningful conversations with, especially with things involving space and cats.

The most Chanyeol knew about space were limited to what was in the Star Wars movies.

It took nearly twenty minutes of candy crush and a few deep breaths before he was able to calm himself down to go to bed. When he rolled over to go to sleep, he failed to see his screen light up with a notification.

Instead, he saw it in the morning, and just the thought of Baekhyun messaging Chanyeol first sent his nerves into overdrive the rest of the day. He kept messing up cords and blanking out on his guitar students, dropping pieces of pasta off his fork at lunch, and he’d walked into about three walls before the day was finished.

Only when he was back home, vacantly staring at the TV as some stupid reality show came on, did he fish out his phone and open the app to read the actual message.

Wow, a super like? I’m flattered ~_~ Am I that cute?

His fingers hovered over the screen, and he debated what to type, trying to come up with something witty, yet also showcase his very corny personality, which Chanyeol considered to be one of his best traits.

Finally, he thought of a passable reply and sent it, gritting his teeth the entire time because the whole situation was more than shooting his shot. No, he was shooting the ball from half court and could only hope that it at least grazed the hoop or backboard.

Would you be mad if I told you that the super-like was an accident, but that yes, you *are* that cute?

After he finished typing and sent the message, he threw his phone on the couch and jumped up from his seat, immediately pacing the room.

Would his flattery actually get him somewhere or would Baekhyun think he was boring?

A few moments later, his phone lit up with another notification.

Well, I’m not mad, but I’m glad we matched. You’re not bad yourself. Not to be too forward, but are you looking for a hook-up or relationship? Your profile doesn’t say anything, so I wanted to know, so I don’t ask any uncomfortable questions.

His fingers typed faster this time, and he repeatedly typed and erased various responses, eventually settling on something simple.

I’m not the best at hook-ups so I would say a relationship, but what about you? I know your profile said something about wanting someone to talk to.

Chanyeol wanted to type more, but he decided against it. That’d been enough, and if Baekhyun was interested, he’d open the conversation for more in-depth explanations.

Another notification.

Well good. I’m not the hook-up type either. How about we continue this over text? This feels so impersonal, and I like you so far.

Following the message, Baekhyun listed his number and Chanyeol copied it then saved it into his phone.

Everything was going so smoothly that Chanyeol felt the hair on the back of his neck stand because it was too smooth.

Too perfect to be true. Something had to give.

Growing up, kids made fun of him for various reasons whether it’d been his weight, his unexplainable love for ferrets or his large ears that he never quite grew into. As a result, he was always on guard and uneasy when things went too smoothly, especially a potential romantic relationship.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d made that mistake, and for his own sake, he’d like to keep it from happening again if possible.

Chanyeol pressed the message button and thought about what to type before he sent a message to the number.

You’re not going to pop out my closet and tell me I’m being punked or anything will you?

For a moment, the typing bubble came up on the screen, and Chanyeol waited, and his stomach tossed.

No, unless you want me to hide in your closet and scare you. It sounds like fun, but definitely not ideal for a first date.

A date? Baekhyun wanted to go on a date? Date him?

The thought sent Chanyeol’s nerves into overdrive, and he stuck the tip of his thumb into his mouth, chewing the nail.

He went on like that for nearly ten minutes until his phone dinged again with more messages from Baekhyun.

Chanyeol?

Still there?

Chanyeol’s heart sped up when more typing bubbles appeared on the screen, then disappeared half a dozen times before the screen of his phone finally dimmed, then went to sleep. The entire time Chanyeol stared at it, finally looking away when he heard a knock at his door.

“Why do you look surprised? We made plans to chill yesterday,” Sehun commented after he gave Chanyeol a once-over. When he didn’t receive a reaction, he slipped off his shoes and pushed past Chanyeol, claiming his usual spot on the man’s couch.

“Sorry, I’ve just been um preoccupied, I forgot,” Chanyeol finally answered, his voice flat as he eyed his dark phone screen. Sehun’s eyebrows quirked, interested as he reached for it, quickly typing Chanyeol’s password and eyeing the exchange with Baekhyun.

If it’d been anyone else, Chanyeol would’ve had a problem at the blatant disregard of his privacy, but since it was Sehun, Chanyeol didn’t even blink. Instead, he just hunched his shoulders and sunk deeper into the couch.

“He seems really into you. Why are you ignoring him?”

“I just don’t know how to reply. What if he’s like, pretending to be into me? He’s way too hot for me,” Sehun put Chanyeol’s phone down and patted his friend on the shoulder with a sad smile on his face.

“There so no such thing as ‘too hot’ for you. We both know you’re a catch and anyone would be lucky to even breathe the same air as you. Also, if Baekhyun didn’t like you, he wouldn’t be wasting his time. This isn’t high school anymore.” The words got a small nod from Chanyeol, and he unlocked his phone again, his fingers hovering over the keyboard as he thought about what to type back.

Yeah, I’m here, just had to run a quick errand.

Sure he was lying, but it was way too early in their interactions for Chanyeol to disclose the recurring downward plunges in his self-esteem. He’d save that for the third date, thank you very much.

Ah okay. Sorry if I’m being too needy or impatient. But speaking of errands, I have to go to work in a bit, but I was wondering if you wanted to do dinner tomorrow night? There this new Poké place near my house and I heard it’s good.

Sure. What time?

Is 8 good? We can meet up there, or I can pick you up? Whatever is better?

“Despite what you say, you’re actually pretty good at texting,” Sehun whistled, wiggling his eyebrows at Chanyeol.

Chanyeol collected air in his cheeks and made a face at Sehun in response, which earned him a hard poke in the cheek, “stop being a coward and make it clear that you’re asking him out.”

The air rushed from Chanyeol’s mouth with a puff, and he stared down at his phone because Sehun was right.

8 sounds perfect actually. See you then~

And just like that Park Chanyeol found himself nervously buttoning his shirt in the mirror as he looked over himself one more time. It was nearly 7:45, and he needed to leave his house soon if he wanted to make it to the restaurant on time.

The moment he arrived, nearly tripping through the door, he recognized Baekhyun.

The pictures on his profile barely did him justice with his honey blonde hair and smooth skin. Chanyeol briefly thought about asking him for skin care tips but decided against it last minute.

He wanted to make a good first impression.

Chanyeol stood in front of Baekhyun for a few moments before the man looked up, recognizing him immediately.

“Ah, you’re here! How long have you been standing there?” Baekhyun sounded embarrassed, and Chanyeol made a mental note of how cute he looked as his cheeks turned a light pink.

“Not too long, but it’s alright. Should we get a table? I heard this place gets packed at dinner time,” Baekhyun nodded and stood up.

It was then that Chanyeol noticed just how much shorter Baekhyun was than him.

Cute.

To Chanyeol’s surprise, the date went well, and he and Baekhyun hit it off.

They liked the same kind of music—90’s grunge and 80’s pop—and the same TV shows. They even discovered that they’d gone to the same college, but unlike Baekhyun who’d graduated after three and half years, Chanyeol had dropped out due to disinterest.

“So, this guy tried to tell me that the 80’s wasn’t Madonna’s golden years and I couldn’t take it anymore. I just walked away from him,” Baekhyun explained, telling Chanyeol in great detail about his last Tinder date as they walked around the empty streets.

“Well I’m glad you didn’t walk away from me,” Chanyeol muttered more to himself than Baekhyun, but the man heard him anyway.

For some reason, he didn’t offer a response and only reached for Chanyeol’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

Chanyeol picked up the sentiment immediately, and a small smile graced his lips. Even though they were walking, now that Baekhyun was holding his hand, his heart was racing.

“I don’t usually hold hands on the first date, but I’ll make an exception,” as Baekhyun said the words, he realized that he’d already made plenty of exceptions for Chanyeol that night and he was about to make one more.

Chanyeol tried to be suave and said the line, “what else don’t you do on a first date?” but as he said it out loud, he immediately regretted it and wished he could shove the words back inside. Baekhyun, however, glanced up at Chanyeol, then let out a laugh that sounded like it came from the pit of his stomach.

When he finished laughing, he stopped walking, “this.”. Chanyeol also stopped, and he looked at the shorter man in confusion. Without warning, Baekhyun rocked forward and place a soft peck on Chanyeol’s lips.

As he pulled away, he took in Chanyeol’s reaction and immediately started to freak out. Chanyeol’s expression looked akin to a short-circuited robot. Only after Baekhyun waved a hand in front of his face did he finally blink.

“I’m so sorry, I should’ve asked first, I—” Baekhyun went to ramble on, but Chanyeol stopped him by holding up his hand. There was a sheepish smile stretched across his lips and a light flush across his cheeks, “no it’s okay Baekhyun. I liked it. It’s okay.”

After that, they both walked in silence for a minute before Chanyeol cleared his throat, “would it be too much if I asked for another date?” Baekhyun looked up at Chanyeol with an incredulous expression on his face.

“I was going to ask you the same actually,” Baekhyun admitted with a bright smile on his face.

Chanyeol could’ve sworn his heart stopped for a few beats.

