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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34906 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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From the article you linked:

Pearl was familiar with the email content’s theme as it resembled previous automated correspondence from Twitter — featuring a minimal white background, black text, and blue links.

Fearing her account’s safety, Pearl clicked the link inside the email that supposedly would instantly let her secure her account and entered her existing password on the following webpage to update it.

Moments later, a message arrived in a Telegram group. All it contained was a screenshot of Pearl’s Twitter profile and a link. Three hours later, the admin texted, “Sold.”

Pearl had fallen prey to a phishing attack. The email wasn’t from Twitter but from a hacker who had copied the look of an official Twitter message.

This doesn't seem like anything new, let alone related to the new Twitter Blue system. "Impersonation of official communication" is an age-old "social engineering" attack. Hell, the article predates Twitter Blue, and has more to do with the prior crypto-craze that's even led to things like the hacking of Discord bots.

I assume Elon's bet is that $8/month is too high a price for normal spammers and scammers to bother with. Phishers will always be a problem, yes, but again, we've had literal decades of trying to warn regular people to be vigilant against cyberattacks. Maybe it'll be worse when there's more bluechecks, but that's the other thing: the value of the bluecheck is not as high in the eye of the beholder, or, rather, the signal changes with the ubiquity of the check. Pre-Elon, the Blue Check was generally taken as a warning sign that the holder was a sanctimonious opinion-holder who leaned left. Post-Elon, "you paid $8 for a checkmark" has become the new lazy insult on Twitter. If the worst-case scenario you imply were to come to pass, why would the response not be "most users scroll past the checkmarked tweets"?

From that small excerpt, all I can say is that Pearl is an idiot. How many of these kinds of emails does everyone get everyday? I've had urgent messages about my account with such-and-such being compromised, and they look legit - but since I never went near such-and-such and have no account, I know it's a fake.

Anyone above the age of reason who clicks on a mystery link in an email, in this day, is an idiot. Sorry Pearl but it's your fault, not Musk's fault.

From that small excerpt, all I can say is that Pearl is an idiot. How many of these kinds of emails does everyone get everyday? I've had urgent messages about my account with such-and-such being compromised, and they look legit - but since I never went near such-and-such and have no account, I know it's a fake.

Anyone above the age of reason who clicks on a mystery link in an email, in this day, is an idiot. Sorry Pearl but it's your fault, not Musk's fault.

It is shocking to me, as someone whose job is basically helping small business owners deal with technology, how resistant people are to learning basic internet safety habits. There are often two or three clear signs that these emails are fake and a very simple way to verify without clicking any links in the email. Fortunately, I've trained several of my clients to forward suspicious emails to me, so I can confirm their suspicions, but it really isn't very hard and we've had 20+ years of life-training on this by now, haven't we?

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