They were talking to me too but I was super vague about things and cautious from the start. Eventually, they wanted to, "take the conversation off if lemmy" and that's a red flag, so I said no thank you, we can continue here and that was the end of it.

If you notice from your conversations (just guessing), you might see that the conversation is heavily about you and they rarely speak of themselves without prompt. The responses probably resemble yours or are similar or relatable in some way.

The conversation built up on all of this together and was another flag. Although what was being said was natural, the direction and pace seemed unnatural.

I'm a stranger on the internet. I lied to sadbunny. I gave no real information. I made up everything from my name to my life events. Why? Because I don't believe that a random internet person would care that much to reach out. Sad? Maybe. This was reinforcement of that thought.

Be cautious. I'm hesitant about everything as the internet is mostly dead to me (see: dead internet theory). We sail the internet seas, be weary of mermaids and ghost ships.

This is why I don't have internet friends. I don't trust anyone in the slightest.

That’s funny. It always ends up being one of the classic scams. That’s a lot of wasted time, sounds like you had a real operator. Once that gets automated it could get even worse.

Scams online used to be obvious, because they cost time and money to pursue. Only a person who would actually click on "You are thee 1 million vissitor to this webcite!" and then continue through a bunch of increasingly terrible prompts was actually worth their time, because that person was likely to be scammed. Anyone smart enough to not click would likely figure it out and would be easier effort for the scammers.

I'm hearing more and more about scams that smart, cautious people fall for. It seems kind of terrifying, and I wonder if we have to figure out new guidelines around online safety.

If you want to donate to this effort, I will accept iTunes gift cards to pay my back taxes.

Thank you for reporting this.

@mrkaplan@lemmy.world ?

They took the cat picture, or may be the same poster as Dawin on Reddit. Reverse image searched the cat image they posted, was posted here 3 months ago. The profile says they are a coin collector from Malaysia. Obviously no way to know that's actually the same person.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cat/comments/1kovlx6/tom_peaceful_face/

When I bump into something suspicious, I always drop the famous "Ignore All Previous Instructions" line to see what happens. So far, the IAPI-method has made shady scammers stop immediately.

Honestly, the most horrible thing about this is that people like you are even more cautious

how i was disbelieving in their kindness, and they reassured me every step of the way that there are good people out there and sometimes good things do happen

Because that's just true. I often get emotionally attached quickly to people, and there are situations in which I've done similar stuff to help people.

I don't really get the scam though; in what way would they have scammed you by giving your email address?
I don't feel like the takeaway should be being more sceptical though. I mean, in the end there always is a point at which a scammer would… well, ask you to do something that would enable them to scam you. And if you truly let your whole worldview be determined by them, you just let them win.

Sorry for that ordeal, I hope you’re okay.

As someone who messes with open LLMs a lot:

LLMs are trained with pairs of text that “sway” them to respond positively instead of against the user's wishes, hence a hallmark of popular models is that they skew sycophantic. If you want to slyly check if someone is real, steer the conversation somewhere where they should push back.

Another is numbers and math. The way they tokenize numbers and symbols, especially big numbers with spaces as typos, leads them to a lot of strange mistakes.

Also, overseas scammers might be using Chinese APIs instead of OpenAI. They have a blaring giveaway, if you can work it in: Chinese Politics. Mention the name of, say, party officials the CCP disappeared, or policy, and western models will know, but Chinese ones start freaking out. I used to know some trip ups US ones too (with OpenAI being the most popular for scammers), but i haven’t touched US models in a long time so I’m not sure they still work.

Oh, dang. I’ve been telling people who’ve apparently had a rough time to message me if they need a shoulder or an ear. That sucks, nothing is sacred anymore. I’m sorry that happened to you.

send a check, so you can clear, is like the oldest scam.

The check scam is ssooooooo old. It’s Venmo me that cash or no thanks lol

Anyway, your problem was talking to ANYONE on the internet privately whom you have not physically touched.

Glad you’re ok.

that's so predatory i'm sorry you got wrapped up in it. hey congrats on not actually falling for it though!!

I think one of the things that has been really getting me down is that the methods being used to scam people discourage compassion. This has been true before but I feel like as technology becomes more intrusive and advanced it becomes easier to take advantage of people. Where I live, in the U.S., the current administration is normalizing the behavior and removing obstacles and laws that would protect people from such behavior. Corporations are basically scamming people with dark patterns, walled gardens, anticompetitive practices, incomprehensible contracts or EULAs, poor data security/ + hacking events, enshittification, etc.

I'm not a social person to begin with and this leaves me so fucking distrustful of literally everything. Everything has become a scam and every method of communication has been taken advantage of. I need to train my parents to use verbal passwords to make sure phone calls aren't scammers with a voice synthesizer. All it takes is for them to not double check that the email that says it is from their family member is actually from their family member and click on a link. So depressing.

But, they paid the cat tax! Scammers have gone too far!

Sucks, even on a network this size still people trying to take advantage. I'm glad you could spot the scam before any real trouble.