#fandom: exo #pairing: baekyeol #rating: pg #baekyeol

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schemesanddreams · 8 years

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Part Three – David

David - whose last name I refuse to publish, as to not give him the attention he so badly craves – is my stalker. For about a year after Lee died, I had referred to David in the past tense. He “was my stalker,” that is until he resurfaced late last year. More on that later, though…

I was first introduced to David shortly after Lee and I became close, though I didn’t know he had entered my world at the time. One Saturday afternoon, the telephone rang and a woman quickly introduced herself as “Kathryn” (again, I am redacting the last name) and launched into a bucketful of praise about an article I had written for my high school newspaper, featuring none other than Tallulah Bankhead.

The introduction had happened so quickly that I had no time to process the situation or ask how this woman – who sounded like a man, impersonating a woman – had acquired my article. Other than the school itself, the only other person who had access to the article was Lee, who I had sent a copy to due to its Bankhead reference.

The voice on the other end of the receiver didn’t have much to say, which I found curious, and didn’t offer up how they had found my unlisted number. Regardless, I thanked them and hung up. Not a moment later, an e-mail popped up in my inbox from none other than Kathryn. How did she get my e-mail address, too?

I was perplexed but decided to wait until the next time I spoke to Lee to ask her if she had any idea what was up. In the meantime, I googled Kathryn and discovered where she lived, what she did for a living, who she was married to and what her hobbies were. None of those things were even remotely connected to Dorothy Kilgallen. I wrote down her phone number, just in case.

A few days after this perplexing phone call, the phone rang again. A deep, woman’s voice asked for my sister and insisted she was a friend of hers. The only friend of my sister’s who had our number was one who not only did not call but also did not have anything close to a deep voice. …It was Kathryn calling.

Shortly after that, I received an e-mail from another man who I will hereby refer to as Mark. Mark discussed Dorothy Kilgallen in this e-mail as well as mentioning Lee. I found this incredibly suspicious, as I had nothing online relating to Kilgallen. My research, at that point, was strictly via handwritten letters and telephone calls. Nowhere, was I attached to the case. Mark shouldn’t have been able to find my e-mail address. Hell, he shouldn’t have even known who I was.

Finally, I got Lee on the phone and asked her about both instances. While she hadn’t heard of Kathryn, it turns out, Mark was a Hollywood producer friend of hers. Weird. Why would he be e-mailing me? We didn’t even know each other…

I searched his name and found hundreds of postings to Yahoo boards about Dorothy. He was very opinionated and also very strange, it seemed. Most of his postings were nonsensical and appeared to follow an invisible and dare I say it, crazy thought process – most of which didn’t make any sense at all.

Lee suggested I contact Mark and forward him what I found, since the postings I had discovered were clearly not him. “Mark wouldn’t write like that,” Lee had told me. Not surprisingly, Mark never returned my call about what I had uncovered. It was apparent that someone had stolen his name and identity, yet either the number she had provided was fake or he simply did not care.

Enter David.

There was a very old alt message board posting that I found in my research, written by David about Lee and Dorothy. It gave Lee’s information as well as contact information for Dorothy’s children and Ron Pataky, Dorothy’s boyfriend at the time she died. I asked Lee about this posting around the same time that Mark entered my realm and that was when I was officially introduced to David.

David, she told me, was a “very strange man” who once ordered milk at a Chinese restaurant when he was out dining with Mark and his wife. (Say what? They knew each other??) “Who does that?!” she asked me, astonished at David’s weirdness, as if that one incident solidified him as a bonafide screwball, completely ignoring the fact that Mark and David were somehow connected.

Lee also told me that David was very interested in the Kilgallen case and had contacted her many times. Lee’s relationship with David was never truly defined but she was the only link to connect David – the screwball, Mark – her friend and myself.

I ended up calling (the real) Kathryn and, unlike Mark, she got back to me. Not surprisingly, her identity had been stolen and used to post Kennedy/Kilgallen conspiracy theories online in the same way that Mark’s had been. Over the next ten years, I ended up contacting a handful of other people who also had their names and identities thieved and used to perpetuate myths about Dorothy. Unfortunately at the time, online identity crimes weren’t at the top of the law enforcement radar and I was essentially told that the victims of identity theft were as good as fucked, with no options afforded to them to combat whoever was stealing their names.

By that point, I had realized that it was David who was behind the personas. David, the Kilgallen obsessed weirdo, had already ostracized himself from any and all message boards that even remotely discussed Kennedy or Dorothy. His writing style was so unique that it was instantly identifiable. It took no time for me to piece together that David, using his real identity, had been banished due to his overzealous conspiracy theories, and quickly turned to false identities to get his message across.

Kathryn, Mark, a woman named Lisa and several others were victims. Another man whose name he adopted was actually quite famous in his particular area of Kennedy-related study and I called him up. I filled him in about David and, to my surprise, he was already aware of the situation.

This man, who shall remain nameless, had gone to college with David and had angered David at some point. The man told me that, around that time, David “went off the deep end” and that he had discovered that his identity was being used by David, thus attempting to discredit him.

This is where things get a little convoluted. See, Lee was a master at impersonation. Not only signatures but voices, as well. In her memoir, she proudly told tales of her calling people who had slighted her, impersonating other people, and harassing them. Keep this in mind as you proceed…

In 2005, I moved across the country. Prior to the move, I lived not far from David. While I didn’t have his exact address, I knew we were only about an hour or so away from each other. The house I lived in was listed for sale, with several open houses. I didn’t doubt that David had my address and I feared that in his obsession for Kilgallen information, he would feign interest about a walk-through in an attempt to locate my files.

I know that this sounds incredibly paranoid but I assure you, I was completely just in my concern. David was beyond obsessed and clearly did anything he could to obtain information. At this time, it was clear to me that David – who kept hounding me, using various identities – believed that I had unpublished Kilgallen information, directly from Lee. He wasn’t wrong...

It was at that time that I invested in a locking case for my files. I hid them in my closet, kept the key and left to allow interested buyers to peruse the house, never knowing if he was one of the many who walked through.

Once I moved, my number was again unlisted. On the 40th anniversary of Dorothy’s death, my house phone rang. It was a deep-voiced woman, asking for me. The person on the other end of the line made up some line about needing high school transcripts – something which was clearly a farce, as I had been close with the woman in charge of transcripts at the high school I had attended. I called her up, verified that the phone call I had received was a ruse and took a deep breath. I had crossed the country and David had found me – again.

According to Lee, she had conveniently “lost her address book,” around that time - claiming that she feared a maid (who most certainly did not exist) had stolen it… Undoubtedly, you see where this is headed.

Things get even stranger when, one night, I was in the middle of an information swapping session with Kerry, Dorothy’s son. Over Instant Messenger, we were discussing David. At the time, Kerry and I were close – although I understood and respected that Dorothy was a topic I needed not push with him.

David had stalked Kerry for over 15 years, following Kerry from address to address, always finding unlisted numbers and sending him mail from various states, using different identities each time. Like me, Kerry was wise to David’s ways and was quick to spot the impostor. Yet, David persevered.

Kerry forwarded me an e-mail that stopped me dead in my tracks. My throat welled up into a lump and it felt like my heart sunk into my stomach. The e-mail, which was so clearly written by David, was sent from Lee’s e-mail address.

“Wait, wait. Hold the phone.” I typed frantically into the text box. I slammed the enter key and awaited Kerry’s response. We compared more notes and every e-mail he had received from that address was most definitely from David. Every e-mail I had received from the same address was unquestionably from Lee. She and I had even discussed some of the e-mails over the phone.

Was David even real? Was Lee pretending to be David? It wasn’t beyond the spectrum of possibility by that point. All I knew for certain is that Lee was desperately protecting her stake in the Kilgallen case and was not beyond either making up a persona to scare me away from it - or putting David up to the task.

All that I truly knew was that there was a woman threatened by my interest in Dorothy, a person who consistently found my unlisted information and harassed me in every way possible and another man, Dorothy’s son, who was in the same boat as I was. I didn’t know what to believe but I knew without a doubt that I had to continue my research, no matter who I ended up pissing off.

A quote by Lillian Smith struck a chord with me - something I could not shake and even, during the worst of the Kilgallen ordeal, was a quote that kept me grounded. Emblazoned on one of the many binders of the Kilgallen dossier I kept, it read:

“To believe in something not yet proved and underwrite it with our lives is the only way we can leave the future open.”

Dorothy had lived by this mantra, quite obviously. Willing to put up with anonymous phone calls, threatening her life. Dealing with continuous heat from J. Edgar Hoover, who didn’t agree with her so unabashedly questioning the Warren Commission report. She was dedicated to uncovering the truth behind the assassination of Kennedy, just as I was dedicated to figuring out the truth behind her mysterious death.

Little did I know then that I had stumbled upon merely the tip of the iceberg and that overly-friendly telephone calls from a deep-voiced “woman” and uninvited e-mails from overly-factual aliases were the least of my concerns…

#cc

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ritamcgee · 4 years

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How Can I Get My Ex Back After 6 Months Astounding Useful Ideas

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How To Get Your Ex Back When She Has A Boyfriend

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How To Manifest Ex Boyfriend Back

#How Can I Get My Ex Back After 6 Months Astounding Useful Ideas #I Got My Ex Back Stories

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romancescams · 6 years

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SCARS|RSN™ Special Report: When Real People Catfish!

Texts And Photos Woman Used To Catfish A Man On An Online Game

We present this because it is such an important story for everyone online looking for love to learn!

