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mrhottakes 6 hours ago

Unfortunately most evil cybercriminals know the "one weird trick" of "do your crimes in countries that don't care about the crimes"

jmward01 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I see several comments like this implying nothing can be done. But that is far from the truth. First, an agency that actually answered the phone could coordinate directly with LinkedIn and other tech companies to quickly take down these fake accounts and minimize harm to others. We all know how incredibly hard it is to contact a tech company. Second, an agency that answers the phone could help less technical people find what may have been compromised and push people towards support services if needed. And finally, maybe, they could do the hard job of combining leads and working with appropriate agencies to maybe find and prevent these things over time.

nijave 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Taking things down doesn't help much unless the platform has something in place to make it hard to recreate them.

>they could do the hard job of combining leads and working with appropriate agencies to maybe find and prevent these things over time

At least in the U.S., everyone will cry government overreach and no one will fund it. In other countries, they should probably just ban U.S. platforms unless they're reachable and actually resolve these type of problems.

noisy_boy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Won't that require laws that allow the said agency to compel LinkedIn or whatever tech company to actually pay attention and take action? Like laws compelling tech companies to unlock the bootloader once they stop supporting a device.

I wonder why such common sense laws don't exist and who is preventing them from being introduced and passed despite wide public support in general?

jmward01 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not a lawyer but it would be odd if a government agency couldn't communicate a possible threat to a tech company. It is in a company like LinkedIn's best interest to set up a phone number/channels for a centralized agency to communicate potentially malicious accounts and other emerging threats. I suspect that actually already exists for big companies. I doubt they are required to -do- anything without laws but this seems like a win that is easy for all sides. The problem is likely mostly on the US (and other govt) side of things. No clearly defined agency with a clear mandate, resources and leadership to take on this task.

evilduck 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You're describing the FBI or your state level equivalent. And they actually do exactly what you are describing, but in measured efforts. I've even had them come by my place of employment before. They clearly lack the resources to work at this scale though.

The problem with a phone number you suggest is that it will get spammed and abused with fraudulent imposters too (the complete and utter destruction of trust in phone calls and text messages should also be corrected by the government, but that's a different topic).

https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber

marcus_holmes 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Won't that just create another channel for social engineering to delete a victim's account?

lukewarm707 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

whilst reducing crime is an honorable objective, as we all know, increasing the wealth of tech billionaires must take priority.

Georgelemental 35 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Cut the cables