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Coinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data, demanding $20M ransom

(www.cnbc.com)
410 points gpi | 4 comments | 15 May 25 15:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.989s | source
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modeless ◴[15 May 25 19:12 UTC] No.43998293[source]▶
I have been receiving regular spear phishing calls from these guys, or someone who bought the leaked data, with classic tactics like claiming that I need to confirm a potentially fraudulent transaction. They speak perfect English with an American accent, sound very friendly, and have knowledge of your account balance. Thankfully on the first call I realized it was a scam right away, and Google's call screening feature takes good care of the rest. Wish I could forward them to Kitboga[1].

I guess they didn't have as much luck as they wanted scamming Coinbase's customers, and once they had their fun they decided to try extorting Coinbase themselves.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNziOoXDBeg

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VectorLock ◴[15 May 25 19:37 UTC] No.43998497[source]▶
I just switched to iPhone from a pixel device and I’m shook by all the spam calls. How do iPhone users deal with this?
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dx4100 ◴[15 May 25 19:42 UTC] No.43998554[source]▶
I have my phone set to silence Unknown callers. What did you have setup on the Pixel before to block them?
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1. conductr ◴[15 May 25 19:50 UTC] No.43998638[source]▶
That’s too heavy handed for me. I get valid calls that I need to answer that aren’t in my contacts.

The calls they flag as potential spam and telemarketers has been 100% accurate in my experience so i wish I could just silence those

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2. vitaflo ◴[15 May 25 22:33 UTC] No.44000049[source]▶
Usually you are expecting these calls tho so you can turn off that feature when you do. If said person calls often, add them to your contacts.
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3. mullingitover ◴[15 May 25 23:15 UTC] No.44000316[source]▶
I just see if they leave a message. If they don’t, they’re sorted. If they do I can always call them back.
4. conductr ◴[16 May 25 00:56 UTC] No.44000826[source]▶
They could also just easily enhance the feature right? It’s an extra if statement in the code. I get enough calls that it’s not practical to constantly edit a setting that’s like this. There’s nothing else in the settings app I change regularly, it’s mostly set and forget.

It’s much better to just silence every spam call manually instead of having to go into voicemail, listen , decide if I need to respond, hope that I’m acting quickly enough that the other person answers when I ring them back, etc. i imagine this works for a lot of people. But if you get enough calls, or get urgent calls for any reason, it’s not ideal.

For those that can’t imagine the use cases. Consider you are primary contact for your elderly parent. If they fall in the middle of the night you might be getting a call from any random number. Do not disturb isn’t an option and sometimes the EMS guys will call you from their personal cell phone. Even some services like home security will call from random numbers. If ask a plumber to come over, some random technician will call from their device to talk. If a potential client gets my number somehow, I’d prefer to answer versus them get my voicemail.

You have to also factor in that a lot of people don’t even like leaving voicemail so they don’t leave one and I’m left guessing if it mattered that