A Stranger Used An Intricate Web Of Lies And Deceiving Messages To Catfish A Newly Divorced Man, Making Him Fall In Love With Her And Leaving Him “Humiliated”

“I have never been so humiliated in my life.”

This is how a newly divorced dad felt after he discovered the woman he had been talking to for over a year and had planned to start a new life with didn’t actually exist.

A Canadian man, Cheyne, had his whole life turned upside-down by a woman he met on his favorite online game, Game Of War.

For a whole year, he spoke with a woman who he thought was named Lori McKinley, sharing loving messages and pictures, secrets and planning their life together.

But it was only when he contacted an organization which helps verify people’s real identities, that Cheyne came to realize the person he had fallen in love with was not who she said she was.

It’s Not Always Africans!

She sent him pictures of her family and children.

Laurie with her daughter Leigha, whose pictures she used.

Cheyne was tricked into believing that this woman was Lori McKinley.

Laurie was using pictures of her daughter to trick Cheyne.

Though Lori wasn’t the type of woman Cheyne usually went for he found her increasingly attractive as their relationship grew.

“I was in love, but I was in love with someone who wasn’t real,” Cheyne said.

“For me, it’s like somebody died.”

His horror ordeal started in July 2016 when Cheyne was 48, newly divorced and working as a tractor driver.

He was introduced to Lori, a 33-year-old American woman, by a mutual friend in the online game and they hit it off almost immediately.

They began chatting through the game daily. This soon moved on to emailing and texting and then progressed to a regular phone conversation.

The two had such a great connection that when Lori first sent him a photo of herself he didn’t mind that she wasn’t his usual type.

She was skinny, with long brown hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. However, the more they spoke the more attractive he found her.

As their relationship progressed, the couple would exchange heartfelt text messages and emails, with Lori constantly reassuring Cheyne of how much she loved and adored him.

There were red flags that started appearing early on in their relationship, but Cheyne pushed them aside, always accepting the hasty explanations Lori gave him.

One of the first things he noticed was Lori appeared to look different in one of the photos she sent him. She explained it away as an old photo from her younger days.

It was only when his 18-year-old daughter mentioned that Lori might not be who she said she was, did he suggest that the two talk via video chat.

At first, Lori resisted, claiming her religious father who she and her daughters lived with thought video chatting was “the work of the devil”.

But one night she managed to sneak onto the computer and video call him for a few minutes. It was only enough time for Cheyne to see her face and confirm it was the woman he had been receiving pictures of. That was more than enough for him and made it easier to push aside the other strange events that came after.

Lies Are Lies Regardless Of The Source

She even went as far as telling him she had flights booked for her and her children.

The messages became more heartfelt the longer they spoke.

Lori constantly reminded Cheyne of how much he meant to her.

Despite the setbacks, Lori kept insisting that she was excited to meet him

He admits now that he was lonely and Lori was one of the few people he felt he could talk to, which led to him wanting to believe her.

“I was struggling with being alone again after separation and divorce,” he said.

“I was isolated and Lori was the only person I had in my corner at this point in my life.”

It was after the two set a date to meet that Cheyne’s suspicions started to creep back in.

Just as they were planning to see each other, Lori had to have emergency surgery to remove cancer cells in her uterus.

So they set a later date but then she found out the doctor had nicked her bladder during the surgery and had to have it rectified.

They continued to set dates and things continued to happen that meant Lori couldn’t go, including being assaulted by her violent ex, her father having two strokes, her grandmother dying, her sister attempting suicide, and having to go to court with her ex but having the date pushed back because his dad had a heart attack.

“It was all part and parcel of the web of deception she was weaving and how caught up in it I had become,” Cheyne said.

Throughout all of this Lori continued to tell Cheyne she was in the process of getting everything sorted so she could move in with him.

He wanted to believe her but her lies had become too much and he contacted Social Catfish, which is when he found out the devastating truth a full year after they had met.

Her name was not Lori McKinley and she was not 33. Her real name was Laurie, she was 42, overweight and feeling bad about herself.

The images that she had been sending Cheyne were of her 23-year-old daughter Leigha.

When Cheyne confronted both the women via video chat all Leigha said to him was “get the f**k over it”.

“Nobody has ever taken my emotions on such a ride before,” he told news.com.au.

“I will never again make this mistake as it has cost me months and months, a full year of emotional investment.”

Confused, hurt and still in love with the woman Laurie had made up, he continued to speak with her for a time but eventually, he realized that he had to let go of Lori McKinley.

He cut all contact with her and, while it was painful at first he has started to meet other people.

“I stopped talking to her without notice. It’s been six months now,” Cheyne said.

“I have started dating in the real world and I am dating and meeting real people, face-to-face, eye-to-eye.”

Even though it is a cliche, Cheyne’s advice is that if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.

“If the stories seem over the top and don’t add up, those are red flags. Trust your intuition and get out as soon as possible.”

Source: https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/dating/texts-and-photos-woman-used-to-catfish-a-man-on-an-online-game/news-story/c72bcf88804e4a9b9c4beae5431db325

RSN™ Team A SCARS Division Miami Florida U.S.A.

TAGS: Carfished, Catfishing, Lies, Romance Scammers, Romance Scams, Love Scam, Dating Scam, False Identity, Fake Profile, Impersonation, Real Person, Fake Faces, Fake Female,

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – END – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Tell us about your experiences with Romance Scammers in our Scams Discussion Forum on Facebook »

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

FAQ: How Do You Properly Report Scammers?

It is essential that law enforcement knows about scams & scammers, even though there is nothing (in most cases) that they can do.

Always report scams involving money lost or where you received money to:

Local Police – ask them to take an “informational” police report – say you need it for your insurance

Your National Police or FBI (www.IC3.gov)

The Scars Worldwide Reporting Network HERE or on www.Anyscam.com

This helps your government understand the problem, and allows law enforcement to add scammers on watch lists worldwide.

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Visit our NEW Main SCARS|RSN Facebook page for much more information about scams and online crime: www.facebook.com/RSN.Main.News.And.Information.Home.Page

To learn more about SCARS visit www.AgainstScams.org

Please be sure to report all scammers HERE or on www.Anyscam.com

All original content is Copyright © 1991 – 2019 SCARS All Rights Reserved Worldwide & Webwide – SCARS|RSN/Romance Scams Now & SCARS/Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams are all trademarks of Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Incorporated

When Real People Catfish! – SCARS|RSN™ Special Report SCARS|RSN™ Special Report: When Real People Catfish! Texts And Photos Woman Used To Catfish A Man On An Online Game…

#Carfished #Catfishing #Dating Scams #Fake Faces #Fake Female #Fake Profile #False Identity #Impersonation #Lies #Love Scam #Real Person #romance scammers #Romance Scams #

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legit-scam-review · 6 years

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How Hackers Stole Millions Worth of Crypto Via Victim’s Telecoms Operator

On Aug. 15, American investor Michael Terpin filed a $224 million lawsuit against AT&T. He believes that the telecoms giant had provided hackers with access to his phone number, which led to a major crypto heist.

Michael Terpin is a Puerto Rico-based entrepreneur and CEO of TransformGroup. He is also a co-founder of an angel group for Bitcoin (BTC) investors named BitAngels and of a digital currency fund, the BitAngels DApps Fund.

Terpin claims that he lost $24 million worth of cryptocurrencies as a result of two hacks that occured over the course of seven months: The 69-page complaint he filed with California law firm Greenberg Glusker mentions two seperate episodes, dated June 11, 2017 and Jan. 7, 2018. In both cases, as per the document, AT&T, of which Terpin was a longtime subscriber since the 1990s, failed to protect his digital identity.

Now, Terpin is seeking $200 million in punitive damages and $24 million in compensation from the telecommunications corporation.

SIM swapping scam: What does a telecoms provider have to do with crypto savings?

“What AT&T did was like a hotel giving a thief with a fake ID a room key and a key to the room safe to steal jewelry in the safe from the rightful owner,” the complaint states, arguing that Terpin fell victim to a SIM swap fraud, also known as SIM hijacking or a “port out scam.”

SIM swapping is a process of leading a telecoms provider like, say, T-Mobile transferring the target’s phone number to a SIM card held by the attacker. Once they receive the phone number, hackers can use it to reset the victims’ passwords and break into their accounts, including accounts on cryptocurrency exchanges.

Occasionally, that allows thieves to bypass even two-factor authentication, as Motherboard writes. According to their investigation, SIM swapping “is relatively easy to pull off and has become widespread,” adding that “cryptocurrency accounts are common targets.”

The tactics employed by criminals to perform such hacks may vary. Sometimes, they trick customer representatives into believing they are the targets and make them hand over their data. However, as per Motherboard, fraudsters often use the so-called “plugs”: telecom company insiders who get paid to do illegal swaps. An anonymous SIM hijacker told the publication:

“Everyone uses them[…] When you tell someone [who works at a telecoms company] they can make money, they do it.”

An anonymous source at Verizon told Motherboard that he had been approached via Reddit, where he was offered bribes in exchange for SIM swaps. Another Verizon employee claimed that the hacker promised that they would make “$100,000 in a few months” if he would cooperate — all he had to do is “either activate the SIM cards for [the hacker] when [he was] at work or give [the attacker his] Employee ID and PIN.”

