This week on Bits about Money: geeks running Internet-enabled small businesses using a combination of software development, marketing savvy, online platforms, and boutique investment firms... except they're evil.
Welcome to the fraud supply chain.
bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/the-fr…
Welcome to the fraud supply chain.
bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/the-fr…
This is a follow-up on my tweetstorm from Giving Tuesday about how charities get preferentially targeted by card testers, one link in this supply chain.
A number of y'all told me that this was surprising, so I thought I'd go into it in more detail.
https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1465718782781911040
A number of y'all told me that this was surprising, so I thought I'd go into it in more detail.
I have some weird hobbies. One of them is email spam, which I did a (tiny) bit of work on in my first job in Japan.
In doing the research for it I read a new article by some blogger who had a Plan for Spam.
paulgraham.com/spam.html
In doing the research for it I read a new article by some blogger who had a Plan for Spam.
paulgraham.com/spam.html
Anyhow, while I was reading everything I could about spam, I fell backwards into reading about the world of online fraud, and it was so freaking fascinating. It combined my interest in systems about money, programming, etc, with the thrill of a heist movie.
Fast forward 15 years and I ended up working in the payments industry, and it turns out that there are a number of people who love geeking out about this stuff.
If you were e.g. a technologist or marketer or similar who was newly hired at my day job, and had never thought about this subject before, this essay is approximately what I would tell you over a coffee prior to pointing you to the internal docs about What We Do About It.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
