Scim, scam

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We have been phoned about every five days by men purporting to be raising money for police charities. Nobody else phones us so often.

I checked, and was told that this was not genuine and that the police were expressly forbidden to ask for money from the public, whether they are current or retired member of the force. I have subscribed to Do Not Call and I asked the last “policeman” to give me his name and National Insurance number (!),(whereupon he rang off).

Isn’t it sad? So much is geared to fear of, or dealing with, scammers, fraudsters, crooks and thieves. I wonder if the ancient Greek world was as full of fraudsters like this? Of course, they had their beggars and those desperate for food and roofs over their heads, but they didn’t have the tools – computers, phones, pickable pockets, credit cards and the sheer number of modern “things” that are steal-able to make the lives of others constantly wary and anxious Are we better off? No, unless we determinably work at peace of mind, consideration for others, kindness and thoughtfulness.

Epicureans are for the simple life. I used to have a Facebook presence. Do I miss it? Absolutely not! And now it appears in any case to be deliberately malign in many ways. Walk away.

Romance scams

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loneliness pushed many Americans online in search of a love connection. But romance scams often left them with an empty bank account as well as a broken heart.

For the past three years, people have reported losing more money on romance scams than on any other type of fraud, according to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Database. Last year, the reported losses for romance fraud reached a record $304 million, up about 50 percent from 2019. Adults 60 and older reported losing about $139 million to romance scams in 2020, a new report from the FTC finds. That’s a significant increase from the $84 million seniors lost to such scams in 2019.

It’s important to note this is only what people reported to authorities. In this loathsome scheme, con artists use fake dating profiles to impersonate people looking for romantic relationships. The contact could also start as a friend request or message on a social media platform. The criminals ultimately persuade their victims to send them money via gift cards or wire transfers. Before covid, schemers made up all kinds of reasons not to meet in person, and the repeated cancellations could alert some people that they were being bamboozled. But the pandemic has given criminals cover. Guidelines on social distancing provided a plausible excuse to keep the relationship online and avoid meeting in-person.

“What scammers do in a romance scam is they make up reasons why they can’t meet their supposed love in person,” says Kati Daffan, an assistant director in the Federal Trade Commission’s division of marketing practices.

The pandemic inspired new twists to the stories that scammers typically use to defraud their victims. scammers are incredible about coming up with believable stories – he couldn’t travel because of the pandemic or because of a supposed positive covid-19 test.

The FBI estimates that more than 23,000 people lost more than $600 million in confidence fraud, including romance scams, last year. This is up from $475 million in 2019. Kathy Stokes, director of AARP Fraud Prevention Programs. blames isolation because of the pandemic, loneliness and, in the case of a widow or widower, grieving. These make people more vulnerable and susceptible to being generous. Scams can go on for months or years, draining people’s life savings. One victim lost half a million dollars. Once they realize that it has been a scam, they are devastated financially and emotionally. Some take their own lives.

Criminal enterprises, often transnational, target widowed and divorced seniors on dating sites such as Match.com, Christian Mingle, JSwipe, and PlentyofFish, concocting sob stories about needing funds to pay taxes, cover travel costs or pay down debt. Many victims are often too embarrassed to come forward and admit they were hoodwinked. (Edited version of articles by Michelle Singletary, The Washington Post and Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News).

My comment: Epicurus believed in peace of mind above all. Ataraxia in ancient Greek. Peace of mind has to be accompanied with care in dealing with over- friendly strangers, who have been with us for centuries. “Buyer beware!”

I’m outa here!

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One pays for things like blogs and websites. Money, that is.

Today I decided I want to move to another planet, a planet without hi-tech stuff or teeming with fraudsters.

I tried to renew my subscription for this blog domain. Should be easy, yes? No.

It seems that my wife, minutes before, had tried to order something from a famous company with a French name. I knew nothing about it till later.

Well, our credit card people decided that trying to pay a French company had to be fraud, and they suspended use of the credit card. Unknown to my wife I was simultaneously trying to pay the hosting subscription for Epicurus.Today
I was told that the card had been suspended for possible fraud, and I had to abandon my efforts.