More related to the Terpin case, Motherboard’s dialogue with an AT&T employee suggested that their system’s design reportedly allows some employees to supersede security features, such as the phone passcode that AT&T requires when porting numbers:

“From there, the passcode can be changed[…] With a fresh passcode, the number can be ported out with no hang ups.”

How was Terpin hacked?

As mentioned above, Terpin was hacked twice: in June 2017 and in January 2018.

First, in the summer of 2017, he found out that his AT&T number had been hacked when his phone suddenly went dead, according to the complaint. He then learned from AT&T that his password had been changed remotely “after 11 attempts in AT&T stores had failed.”

After gaining access to Terpin’s phone, the attackers used his personal information, including calls and text messages, to break into his accounts that use telephone numbers as a means of verification, including his “cryptocurrency accounts” — although it doesn’t specify the type of those accounts. The hackers also reportedly hijacked Terpin’s Skype account to impersonate him and convince one of his clients to send them cryptocurrency.

AT&T reportedly cut off access to the hackers only after they managed to steal “substantial funds” from Terpin. The document also states that after the incident, on June 13, 2017, Terpin met with AT&T representatives to discuss the attack and was promised by AT&T that his account would be moved to a “higher security level” with “special protection,” akin to the ones used by celebrities:

“AT&T further told Mr. Terpin that the implementation of the increased security measures would prevent Mr. Terpin’s number from being moved to another phone without Mr. Terpin’s explicit permission, because no one other than Mr. Terpin and his wife would know the secret code.”

Nevertheless, half a year later, on Saturday, Jan. 7, 2018, Teprin’s phone reportedly turned off again — he got attacked yet another time. The complaint claims that “an employee in an AT&T store cooperated with an imposter committing SIM swap fraud,” despite extra security measures being taken back in June 2017:

“As AT&T later admitted, an employee in an AT&T store in Norwich, Connecticut ported over Mr. Terpin’s wireless number to an imposter in violation of AT&T’s commitments and promises, including the higher security that it had supposedly placed on Mr. Terpin’s account after the June 11, 2017 hack that had supposedly been implemented to prevent precisely such fraud.”

This time the thieves allegedly stole about $24 million worth of cryptocurrency, even though he tried to contact AT&T “instantly” after his phone stopped working. AT&T allegedly “ignored” his request, leaving the hackers enough time to get enough information about Terpin’s crypto accounts to move his funds to their own accounts. The plaintiff complaint argues that Terpin’s wife also tried calling AT&T at the time, but was put on “endless hold” when she asked to be connected to AT&T’s fraud department.

The Teprin case could be a legal precedent for SIM swapping scams

As the complaint sums up, emphasising the potential scale of port out scams:

“AT&T is doing nothing to protect its almost 140 million customers from SIM card fraud. AT&T is therefore directly culpable for these attacks because it is well aware that its customers are subject to SIM swap fraud and that its security measures are ineffective. AT&T does virtually nothing to protect its customers from such fraud because it has become too big to care.”

When Gizmodo contacted AT&T for a comment on the story, the company reportedly denied the accusation, stating that they are ready to stand their ground:

“We dispute these allegations and look forward to presenting our case in court.”

Terpin told Gizmodo that such crypto heists are commonly performed by “college kids who go online in these Discord groups.” He also insisted that in his case, the thieves used an AT&T employee:

“The one thing that’s been a link between [the crypto hacks] is that in every case they’ve had an insider[…] [Trading cryptocurrencies] is safe as long as nobody gives out your digital identity.”

He added that he contacted the FBI, Homeland Security and the U.S. Secret Service, and they’ve identified the AT&T employee who allegedly participated in the attack.

Terpin also claimed that he doesn’t give out his phone number anymore, relying on Google Voice instead.

Cointelegraph has contacted Terpin’s lawyers to specify which tokens were stolen from him, and where he had his cryptocurrency account. This story will be updated as soon as the comment request gets returned.

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lindyhunt · 6 years

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It’s Time to Put SMS Out of Its Misery

Surprize :) Get it here:

That was an actual SMS I received earlier this week.

Unidentified number? There’s the first red flag. Followed up by a bit.ly link? Red flag number two.

I still have no idea who it was from, what lies beyond that link, or what I did to deserve this.

Now, that message has been banished the land of deleted SMS along with thousands of other shipping alerts, thinly-veiled scams, and local service providers shouting at me about LAST MINUTE DEALS.

None among them have invited, or inspired, me to engage. In fact, I now almost flinch instinctually at the arrival of a message from an unknown number.

It feels invasive. It is wholly impersonal. It does quite the opposite of connecting with or engage me.

On a messaging platform that invites two-way communication, things could have been different. I could have discovered it was just my friendly, neighborhood Mr. Smiley’s inviting me to use their chatbot to order buy-one-get-one-free burgers today. I could have responded to Amazon’s shipping alert to change my one-time order to a monthly subscription.

What were once built-to-be-ignored SMS messages could have been opportunities to upsell me, retain me, or even just collect more data on me.

With a chatbot on a popular messaging app, these marketing messages could have been contenders.

SMS messages simply can’t contend with chatbots. Their high interaction metrics continue to be a red herring that tells nothing of actual engagement.

Modern marketers who understand that consumers demand valuable and immediate one-on-one engagements are choosing chatbots over SMS for several reasons.

SMS is costly in comparison to, well, everything.

For all intents and purposes, communicating with customers via a chatbot is free. Sure, there may be a cost associated with developing and maybe manning the bot. But for the chunk of the world that is connected to the internet, the act of sending and receiving messages via chatbot is free.

SMS is not.

Consider spending a cent, which is at the low end for SMS, every time you send a message. Doesn’t sound all that bad, does it?

It doesn’t — until you consider the size of your contact list and how often you want to reach out to them.

Grew your list to 100,000 subscribers? Awesome! That’ll be $1,000 every single time you want to send them a 160-character message.

500,000 subscribers? Now we’re talking $5,000 per mass message.

You get the point.

If you were to share a promotion even every other week, you’d be spending well over $100,000 a year to send a couple dozen sentences to your list.

Many singular chat sessions can get up to that length — and you could have a million of them for free.

The paradox here is that while you want to grow your contact list, the expense of actually communicating with your subscribers via SMS will quickly become prohibitive.

SMS is not the ubiquitous marketing channel it was once believed to be.

Affordable tech and widespread, low-cost internet connectivity draw millions of active users to messaging apps every single month.

SMS is no longer the most far-reaching communication channel that marketers can tap into. Nor was it ever really as ubiquitous as we once believed.

Yes, almost all mobile devices come with some kind of SMS app preloaded. But have you tried shooting a quick text from California to your friend in Germany lately?

“If you’re a brand that wants to message people in US, Canada, Mexico and the UK. That means 4 different SMS setups, 4 different cost structures …

If you launch on FB Messenger in the same four countries, it’s one launch and of course 1 cost structure (free) and the build is to a single API.

SMS suppliers are fragmented by location. Costs are all over the place and marketers will have to set up completely new campaigns according to the regulations of SMS suppliers in every country in which they wish to advertise.

Now that sounds like a great way to spend a week leading up to an exciting new launch.

By contrast, most messaging apps are not fragmented by location. While some apps are certainly more popular than others in different countries, a marketer can set up a single messaging campaign that will function perfectly for any user in that app — regardless of their country of origin or the one they’re in at the time.

Facebook Messenger specifically has the weight of a billion monthly active users all over the globe. The power to piggyback on one of the world’s largest messaging apps is something SMS will never be able to tap into, yet it’s something more and more chatbots do every day.

Yes, SMS interaction is high …

According to the 2016 E-mail Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study, the world average open rate of emails was 21.8 percent. Click-through rate? A dismal 3.3 percent.

On the other hand we have SMS, which Salesforce’s mobile product manager Greg Murphy says has an open rate of 98 percent and a conversion rate of 45 percent. Way better.

And chatbots are right up there with it.

Email-marketing evangelist Neil Patel has seen chatbots garner 88 percent open rates and a 56 percent click-through rates.

The custom bot-builders at Olyo observed amazing results after sending the same content to users via email and chatbot:

“The results obtained with the chatbot were extraordinary: the CTR (click-through rate) was 12 times higher than the one obtained by e-mail…”

We don’t have to assume that message-based communication like chatbots and SMS are more effective than email marketing. It’s in the numbers.

While SMS and chatbots are neck-and-neck when it comes to opens and CTRs, the engagement taking place on either platform couldn’t be more different.

… but what about actual engagement?

“Consumers no longer want to talk to a business by phone or email; they’ve moved to social media and messaging in their personal lives, why not when they’re dealing with a business?

Convenience is winning. People do not want to wait or search for an answer, they want the answer to come to them.”

In 1989, CompuServe made it possible for internet users to send emails back and forth.

Since then, we’ve measured engagement in metrics like opens and clicks. Conversation wasn’t measured because technology didn’t support the exchange of information in real time.

It isn’t the 80s anymore. What if what we’ve been calling “engagement” has really just been “interaction” all along?

Because I don’t know a better word than “engagement” for what people are doing with chatbots today.

Amit Sharma, CEO of post-purchase customer service tool Narvar, found that less than 1 percent of customers engage with the millions of SMS messages his company sends to follow up on transactions.

