Winter of Discontent: Man Scammed over PS3 Lets Slip the Texts of War

[Tactical Pause]

Also, £80 for a ps3 and games? Haven't had a Nigerian prince email you lately? Long lost relative need £1000 to get out a few million? Idiot!

Actually, I purchased my PS3+Games from ebay for only a little more than that, and it has all been working marvelously since then. It is a good idea to default to skepticism when it seems like there's a bargain to be had, but that isn't a completely outrageous price.

 

[Davroth]

Why can't the police track the guy from his phone number?

Or is that Sci-Fi technology that only exists in Hollywood movies?

It's not. It's actually a fairly accurate technology too... I'm just as surprised as you are.

 

[michael87cn]

Because he likely left out that he has the guys number when contacting police, or they don't want to deal with the hassle of tracking him down, also there's probably a lack of evidence.

 

[FalloutJack]

And after that little 5 minute responce, his number was blocked. The scammer goes on with his life, spending the fools money and the sad prick pathetically spends even more money to send pointless texts that don't go anywhere.

Well, obviously not the case. Moving on...

OT: I dunno. Shakespeare is entertaining. If you want to hit someone with a long and torturous epic, try Moby Dick. Nevertheless, I find it amusing and intriguing.

 

[Strazdas]

So much wrong with this actually.
First of all ints odd that the guy hasnt even blocked his number yet. he certainly did after the call i assume.
If he didnt, its worse.
he actually got a case of harrasing and can get that guy fined. so not only he woudl be left without PS3 but also with a fine.

 

[PirateRose]

Since it is probably a prepaid phone, I'm willing to bet that the scammer has a new number & the old number was passed on to someone else by now who is completely innocent of whatever happened. That someone else is going to probably complain to the police and this guy is going to get in serious trouble for harassment.

I can't help but notice how the guy mentions the person on the other line was confused.

When I got a prepaid phone a few years ago, I got constant calls, even in the middle of the night because whoever had the number previously posted it on their Facebook, invited any random person to call him anytime, and then never changed it when he got rid of the number.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Since it is probably a prepaid phone, I'm willing to bet that the scammer has a new number & the old number was passed on to someone else by now who is completely innocent of whatever happened. That someone else is going to probably complain to the police and this guy is going to get in serious trouble for harassment.

This is a perfect example of why we need to get rid of the traditional phone-number paradigm already and focus on migrating to a standardized, open, and secure voice-chat protocol where everyone's ID is formatted like an email address. How much longer are landline phones going to be a thing, anyway? Granted, that can still have some problems [http://xkcd.com/1279/], but I doubt they'd be nearly as common as wrong numbers.

 

[Roxor]

If the scammer has to pay to receive text messages, this could get very expensive.

If you want to send something REALLY long, how about the full text of Wikipedia? Isn't it something like 14 gigabytes, or 6000 volumes if printed?

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

I'm waiting until the War and Peace text messages start. I read that thing in just under a week and lemme tell ya, 2000+ pages equals a SHITTONNE of texts.

 

[The Wykydtron]

This could possibly be the most English thing I have ever seen. Scratch that, this is the most English thing I have ever seen.

I approve, practicality be damned. The idea alone is brilliant, if the texts haven't been shut down with a number block or other admittedly pretty simple countermeasure it's even better. Give the guy painful flashbacks of secondary school English classes.

 

[Eve Charm]

If he has the sellers phone number can't he pay someone like 20 bucks on the internet to look up the information get an address and then send some not nice people to his house?

 

[Little Gray]

Typical southerner, rather than going for abusive texts (like a Northerner would), he sups his earl gray, takes a bite out of a crumpet and while listening to Bach, copy and pastes Macbeth to his scammer!

Also, £80 for a ps3 and games? Haven't had a Nigerian prince email you lately? Long lost relative need £1000 to get out a few million? Idiot!

Its actually not an unreasonable price. I got my ps3 with two controllers and a half a dozen games for around $100 and my 360 only cost me $50 and those were both a few years ago. Used consoles much like games and everything else are worth considerably less then new ones.