Internet/Facebook

msg · Guru

Internet/Facebook

rmoor · Senior Member

I sympathise greatly with you.
Not big on updates, apps, or the coming A.I. storm.
It is all getting way too much.

One wonders what would happen if the whole deck of cards crashed, if someone cut all the undersea internet cables for instance?

I was spooked big time last week.

A nicely spoken young Aussie girl rang me to sing the praises of a Cryptocurrency investment. She spoke about 5 or 6 polite sentences as I gave her my usual spiel back about cryptocurrencies.

I.E. They are dodgy. For someone to make money, someone else has to lose an equal and corresponding amount. The currencies have no substance. There are too many of them springing up, they will all crash eventually due to over exposure and market saturation. A tax office capital gains audit target. They are next door to Pyramid Selling. The usual Crypto spiel when confronted with this rubbish.

Then after a few minutes, I twigged, her dulcet tone had not altered as I was giving Crypto a decent 'ol razzing.

She was an A.I. robot and she had me completely fooled with her precise answers and soft tone.
When I twigged I said "Hey, you are A.I. aren't you". "Yes, I am an Artificial Intelligence Assistant" came the reply. I said "Well, you had me well and truly fooled". Then I told her in no uncertain terms what she should go and do.

Another reply "I am an Artificial Intelligence Assistant and I cannot comply with your request".

That has spooked me big time ever since, just how bad is this going to get and I bet my bottom dollar if anyone fell for it and put 10 or 20 grand (or more) with this lovely young lass, you could kiss the moola a sweet goodbye.

rmoor · Senior Member

"Just not sure what's going on, could it be a hacker do you think? Anyhow that camera staring at me will be covered up from now on. Luckily I have no need to use skype. Ad I no longer have a facebook account."

Greater minds than mine could answer that, but it does appear to be mighty suspicious?

Are We Lost · Guru

As for updates, I turn them off. Then maybe every six months take an image of the PC and then do them all at once. Then I can restore the prior version if I want to. Sometimes really annoying things happen.

There are different ways to turn off updates. I use the Group Policy editor (GPedit). It is included in Windows Pro but needs to be set up for the Home versions. Easy to find the detailed instructions with a search.

Jeff-2025 · Member

rmoor wrote:
I sympathise greatly with you.
Not big on updates, apps, or the coming A.I. storm.
It is all getting way too much.

One wonders what would happen if the whole deck of cards crashed, if someone cut all the undersea internet cables for instance?

I was spooked big time last week.

A nicely spoken young Aussie girl rang me to sing the praises of a Cryptocurrency investment. She spoke about 5 or 6 polite sentences as I gave her my usual spiel back about cryptocurrencies.

I.E. They are dodgy. For someone to make money, someone else has to lose an equal and corresponding amount. The currencies have no substance. There are too many of them springing up, they will all crash eventually due to over exposure and market saturation. A tax office capital gains audit target. They are next door to Pyramid Selling. The usual Crypto spiel when confronted with this rubbish.

Then after a few minutes, I twigged, her dulcet tone had not altered as I was giving Crypto a decent 'ol razzing.

She was an A.I. robot and she had me completely fooled with her precise answers and soft tone.
When I twigged I said "Hey, you are A.I. aren't you". "Yes, I am an Artificial Intelligence Assistant" came the reply. I said "Well, you had me well and truly fooled". Then I told her in no uncertain terms what she should go and do.

Another reply "I am an Artificial Intelligence Assistant and I cannot comply with your request".

That has spooked me big time ever since, just how bad is this going to get and I bet my bottom dollar if anyone fell for it and put 10 or 20 grand (or more) with this lovely young lass, you could kiss the moola a sweet goodbye.

Couldn't agree more - AI animation and speech is becoming very difficult to detect.

Any call that I receive and I don't recognise the number I simply let it go to voice mail.

Also after about 10 of these spammers calls, they eventually give up and the number of calls drop significantly.

But AI can be a powerful tool. For example I found a Youtube channel that takes old photos, colourises them and then animates it.

https://www.youtube.com/@HistoryinMotion3

Jeff-2025 · Member

msg wrote:
My computer has been waiting days for an update. I have been ignoring it. Why? I was feeling like "I will not comply"
Any how the computer got aggressive and stopped my utube thingo I was watching.
Just seemed like I had an internet outage. So I went to turn it off and restart.
When I did that there was no option but to update.
It wasn't going to let me restart without updating. Grrrrr.
Any way it took about 20mins of the thing sitting there saying "Starting do not turn off computer" I was tempted to give it the blue screen of death but restrained myself.
Finally it started up again and I happily went to check Facebook for any new posts.
Facebook came back at me saying I had to prove that I was not a robot.
Then, it became strange....It said to prove I was human it wanted to take a digital image of me. I promptly put my hand over the camera and "I would not Comply"
At the present time I have 180 days (that's odd) to let them take a digital image or my account will be closed permanently.
Just not sure what's going on, could it be a hacker do you think? Anyhow that camera staring at me will be covered up from now on. Luckily I have no need to use skype. Ad I no longer have a facebook account.

I simply disable the camera.

Go into Settings. In the search bar type camera, select Camera privacy settings. Ensure the camera access option is set to off.

Also get a post-it note - only keep the sticky part and place it over your camera on your computer.

If microsoft or hackers try to bypass your settings they will still see nothing.

I imagine that FB would see that you did not have a camera and therefore drop this absurb 'security measure'.

msg · Guru

Thank you Everyone. You have confirmed my thoughts.