With chatbots, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Narvar’s chatbots see almost 100% response rates from customers, 65% of whom treat the bot the same way they would treat a human, saying things like ‘Thanks’ or sending emojis and thumbs-ups.”

It’s obvious a shift is happening.

People view chatbots as an opportunity for conversation with a brand; SMS as information being pushed at them from a brand.

And people are interacting with SMS at a high rate, but it’s all in the delivery.

Who among us isn’t quick to respond to a notification in an app where we regularly communicate with friends and family? It’s the exact same reason why bots work, as well.

The interaction rates are very similar, but the engagement is all different.

Engagement is a two-way street.

Bots are able to cross it. SMS waits on the corner. Yeah, a ton of people see him standing there waving his sign and shouting about discounts, but how many slow down and engage?

After years of lead response research, InsideSales.com deduced that if you engage with a lead within five minutes of them indicating interest in your offer, you’re 100 times more likely to actually speak with them than if you wait even 30 minutes. The odds of qualifying that lead are also 21 times higher.

Despite the facts, Drift found uncovered that way too many companies are ignoring this five-minute rule.

“…we found that 93% of companies are ignoring the 5-minute rule. Just 7% of companies responded to sales inquiries in 5 minutes or less, while a whopping 55% of companies took longer than 5 days to respond.”

This just goes to show that immediacy matters.

A chatbot’s engagement time is less than seconds. SMS’s engagement time is…what engagement?

Businesses have unfortunately taught consumers that engaging via many common sales and marketing channels (forms, SMS, emails) is about as effective as leaving a voicemail — don’t even bother.

“I don’t know anyone who likes calling a business. And no one wants to have to install a new app for every business or service that they interact with. We think you should be able to message a business, in the same way you would message a friend.” — Mark Zuckerberg at F8 in 2016.

But chatbots have a way of collecting data in a way that most people don’t even register as marketing.

Sharing some info with a business you’re interested in over Facebook Messenger feels natural. You don’t have to change your habits nor do you go into the conversation half expecting to never hear back.

It’s a win-win situation.

SMS is not scalable.

As I’ve explained in “Why chatbots will change marketing as we know it”: “Messaging is the new frontier of marketing. Bots give us the opportunity to tap into it by creating scalable, one-on-one interactions directly with consumers.” Not only is SMS cost prohibitive on a large scale, you’ll rarely leave people thinking “I feel more connected to this brand now.”

But that feeling of connection and value at scale is exactly what we’re doing with our bot builder tool, to help people in sales, marketing, and customer success connect with people at scale.

By using conversational messaging platforms like Facebook & Website Live Chat to help people communicate with their prospects & help their customers better, we’re trying to make life easier and give them back precious chunks of time.

People click on links sent to them via SMS. It capitalizes on a learned behavior. But one click does equal engagement, much less a transaction.

People engage in valuable, one-on-one exchanges with chatbots, all inside apps they’re already using, to get shit done.

In Narvar’s case, responses to follow-up notifications increased from 1 percent to nearly 100 percent. The only difference? A shift from SMS to chatbot. We’re now poised to see that shift happen on a large scale.

Consumers want useful information, not blasts. And they want it in real time. They’ll go where they need to, including your competitors, to get it.

Remember the trusted adage “The customer is always right.”

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datingadviceonreddit · 7 years

Link

Met a girl in a bar on Saturday. Somehow started talking and had a really good time hanging out with her. She definitely seemed pretty interested in me and I really liked her right away too. My drunk buddy interrupted us and told her to give him her phone number for me. She was fairly drunk herself and didn't mind at all and was totally cool about it. I ended up having to leave to take said buddy, and other friends, home earlier than i wanted to but, kind of talked about possibly meeting up with her the next day and grabbing food. Sent her a quick text after leaving (maybe 15-20 mins later, at the very most). Just a, "hey, it was nice to meet you, lets grab food tomorrow if you're not too busy, have a good night."Here's where i screwed up. I didn't give her my name or where we met or anything when i texted her :( (I've never done this before). Since we had just talked, for like 30 minutes, I figured she'd respond pretty quickly, since I'd just left, and we'd have an open line of communication for the next day.Long story short, I ended up getting zero response from her. I assume she got progressively drunk, forgot we met and our conversation, and then woke up to some random, super forward, text from a total stranger with zero context. Now I don't know how to proceed.I feel like I only have one more chance and I have to make it count. My dilemma is how to go about doing it. My buddy that got her number for me (who is actually pretty good at picking up girls and getting first dates) said I basically fucked myself by giving here no frame of reference and asking her out all in the first text and that my best course of action is to call her. He says it will show confidence and allow me to explain who I am and where we met. Or, if she answers, basically do the same thing and hope it goes well from there. All of my other friends are telling me that I should absolutely not call her and just text her again.This is my line of thinking at this point: My buddy's suggestion makes the most sense since she hasn't texted back. I literally have nothing to loose. I feel like another text now would be awkward and come off as desperate since I've already texted her once and she has no idea who I am. Maybe, if executed well enough, it could potentially work? I just feel like a text is pretty impersonal and much easier to ignore and much more socially acceptable to do so and that at this point being ignored again is much more likely. However, I figure if I call her she likely doesn't answer. This lets me leave a message explaining to her who I am, hopefully jog her memory, its more personal and shows her I'm actually interested enough to make the effort to call her, she doesn't have to read a long text of me trying to explain myself and it shows her I have confidence. And I feel like a phone call or voicemail, generally necessitates, out of common decency, some kind of response, if she's a person with any kind of substance, which she really seemed like she was. The only potential downside is she still doesn't remember me and never responds or she actually answers and it gets super awkward.So that's where I'm at. I really liked this girl a lot. We seemed to hit it off pretty well and I don't want to blow it. Do I call her or text her? Or just forget about her, move on, and learn from my mistakes? via /r/dating_advice

#dating #dating advice #reddit

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mariannesmyth-blog · 7 years

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Marianne Smyth is a Thief and a Con Artist - DO NOT TRUST HER

"Mair Smyth" aka "Marianne Smyth" - Con Artist, Scammer, Thief

Mair Smyth aka "Marianne Smyth" SCAMMED $75,000 out of me... and thousands from other clients and friendsShe was a neighbor and quickly became a best friend. Little did I know she was actually a professional con artist and I was one of her many "marks". She would end up scamming more than $75,000 from me and thousands more from many others. EVERYTHING she told people about her life was a lie used to further her cons. She targeted friends, clients and blackmailed married men she had affairs with. I would later learn she's a fugitive on the run wanted by Police in Northern Ireland for stealing hundreds of thousands from unsuspecting victims. Dating apps, day jobs and her psychic business were the tools of her malevolence. She even used her dead daughter, a daughter the courts took from her at a young age and a daughter who wanted nothing to do with her, to scam people out of money. I'm a Journalist. Having worked in the news business for more than 10 years and won numerous awards for my reporting, I thought I had seen it all. That is, until Mair Smyth crossed my path. This blog is a journalistic chronicle of how Mair Smyth - legal name "Marianne Elizabeth Smyth" AKA "Marianne Smyth" - managed to scam $75,000 out of me and thousands more from many others. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS E-MAIL ME: [email protected]

OR check out this blog for updates:

http://mairsmythpsychicscam.blogspot.com/2017/03/mair-smyth-of-orchid-psychics-scammed.html

The woman pictured above is Marianne Smyth "Mair Smyth" AKA "Marianne Elizabeth Smyth" AKA "Marianne Smyth" from "Orchid Psychics" She's a felon on probation convicted in Los Angeles County of stealing and scamming $190,000 from her former employer Pacific Islands.com.

Court Records:

https://media.wix.com/ugd/7e8f5c_45ecc3916bb14cf09fc7c0bf6115fa6f.pdf

Mair Smyth did prison time at Lynwood Correctional in LA County for her crime:

But she's out now... and scamming people by the day. She scammed me for $75,000. She scammed another friend, Heather, for $10,000, she scammed another friend who doesn't want to be named for $5,000. She scammed another friend Michalle for $5000 by fraudulently applying for credit cards in her name and charging them up. She scammed yet another former friend Nina for $2000. And she scammed another former friend Sam for $900. The list is growing every day.

