Softwares

It’s a scam and in the end only you pay

Job offers promising high wages for 20 minutes of work a day; and, furthermore, with a multinational and recognizable company behind it, such as Amazon. It could only get better if, instead of you trying to convince them to hire you, company representatives contact you to encourage you to work with them.

Sounds good? Too good to be true, specifically? Well, that’s because it’s not even close to true. This is the umpteenth online scam in which in the end the only one who pays money is you.

During the second half of last year, several Latin American media (from countries like Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia or Colombia) echoed a campaign of sending messages through WhatsApp in which a “Amazon project business manager” introduced himself claiming to be hiring a “part-time” team, specifically “10 to 20 minutes”. Wow, the days are short on the other side of the Atlantic.

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The scam jumps the puddle

But now, the scam has crossed the ocean and the “commercial manager” is no longer the one who contacts the potential “signings” of the company, but the person who writes to us identifies himself as ‘Amazon platform receptionist’. Another version of the message, more impersonal, only notifies us that “Amazone Commerce recruits employees online.” Yeah, amazon.

The salary varies between “8-500” (8,500? Between 8 and 500?) US dollars for one version of the message and 36,000-240,000 ‘CLP’ (abbreviation for Chilean pesos) for the other. What does not change is the length of the working day: 20 minutes a day.

Do not trust unsolicited messages, job offers you have not applied for, or links to web domains that do not match the official one

In the message from ‘Amazone Commerce’ we are not even told what the job consists of, but we are offered to click on the “Whatsapp customer service link to start earning money”. Leaving aside that We don’t know what WhatsApp looks like in this, the truth is that the URL (from domain ‘url06.top’) provides little security.

In the other version of the message, the receptionist tells us that the job is to help her “process Amazon orders,” and then explains that the company “need different IP addresses to help the store increase sales and exposure”.

The two versions of the message that are being distributed (Image via Maldita.es)

In any case, if we answer that we are interested, we are encouraged to continue the conversation on the Telegram application. There we will be told that we are perfect for the job (once we have confirmed we have credit card), we will be asked to create an account on a platform without any connection to Amazon (‘shopping2018.com’) and send a screenshot to show that we have met that requirement.

It is there where the ‘contracted’ user will begin to carry out tasks of 20 minutes a day for which theoretically they are going to pay us, but then the scammers will try to convince the now scammed to enter small amounts of money to be returned with commissions…

‘Work’ interview via Telegram (Image via Maldita.es)

…until the victim reaches a certain amount of money deposited and at that moment you lose access to the platformwithout the possibility of contacting anyone to demand the return of the money.

Amazon is a regular target of impersonators from Internet companies and, of course, has nothing to do with these messages. In fact, the company warns that they never use messaging applications for work communications.

Via | Maldita.es

Image | Xataka Mexico

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Softwares

It was 100% smoke, but it caught thousands of cryptocurrency investors making up using an AI algorithm: they ended up in the hot seat

In recent years, cryptocurrencies have gained popularity not only as an alternative means of saving and payment, but also as a form of investment… and, with it, an option to obtain substantial profits. This, of course, has attracted all kinds of cyber-swindlers who have jumped on the wave of ‘crypto’.

One of the most prominent cases of this in recent times, at least in Spain, is that of arbistara cryptocurrency investment platform that promised great benefits (8%-15% per month) thanks to the use of an artificial intelligence algorithm called ‘Community Bot’.

Thus, the only condition for investors was that they could not withdraw their money in the first two months, but now we know that, during a period of just over a year (between May 2019 and September 2020), the platform only dedicated itself to defrauding more than 92 million euros from more than 32,000 investors (of which so far it has been possible to identify just over 5,000).

Curiosity: the Arbistar app is still available in the Google Play Store, although it hasn’t been updated for three years.

This is how the ‘shepherd’ was set up

Therefore, yesterday the judge of the National Court José Luis Calama prosecuted seven alleged members of Arbistar for crimes of criminal organization and massive fraud, imposing a joint and several bail of €123 million (on suspicion that the amount defrauded could greatly exceed the 92 million found so far).

However, the most notable thing about the judge’s order is that it establishes that ‘Community Bot’ never existed and that the platform only sold smoke.

