30 Mar 2025 - AJ
This week, I had to look up what the FCC did, because honestly, I didn’t know what they did either. (Though I knew they weren’t likely to be contacting some random person about a phone number being used in China. They’re not that kind of enforcement.)
I had an idea that this was a scam that targeted people who came from areas where some dialect of Chinese was dominant. I didn’t know that it was actually a common scam in China, to the extent that the govenment of China actually warned citizens to turn off FaceTime. The scams in themselves are ones I’ve seen before in some format or another - such as the scam that convinces someone that hackers have broken into their bank account - but the international angle, the distrust and fear that some expat Chinese have of Chinese police/intelligence is actually something quite fascinating to me. It’s a window into how scammers adjust to take advantage of victims.
It’s a window into cultures and attitudes through the lens of lazy assholes who would rather get money through dishonest means instead of working legal, good jobs. But it’s still a window.