HOW SHE SCAMMED HER EX BOYFRIENDS: BOB Bob was her last known boyfriend and almost her BIGGEST victim. Mair "Marianne Smyth" was actually in the process of drawing up paperwork for Bob to add her name to the title of his two homes! Thankfully, someone printed out my blog and showed it to him and when he brought it home to confront Mair "Marianne Smyth" (who was staying at his house for a few days) she didn't say a word, ran out of the house and never came back. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Mair "Marianne Smyth" met Bob on Tinder 6 months ago. On their 1st or 2nd date, after Bob confided that he was in a custody battle with his ex-wife over his kids… Mair told him, as luck would have it, her day job was as a “730 expert” which is a court appointed child custody investigator. And she offered to help Bob get a better custody arrangement with his kids. Which of course was lie. In reality Mair was a Psychic for a company she created called "Orchid Psychics". Here's her yelp page:https://www.yelp.com/biz/orchid-psychics-los-angeles So like all professional con artists do, she offered to "help" her next victim Bob from the very beginning in an effort to engender trust. And it worked like a charm. Soon Bob started receiving text messages from “Heba Matta” an attorney that was supposedly working with Mair "Marianne Smyth" to help Bob with his custody situation. Turns out… Mair was using a google number to impersonate Heba Matta, who is actually a real District Attorney in Los Angeles and the sister of a former client of Mair’s Orchid Psychics business, so that's how she knew just enough to impersonate Heba. This is the California State Bar's website showing that Heba Matta is actually a real person that Mair was impersonating to Bob.

http://members.calbar.ca.gov/fal/Member/Detail/231898

Wouldn’t you know, Heba claims via text and Mair "Marianne Smyth" corroborates in person that they have found a ton of dirt on Bob’s ex-wife. Mair posing as Heba via text claims to have tapped the ex-wife’s cell phone and is doing intense surveillance on her. Mair and Heba via text told Bob his ex-wife was running a BDSM sex club out of her house while Bob’s kids were in the next room and a ton of other crazy stuff. Bob is alarmed but pleased at the thought of getting full custody of his kids and rescuing them from that sex club house. Of course this was all a story Mair created to get closer to Bob. Mair "Marianne Smyth" knew Bob and his son were huge hockey fans so she told him her good friend is Garth Snow, the GM of the New York Islanders. Mair would show Bob text messages from Garth to prove it. And eventually Bob started getting text messages from Garth too. Bob was pretty disappointed when Garth, who was supposed to meet him at his church one day… never showed. Something came up. Something always came up. Something always does when you’re dealing with a figment of Mair’s imagination. Bob realized It was Mair who was impersonating Garth Snow the whole time. So in Feb-March 2017 when Mair went to jail for 30 days of her 180 day jail sentence after being convicted of stealing from Pacific Islands… she explained her 30 day absence to Bob by saying that her Irish Uncle - Cardinal Richard F Clarke had just died and she had to make an emergency trip to Ireland and deal with everything. Bob was texting and e-mailing Mair while she was in Ireland (Jail) and Mair said the reason she never responded was that she was in mourning for a month. Didn't want to talk to anyone but be in prayer. First, she was going to the Vatican for a service by the Pope then his body was being taken back to Gallway for another service. Which of course was a fantastic LIE to continue stringing Bob along for the giant con soon to come. When she got back from “Ireland” (Jail) she said her apartment was flooded and she had nowhere to stay so Bob let her crash with him. In reality, she was evicted from her apartment 2 months prior, had no job and no money coming in. And here's the biggest con yet... Mair "Marianne Smyth" tells Bob about her wealthy Irish family and the $25 million inheritance she’s going to receive soon. And Bob, like the other people she scammed, believed her. Why wouldn't he? One day Mair shows Bob a $12 million house she says she’s going to buy with her inheritance money. She says she wants to put Bob’s name on the title and co-own it with him.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4525-Camden-Dr-Corona-Del-Mar-CA-92625/25503460_zpid/

For the record, Mair "Marianne Smyth" is not from Ireland. She was born in Bangor, Maine and grew up in Tennessee. There is no wealthy Irish family and there is no 25 million dollar inheritance. But she cleverly convinces Bob there is and that she'll be receiving her 25 million dollar inheritance any day now and that she wants to buy a 12 million dollar home and put Bob's name in it because she loves him. “That’s crazy” Bob says. “If our relationship goes south I’ll own $6 million worth of your home! That’s not right.” Bob says. To which Mair artfully replies “OK. If you put my name on the title of both the homes you own we’ll be even.” So Mair drew up papers and was about to get Bob to put her name on the title of the two homes he owns when fate intervened in the form of Bob's ex-wife. Bob’s ex-wife wanted to check out the woman in her ex-husband’s life because Mair was about to formally meet their kids… that’s when his ex-wife found my blog online by googling "Mair Smyth" - printed it out and shared it with Bob... who then came home and confronted Mair.. who then immediately ran out of the house and left without saying a word. Bob said all he ever paid for was hotel rooms for her. She explained her lack of funds to him by saying I had charged up all her cards and ruined her finances while she was in Ireland. (Jail) Turns out... Bob was supposed to be the BIG CATCH. Can you imagine if he had put Mair's "Marianne Smyth's" name on the title of the two homes he owns!!!! She would own them. And he'd have to pay her out to "buy" them back from him.

BIG

Years before Bob, she claimed to be dating her version of Big (Sex and the City references anyone?) for nine years. But I interviewed Big at length, he wants to conceal his identity, and Big only knew Mair "Marianne Smyth" for 3 years. Big eventually wanted nothing to do with her after he discovered all the text messages and e-mails he was supposedly receiving from her "wealthy family" in Ireland dangling a lucrative job offer that never seemed to pan out were actually coming from fake google voice accounts and fake e-mail accounts that Mair created. By then she had scammed 21K from him... most of it going to repair a roof on one of her many estates in Ireland. Which was another lie Mair invented. Big would later learn Mair wasn't even from Ireland. She was born in Bangor, Maine. During their association, Mair told Big she was good friends with Jennifer Aniston, and showed him text messages from Jennifer to prove it... a story she would use again and again with many other victims.

CHIRS

Mair "Marianne Smyth" told Chris she was good friends with Jennifer Aniston too. And she'd show him text messages from Aniston to prove it... well Chris eventually figured out those Jennifer Aniston text messages were actually coming from a Google Voice account that Mair herself created to text HERSELF as Jennifer Aniston. Then he dumped her. He figured it was a major red flag. BOY WAS HE RIGHT.

JONATHAN

Mair "Marianne Smyth", using another Google phone number, impersonated a client of hers, a Studio Exec, who worked at a big movie studio here in LA to try and get Jonathan, the wealthy guy she was dating to pay $15,000 for some tickets to an awards show. The Studio Exec had no idea Mair was doing this. She has since hired a lawyer and is pursuing a case against Mair for impersonating her. Jonathan never actually handed over the $15,000. He got a weird feeling about it at the last second and changed his mind. But Mair, pretending to be The Studio Exec via text sent a lot of lewd sexual advances to Jonathan to create drama. When The Studio Exec found this out she was FURIOUS.

ROBERT

Robert was dating Mair "Marianne Smyth" for a few months then dumped her after he discovered she was using Google Phone Numbers to text him and other people in his life to cause drama. He would then see her in his neighborhood at all hours stalking him so he filed a restraining order. After he dumped her all his drama went away. "MAIR SMYTH" AKA "MARIANNE ELIZABETH SMYTH" aka "Marianne Smyth" is also running a scam now on Go Fund me where she's using her dead daughter to "raise" money

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-v0A-1evH1Uc/WP4JZNUAmfI/AAAAAAAAAFM/F7UvI-SZh34mCtlTeg8U3_g6zYmnGdmNwCLcB/s1600/Mair%2B-%2BGofundme%2BFRAUD%2B-%2Bhttps-%253A%253Awww.gofundme.com%253Ap9zs28.tiff

HER FAMILY I talked to Mair's family recently back in Tennessee and learned Mair was a HORRIBLE mother who abandoned her daughters, Chelsea and Courtney, for YEARS.

What’s funny is her family doesn’t know her as "Mair" they know her as "Marianne Smyth" They have no idea why Marianne changed her name, though not officially, to Mair but they suspect it was to avoid any association to her previous life in Tennessee and elsewhere. According to Mair's family, Mair "Marianne Smyth" has been a lying, cheating, con artist ever since she was born. Mair's family HATES her because of it and they want NOTHING to do with her. Mair's brother said "If I see Mair I'm going to shoot her in the head." And he's not kidding. He really would. And who could blame him at this point. According to her family, Mair NEVER went to Northwestern University or graduated college or University of any kind.

Mair "Marianne Smyth" has never told her family or Chelsea who Chelsea’s biological father is. Over the years the stories have changed. At one point Mair said he was dead… then she’d say he's a professional Hockey Player… then she’d say he's Black… then she’d say he's married with kids. After Chelsea was born, Mair "Marianne Smyth" disappeared for the first 6 or 7 years of her life. That's why Mair's parents were awarded custody of Chelsea. Then when Mair showed back up she got joint custody. Mair "Marianne Smyth" was born in Maine and grew up in Tennessee but Mair was obsessed with wanting to be Irish. So much so Mair sought out Irish guys online and started a long distance relationship with one. When Chelsea was 11, Mair wanted to go visit Ireland on vacation to see this guy. And she wanted to take Chelsea with her. So she did. Then when Chelsea and Mair "Marianne Smyth" were in Ireland supposedly on vacation, Mair "Marianne Smyth" forced Chelsea to call her grandparents and tell them, "This is not a vacation after all. We're moving here permanently" That's when Chelsea really started to loath her mother. Mair eventually married the Irish guy, Stephen Smyth, she met online. Mair kept the Smyth name after the divorce. Chelsea and her stepfather had a close relationship.

Seven years later, Chelsea turned 18 and she insisted on moving back to Tennessee. She hated Ireland and hated her mother for kidnapping her and forcing her to live there. And on the day Chelsea was leaving, Mair "Marianne Smyth" at the last second changed her mind and moved back to Tennessee with her daughter. Chelsea was furious because she was trying to get away from Mair "Marianne Smyth" . Chelsea asked her stepdad "Why the sudden change of plans?" And he replied "Your mother is not safe in Ireland anymore. People want to kill her. She has to move." Apparently Mair had her own mortgage broker business in Ireland. So you can just imaginethe grand scams she was running with people's money and why those people would want to kill her for it.