There was no fraud, just a whole load of wasted time and making a fool of myself with the hosting company. To wind up my frustration, the security person at our credit card company asked, among a host of other questions, who we spent xxx dollars with on October 18th. Turns out it was a food delivery, but I hadn’t a clue. Our front door is sometimes like a left-luggage area. Fortunately my wife knew the answer, but the point is that the afternoon was wasted with all this, and I ended desperate to catch the first rocket to……to…..anywhere else in the universe.

This is all a huge waste of time (I imagine, dear reader, that you have had similar annoyances connected with credit cards, computers phones etc.).

Upshot: I went back on the hosting site to finally pay, only to learn that it takes TWO DAYS to clear the suspension of our credit card!

When I get to the new planet I want to pay what I owe with pebbles.

Facebook et al

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US Senators have accused Facebook of disregarding research showing harm to teens.

Senators grilled Facebook executives recently, accusing them of ignoring internal research indicating that social media can harm teens. Lawmakers demanded that Facebook executives explain the company’s efforts to attract young users despite evidence that Instagram, owned by Facebook, makes body image issues worse for many teen girls, and is linked by teens themselves to anxiety and depression. “Instagram is that first childhood cigarette meant to get teens hooked early,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). “Exploiting the peer pressure of popularity and ultimately endangering their health.” Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, said the company’s platforms “actually add value and enrich teens’ lives.” [The Wall Street Journal]

My comment: “….actually add value and enrich teens’ lives? “. Really, Antigone Davis – are you serious? Everything I have heard and read suggest that the company’s platforms make them feel inadequate and unhappy. Why do we inflict this on kids in the name of “freedom of speech”?

Another big lie

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A school administrator in Southlake, Texas, advised teachers last week that if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also have a book with an “opposing” perspective.

The only “diverse perspective” on the Holocaust is Holocaust denial: the odious contention that Hitler didn’t arrange the murder of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Roma, homosexuals, Poles and political prisoners; that Auschwitz and Treblinka were fabrications designed to discredit the Nazi’s quest for racial purity? Did anyone suggest that, under the new guidelines?

One can’t help wondering if the response would have been quite so widespread and intense if it had been suggested that books on race relations be countered by other books addressing the toll – the very existence – of systemic racism. In fact, Rickie Farah, a fourth-grade teacher in the Southlake district, was recently reprimanded by the school board trustees for making Tiffany Jewell’s This Book is Anti-Racist available to her students; her case attracted minimal attention beyond the local press it would now be illegal to teach The Diary of Anne Frank without citing the loathsome broadsides that have questioned the diary’s authenticity, among them Ditlieb Felderer’s 1979 Anne Frank’s Diary, A Hoax, which calls the iconic journal “the first pedophile pornographic work to come out after World War II”.

The question of what specific books and topics can and can’t be taught is only part of what’s so disturbing about Texas law HB 3979 and the advice to teachers. What’s troubling is the idea that legislators, rather than educators, should determine and impose limitations on a school curriculum. The problem is the way in which administrators have interpreted the new law to mean that teachers and their pupils should ignore the evidence of history, that students shouldn’t be encouraged to distinguish between what actually happened and what didn’t, and that a range of hot-button subjects are not merely inappropriate but forbidden to mention in a classroom setting.

If teachers are obliged to tell their classes that there is “another point of view” about whether the Holocaust occurred, must American history lessons now also include books asserting that the United States was never a slave-holding nation or that racism ended with the Emancipation Proclamation? If the discussion surrounding a novel or story leads a class to conclude that LGBTQ+ people are entitled to basic human rights, must the class be asked to seriously consider the opposing view: that those rights should be denied to anyone who differs from the heterosexual norm?

My comment: My father arrived with an advanced guard at a mass extermination camp in Northern Germany at the end of the war. He left me in his Will a leather-thonged, bloody whip which he took off a Nazi guard, who he arrested. Dead, naked bodies were in piles in clear sight. His words to me? “Never forget!” Holocaust denial is a gross obscenity and a deep moral failing.