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55 of Arbistar’s investors invested more than €50,000, and 17 invested more than €250,000

All those unfulfillable profits were actually coming out of a classic pyramid scheme., in which part of the money from new investors was used to pay off previous investors and build trust in the system. Of course, the ‘shack’ would only work as long as the rate of entry of new investors was greater than the mass of pre-existing investors.

For a time they focused on creating a powerful acquisition network, with which they were able to generate an image of profitability and implement a referral plan in which investors received compensation for attracting new clients.

They added to this an effective presence on social networks and the holding of public promotional events in hotels and conference rooms to attract more people.

According to the judge, the undisputed leader of the plot was Santiago Fuentes Jover: he has also determined that Jover was the one who designed the fraudulent strategy and gave instructions to keep it going both to the employees of the company and to the rest of those involved.

Image | PYRO on Pixabay

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It was 100% smoke, but it caught thousands of cryptocurrency investors making up using an AI algorithm: they ended up in the hot seat

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Genbeta

by Marcos Merino.

Softwares

so you can try it for free

Artificial intelligence is really versatile at the consumer level, highlighting today ChatGPT or Bard that try to save us from having to search for an answer on Google in a more laborious way. But this technology also has many other purposes, such as making very realistic creations from a simple phrase. We currently have many AIs that are capable of generating images from a sentence, and today we are also adding an AI that will generate videos from a prompt.

We are talking specifically about GEN-2, a really advanced AI video generator today that It is now available to try for free. This is hosted on the Runway page that already allowed you to generate videos with GEN-1 but from the material provided by the user himself.

GEN-2 arrives to create fantastic videos with AI

GEN-2 is presented as a multimodal AI system that generates novel videos with text, images or video clips and has different modes. The first one is the passage from text to video, although you can also find the option of generate a video from an image, stylization or convert mockups to renderings.

To be able to try this new generative AI, you do not need to pay absolutely anything. You simply have to access the Runway website and click on Try Runway Free having to register obligatorily with your own Gmail account.

Once you are in the control panel, you must press to the left on Generate videos and then in Gen-2: Text to video. Keep in mind that you have limited credits to be able to try this function, having to pay extra if you want to generate a greater number of videos.

From here, you will simply have to write in English the text that you want to appear in the video that is generated, being able to add an image on which you want the creation to be based. Once done, you simply have to click on Generate and wait to see the result in front of you.

Something important to keep in mind is that the videos they have a duration of only four seconds and that can obtain distorted results a priori. But it is a very good starting point for everything that is to come with this tool to create royalty-free resources for your own videos. In our case, we have generated a scene of a horse galloping at dawn, and the truth is that the result has been quite adequate to what was expected.

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Softwares

so is this filtered function

According to leaked information, Meta is analyzing the social potential of artificial intelligence chatbots. A screenshot shared by leaker Alessandro Paluzzi on Twitter shows what appears to be an introductory screen for the new Instagram feature.

It says that chatbots will be able to answer questions, give advice and help users to write messages.

It also says that users will be able to choose from “30 artificial intelligence personalities and find the one you like the most”. Another of the options seen in the filtered capture is that we could choose the best way to express ourselves and receive help to write messages.

The leaked Instagram capture reads:

Bring artificial intelligence to your chats for a more fun and engaged experience

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The plans announced by Meta

Goal has not announced any formal plans for such a featureand this leak is not confirmed, but it could go hand in hand with previous statements about the company’s AI ambitions.

For example, in February, Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta was “developing AI that can help people in a variety of ways” and that the company was exploring how to make bots accessible through text conversations “like chat on WhatsApp and Messenger.”

Still, it’s unclear if Meta really intends to launch these types of bots on Instagram, or what security measures it may take. What does happen is that the author of the screenshot above, Paluzzi, has a reliable track record of spotting upcoming features in the app and other social networks, so he often has good sources.

Chatbots in conversations, a difficult combination

Keep in mind that it is not the first time that AI has been used for conversations. Snap has its “My AI” bot, but, for example, it began offering unsettling advice to users, including cheering for a person who pretended to be 13 years old to have sex with her 31-year-old “boyfriend”.

In March, a Belgian man died by suicide, and his widow claimed he had been encouraged to commit suicide by a chatbot.

Last week we learned that the National Eating Disorders Association in the United States (NEDA) was removing its chatbot “Tessa” after continuous reports that artificial intelligence was offering harmful advice to its users. This bot replaced four of his workers fired.

Image | Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

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