After that, Chelsea didn't see her mother "Marianne Smyth" again until a couple years ago in LA when Pablo and I met her and she got the false impression that Mair had turned her life around. Meanwhile Mair "Marianne Smyth" was really in the process of scamming us and our neighbors and all the “friends” she’d meet in LA.

The family said as far back as they can remember, Mair "Marianne Smyth" has never worked for anything. She wants money and the trappings of wealth but never wanted to put in the effort. She just lied and cheated her way through life.

Another lie Mair "Marianne Smyth" told her family in Tennessee was that she had breast cancer. She never did. Mair just used that story to gain sympathy and scam people back home. They said Mair was always pretending to be sick with something.

Mair's other daughter, Courtney, in particular HATED Mair. Mair "Marianne Smyth" had lost custody of Courtney almost immediately after she was born. Courtney was raised by her father and her father's family. When Mair was living in Ireland with the Smyth guy she married, she lied and told him Courtney had died years before. That way, she wouldn't have to explain why she lost custody of Courtney and what a lying, cheating, screw-up of a mother and human being she is. But one day, the Smyth guy saw an instant message pop up on Mair's computer screen from Courtney and busted Mair in her lie. Courtney was in fact alive. Mair just never had custody of her and wasn't allowed to see her and didn't want the Smyth guy to know why. I'm sure that led the Smyth guy to bust Mair in a thousand other lies. Mair drove him INSANE with her lies and cons. Mair "Marianne Smyth" even had an urn of fake ashes labeled "Courtney" she'd use as a prop in her apartment, so clients and friends would see it when they visited.

Courtney did eventually die of Cystic Fibrosis. But on her deathbed, she BEGGED her sister Chelsea to "Promise me you'll never have any contact with mom ever again". So yes Courtney died of Cystic Fibrosis, but Mair wasn't there for that. And Mair never raised her. That's why none of us have ever seen any pictures of Mair with Courtney!!! Mair has only used her daughter's death to gain sympathy so she can scam people for money like with that GoFundMe page where she raised more that $16,000 FOR HERSELF while pretending the money went to Cystic Fibrosis.

MY STORY OF EXACTLY HOW SHE SCAMMED ME:

Back in July 2013 I met convicted felon Marianne Elizabeth Smyth AKA “Mair Smyth” aka "Marianne Smyth" at Bunker Hill Towers. She was my neighbor and she quickly became one of my best friends. But in reality, I was just her next “mark” I had no idea about all the financial crimes she was accused and would be convicted of.

LA County Court records are here showing her conviction for stealing more than $100,000 from her former employer Pacific Islands.Com - She is currently out of jail and on probation. When I met Marianne Elizabeth Smyth aka "Marianne Smyth" , she claimed she stood to inherit millions of dollars because her family’s trust in Ireland was being dissolved. She said her Uncle died and the family was dividing up the $25 million estate. She said she would get $5 million. She said her family in Ireland owned a lot of land. And one of her great uncles actually signed the Irish constitution. She said they were a very powerful political family with IRA connections. But she said her family hated her, especially her cousin Finton and there’s a clause in the trust that if any heir is convicted of a felony they will forfeit the inheritance. She established this story 4 months before she ever asked me for anything. I believed her because she became one of my best friends in the ensuing years and I had no reason to doubt her. But this story turned out to be a huge a lie to bait me for the con coming up. Four months after she solidly established her wealthy family inheritance story, she said her wealthy family, who did business with the luxury travel agency she worked for (Pacific Islands.com), set her up to make it look like she stole more than $100,000 so they could disqualify her from the inheritance and keep her $5 million for themselves. She was fired, arrested and charged. I paid her bail of 4K. She was my friend at the time and I believed her and I wanted to help her get her inheritance because she asked for my help. And it seemed she needed my help. I’m a happily married gay man and my husband and I were only helping Marianne Smyth because we felt sorry for her. And because we thought she could pay us back. On March 10th 2017, I discovered there is no family inheritance. That was a story she made up. And she’s not from Ireland. That was another made up story. I hired a Private Investigator and discovered she was born in Bangor, Maine. Here's a copy of her Maine birth certificate: http://mairsmythpsychicscam.blogspot.com/2017/03/mair-smyth-of-orchid-psychics-scammed.html

She’s also a felon convicted of stealing $190,000 from Pacific Islands.com, the company she scammed using her own PayPal account to take customer’s vacation money for herself. In all I’ve loaned her $75,000 (including credit card interest payments) over 3 years most of it using PayPal. I loaned this money to her based on the series of fantastic lies she told me over and over again. She scammed me. And I’m discovering she’s scammed other people. On March 16th 2017 when I told my neighbor Nina about what happened. Nina confessed that Marianne Smyth told her the same lies and scammed $2,000 out of her. So I started calling other neighbors we knew in common and discovered on March 17th 2017 that she managed to scam another neighbor out of $5,000 using another made up story. And she applied for credit cards in her former friend and client Michalle's name and charged up $5000. And another friend, Heather, she scammed out of $10,000 over a 12 month period telling fantastic, whimsical lie after lie. And yet another friend Sam, she scammed out of $900. I know there must be more victims out there. This woman needs to be stopped before she scams more innocent people. She’s a convicted felon of financial crimes. In 2014 she told me the prosecutor in the Pacific Island’s case, DA David Borsack, working in concert with her wealthy family, froze her bank accounts so she can’t pay rent. She said she had more than $50,000 in a Bank of America account that was frozen. And she had her wealthy family’s $5 million inheritance coming to her very soon. She was a good friend at the time and I believed her. She asked me to borrow money to pay rent. So I paid her rent at 717 W Olympic Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90015 for one month $5800 and I paid $3500 to help her move into a cheaper place at Bunker Hill Towers 222 S. Figueroa St. LA CA 90012 APT 1622. I recently learned on March 15th 2017 the prosecution did not freeze her bank accounts. That was a lie. And there is no wealthy Irish family inheritance. She's not even Irish! She was just broke. She lied to gain my sympathy so I would loan her money to pay her rent. And she lied that she had more than 50K in a bank account so we’d think she’d be able to pay us back. And she lied about a family inheritance of $5 million coming to her. Also back in 2013 she says she broke up with her married boyfriend Lawyer. She says he was also her attorney. She claims they own property in Colorado together and that after the break up he stopped representing her so she’s suing the firm and him. She says he offered $100,000 to settle out of court in order to make us feel more comfortable about loaning her more money. This was all a lie. There is no case against the lawyer or his firm. And there is no $100,000 settlement coming to her. She just lied to scam more money out of me. From 2014-2017 she had dozens of appearances in court (See case docket attached to this statement) getting continuance after continuance based on health reasons. She said the Public Defender she got, Hope Vannorsdall, said for the case to go away she’d need $50,000 plus another $4000 and she would do no jail time and would not be convicted of a felony. She also kept mentioning that her inheritance is coming soon and she’d soon have a lot of money to pay us back what she already owed us and much more. So I allowed her to charge my credit cards $50,000 using her business PayPal account “Orchid Psychics” and she asked me later for a cashiers check for an additional $4,000 to pay her plea so she could get her inheritance so she could pay us back. I had her sign an IOU stating she’d pay me back the cash and credit card loan and the interest the credit cards incurred. Then I discovered through court records she was lying to me to get more money out of me. The plea agreement was for $40,000… but she told me $54,000 to scam me out of an additional $14,000. And the plea agreement always involved her doing 180 days in jail and pleading guilty to a felony. She told me there would be no jail time and no felony conviction so she could still inherit her family’s money and pay me back. I recently discovered all these lies. She’s a convicted felon of financial crimes. There is no family inheritance. She’s a professional scammer from Maine not Ireland. I’ve been talking to LAPD’s Detective Martin Greenblatt who investigated the case she was convicted of and District Attorneys David Borsack and Michelle Raji who prosecuted the case she was convicted of and they urged to me file a police report ASAP so Marianne Elizabeth Smyth can be stopped from scamming other people out money. So I did, ------ IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS E-MAIL ME: [email protected] Other Known Aliases: "Marianne Andle" "Marianne E. Andle" "Marianne Elizabeth Andle""Barianne E Welch" "Mariane Smyth" "Mariane E. Smyth" "Marianne E Andle" "Marianne E Welch""Marianne Welch" "Marianne Elizabeth Welch"

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aheliotech · 7 years

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Common phishing scams and how to prevent them

New Post has been published on https://www.aheliotech.com/blog/common-phishing-scams-and-how-to-prevent-them/

Common phishing scams and how to prevent them

I think by now we’ve all been contacted by a Nigerian prince looking for someone to help him move his wealth out of the country in return for a share of his fortune. We all know it’s a scam, but did you know a whopping 30% of you still click on phishing scam links?

Phishing scams in particular are getting so sophisticated these days that most of us will need a magnifying glass just to spot the inconsistencies that give away their fraudulent nature.

In today’s post, we will tell you exactly how to recognize a phishing scam and share some classic examples we’ve encountered.

Firstly, what are phishing scams?

The term ‘phishing’ was coined in 1996 by hackers who were stealing ‘America Online’ (better known as AOL) accounts and passwords. Employing the analogy of angling, scammers used email ‘lures,’ laying out ‘hooks’ to ‘fish’ for passwords and financial data. The letter ‘f’ was often interchanged with ‘ph’ as a nod to the original form of hacking known as phone phreaking: the reverse engineering of various tones used to re-route long distance calls.

While these ‘phreakers’ manipulated tone sequences to obtain free calls, the act itself could be argued to be victimless (Well, except for the phone companies…). This is not the case with phishing attacks. Phishers attempt to trick, steal or socially engineer you into divulging your private information. As businesses put complex security mechanisms in place to protect against unauthorized access, criminals target the weakest element in the system: you.

So, what types of phishing scams are out there?

There are two main types of phishing scams:

Advanced-fee fraud

An advance-fee scam is a type of fraud that involves promising the victim a significant share of a large sum of money in return for a small up-front payment. If a victim makes the payment, the fraudster will either invent a series of new fees for the victim to keep paying, or will simply disappear.

Traditional phishing scams

Phishing is the attempt to obtain sensitive information such as your username, password and credit card details by pretending to be a trustworthy entity such as Microsoft, Amazon, PayPal or even your bank.

While most traditional phishing scams are implemented via email, many phishing attempts happen via social media and even through your work suites such as Dropbox and Google Docs.

Over the years we’ve seen it all, like that time a Skype scambot tried to lure our CEO into plugging in his credit card details.

Or that other time when we teamed up with Bleeping Computer to watch a ‘tech support’ scammer (dubbed Mr Z by the team) attempt to convince us our virtual machine was infected with ‘trozens’ so we’d buy his fake product.

In fact: Tech support scams are so common we’ve covered them in depth here.

While there are countless different ways to phish, these are the most common phishing scam examples:

Deceptive phishing

Regardless of the delivery method, eg; Skype, email or phone call, deceptive phishing is a scammer impersonating a legitimate company in order to receive something from you, whether that be your personal information for identity theft, your credit card details or for you to feel pressured into buying a product that may or may not exist. The methods criminals are using to make you believe the site you are opening is the real deal are getting increasingly clever, as we’ll show you in our examples later on.

Spear phishing

Are deceptive phishing attacks but rather than attempting to scam an entire population of people, the attacks are targeted. You may receive an email that includes your name, position, company name and work phone number, or a contact request on Skype where you are directly confronted with personal information.

CEO Fraud

This is a type of spear phishing where the credentials of a business executive are commandeered via a phishing email, hoax call or Skype scam. These credentials are then used to conduct fraudulent activity. Common examples include Google’s Larry Page himself writing you to notify you about the “official” sweepstakes.

Cloud Storage Phishing

Utilising the suites that many people now rely on for work, these phishing scams are conducted via shared documents. In past phishing scams, Google and Dropbox have even unknowingly hosted these scams in the past with SSL certificates, meaning these scams appeared 100% legitimate.

Pharming

Redirects traffic from a legitimate site to a malicious one without your knowledge. Any personal information you enter into this page is going directly to the scammers. These pages are usually reached via links shared in deceptive phishing emails, Skype chats and social media ads.

How advanced-fee phishing attacks work: Chatting with a scammer

This email showed up in my inbox from ‘UBS Investment Bank London’ earlier this week. The sender email, [email protected], piqued my interest.

I was amused by the many inconsistencies in the email, such as the fact that it made absolutely no sense. I couldn’t help myself. I had to know. What was the deal? Who was Jerry Joe?

So I called him.

The phone number connects to a man in Basingstoke, England, who didn’t know what to say until I asked him why he emailed me. He continued to ask me my name while I questioned him and assured me repeatedly that if I simply gave him my full name he would be able to give me more information about the business adventure we were about to embark on together.

When I couldn’t get past Jerry Joe’s demands for my personal information on the phone, I responded from a different (pseudonymous) email address to learn more.

Within an hour I had received nothing short of an essay.

A 40% cut of almost £8m? Guaranteed 100% success? Sweet! If I wasn’t already sold on this wonderful opportunity, I had the following attachments to convince me.

Even though I was surprised that the account statement from 2014 looked like it was printed on paper from the 80s, this all seemed incredibly convincing. He went on to say:

Now assured “this was no child’s play,” and that “nothing stupid will happen in this business either now or later” I was to feel safe providing my brother/partner with:

My full legal name

My full address

My age

Occupation

Marital status

A copy of any of my identity documents, either international passport or drivers license.

I can only imagine if I had provided these things, this ‘SIR’ would have had her identity used online to scam other poor souls. And I can’t imagine this is the only aim of the scam. There is often some ‘small fee’ required to facilitate the transfer of my newly acquired fortune. Whereby I offer my credit card details or send money via Western Union or PayPal.

British comedian James Veitch repeatedly converses with scam emailers in a bid to extract some whimsy from the scourge of the internet. In his words, time wasted with him is time that these scammers are not out scamming adults out of their savings. The results are hilarious.

Though it is obvious in the context of this post that the above examples are indeed scams, and while humorous to behold, this is a serious problem. There are still many who are able to be convinced to give up their information through either falling for the initial scam email or being harassed until they are willing to do so. If you receive an email like the one above, simply delete it.

But what about less obvious scam emails?

How to identify a traditional phishing scam

Think about how meticulous you are about your spelling in an email to a customer, your boss or a work colleague. Now imagine the importance a financial organisation, such as your bank, would place on ensuring all brand communication was immaculately presented.

If you receive an email that looks like this, you can be sure it didn’t come from Bank of Scotland:

Though the general layout is quite neat, the incorrect email address, or email spoofing, is your first clue that something isn’t quite right. The random capitalisation in the main header text might not tip you off but the request for you to immediately log on and correct your details should.

There is not a financial organisation on earth that would lead you to a third party site to sign in to your account. If you receive an email like this, go to your online banking directly from your bank’s website in a separate window. Check your secure messages from within internet banking. See any message there about your online account? Didn’t think so.

Scammers take advantage of the fact that we are constantly being bombarded with information at all hours of the day. It is easy to become complacent about what we are clicking on and to whom are we are giving our information.

Keep a clear eye out for the following clues that an email is not what it seems:

An email is addressed vaguely with salutations such as ‘Dear Valued Customer’ or ‘Dear Customer.’

The subject uses urgent and/or threatening language such as ‘Account Suspended’ or ‘Unauthorized Login Attempt.’

You are being offered a lot of money for no reason.

The email simply makes no sense.

The message appears to be from a government agency.

An email, phone call or contact request is completely unsolicited and was not initiated by any action on your part.

You are being asked to surrender personal information such as your bank account details, credit card information or are being redirected to login with your internet banking credentials.

Something just doesn’t feel right. If an offer seems too good to be true or you just feel in your gut that something is off, it probably is.

Let’s take a look at a common example close up.

Think you can spot a scam now? Not so fast.

There’s one more type of phishing scam you need to be very aware of.

Unicode phishing

Now, let’s take a look at the browser bar below. If you were redirected here from an email you wouldn’t see any problem. It looks like Paypal.com. Great! Now, click on the image and look closely.

See the umlaut and tilde above the ‘a’s. This is a scam site that I was redirected to via a link in an email. It’s a common method that our lab team is increasingly seeing to trick users to believe they are accessing a legitimate site. In this case, phishers are exploiting the fact that unicode incorporates many writing systems that each have different codes for the same letter. Using punycode, scammers can register domain names that look identical to a real site.

It is because of legitimate looking login pages like the ones above and altered URL’s like this one that cause people to be so easily caught out.

So how can you protect yourself?

How to prevent phishing scams

Though scams are getting more sophisticated all the time, there are easy steps you can take to prevent phishing attacks.

DON’T click on any links in emails claiming to be from your bank or any other trusted organisation. Especially if it asks you to verify or update your personal details. Delete these immediately.

DO an internet search of specific names and phrases in an email you are unsure about. Many scams can be identified this way as other victims post their stories on online forums.

LOOK for https: in any website where you are asked to provide personal details. SSL certificates are used to encrypt the transmitted information to secure identities and financial information over the web. If you don’t see HTTPS in your browser search bar, close it and manually search for the secure address. Always pay very close attention to what is written in the browser search bar. Check for inconsistencies such as symbols that shouldn’t be there and scrambled URLs.

NEVER provide personal information in an unsolicited phone call. Even if you believe the person calling you is legitimately from your bank, call your bank directly on the number listed on their website to be sure. They will confirm if you were contacted and why. Never return a call on a phone number given to you by the caller directly.

ALWAYS report a scam to the Anti-Phishing Work Group to ensure that others who are affected by the same scam can find out about it online.

As you can see, some people will try anything to scam you out of your hard-earned money, and the lines are always being blurred between phishing for information and scamming users for financial gain. But never fear. You have all the tools you could possibly need to spot a phishing attack a mile off! All it takes is clear eyes and a few second’s consideration to avoid infection. Now that you know what to look for, you can even help someone else to do the same!

Have a great (scam-free) day!

We’ve shown you ours, now show us yours. What’s the craziest scam you’ve ever encountered? What did you do about it? Tell us in the comments.

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