A database of suckers

I've just had a text:

You have still not claimed the compensation you are due for the accident you have. to start the process please reply YES. To opt out text STOP.

Obviously a scam, but how does it work? It didn't take much googling to find out. It seems that the real scamming doesn't start at the point when an unwise person replies to the message (although replying to one of these texts may be a bit pricey). These messages are apparently sent out to random numbers, to see if anybody replies. The numbers of people unwise enough to reply are added to a database of marketing "leads" (AKA "marks", "gulls" or "suckers"). James Wiseman is able to elucidate:

The whole setup is quite elaborate. But in essence there is a computer program that pretends to be the number you see that sends out all the spam messages. Meanwhile, another computer program monitors the text-message mailbox of all of the numbers you see. If you reply, then you are added to a database of numbers to be called (and for future spamming).

The real scamming starts when people who've replied, and therefore passed the gullibility test, start getting marketing calls from dodgy salespeople using the database of soft touches. The current message is apparently a variant of an earlier message, which purportedly alerted people to government debt settlement orders that would have the effect of "wiping off" debts. As you'd expect, most of the dodgy operations who follow up the "leads" from the fall guy database are in the accident management or debt management businesses.

It's a murky business and I'm grateful to the public-spirited Mr Wiseman for dishing out the straight dope on the rest of the process. Like making law or sausages, the squeamish may wish to remain ignorant of the means of production, but if you're still interested in how marketing leads are processed, there's more information here.

Oh, and don't, whatever you do, reply to +447866735879, or any other number sending out a similar message.

Splendid

I don't want to go all Stephen Fry on you, but I really love the word "splendid." It's so ... er ... splendidly un-hip and avuncular. So I, for one, welcome the advent of Professor Elemental's rather good single of the same name:

You are, no doubt, already aware of the result of the good Professor's rap duel with Mr B, The Gentleman Rhymer, but in the unlikely event that you have recently been detained in the wilds of Borneo, here's Fighting Trousers, another tutorial in advanced silliness from the superbly-named album The Indifference Engine:

Toff Aid - a case of charity mugging

One of the arguments that keeps coming up whenever anybody objects to making individual university students fund all their own tuition fees and accumulate unprecedented levels of personal debt goes like this. Why should somebody who empties the bins or cleans offices down around the minimum wage be subsidising the higher education of middle-class kids, who will go on to earn far more money than they could ever dream of?

Now there are plenty of counter arguments to this; for example the deterrent effect of £25,000+ of debt on the bright child of a hard-working refuse collector or office cleaner considering a university career, but something else has also occurred to me. There's a related subsidy that the enthusiasts for high fees are strangely quiet about.

If, as the high-fees enthusiasts insist, there's no justification for the poor subsidising the comfortably-off in this way, why haven't they campaigned with equal conviction to remove the charitable status (AKA tax breaks) of elite private schools, which is a far more outrageous example of money being siphoned out of the pockets of the poor to subsidise those rich enough to buy their children a gold-plated education / networking opportunity? The numbers involved and the savings to be made are a lot smaller, but the level of injustice is far greater and the excuse for maintaining the status quo (the few token scholarship pupils), far weaker.

Mind you, it wouldn't take Sherlock Holmes to work out why this particular dog didn't bark, given where most of the cabinet went to school.

I'm grateful to the author of the Notes from a Broken Society blog, for this post which got me thinking about the issue (it also contains some good blogging on the dire influence of the Tabloid-Political complex on our national debates).

Jive talkin'

I'm assuming that the term "P-38" meaning "a neat chick" refers to the spectacular-looking Lockheed P-38 Lightning, the mount of America's most successful fighter ace, the last 'plane ever flown by author and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and the inspiration behind the tailfins adorning Cadillac's chrome-laden gas-guzzlers.

Unfortunately, (or not, depending on your point of view), when you google the terms "P-38" and "neat chick", most of the search results that come back are for videos of unclad young ladies being pleasured in a variety of creative ways, so I may have to outsource my etymological research to the good folk at the QI Talk Forum. In the meanwhile, I can't end any discussion of airplane-related jive talk wthout posting this classic:
Alternative link here.

Watch and learn, Dr Starkey, watch and learn.

Via

Deputy PM stands up for the vulnerable and powerless

Every now and then "Cactus" Clegg says something that doesn't make him sound like a sell-out who's taken on the job of supine mouthpiece for a regressive rich boy's club, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created unequal, having highly resolved that government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich, shall not perish from the earth:

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has defended the UK's human rights laws, saying they have done much to protect the vulnerable and the powerless.

Writing in the Guardian, he said governments had "belittled" and "trashed" such laws in recent years.

BBC

There's nothing there I'd disagree with. In fact, he almost sounds like a liberal again. If he walked the talk, he might even regain some of his lost credibility, but I'm pretty sure that, in terms of political influence, as opposed to personal wealth, Nick is at one with the vulnerable and powerless.

Headline of the day

Voters pick Nutter to take on Edwards as Republican nominee for Virginia Senate in 21st District 

Sadly for nominative determinism fans, Dave Nutter was not the Tea Pary candidate, an honour that went to one Tripp Godsey:

Nutter based his campaign on two major issues: jobs and electability. He touted his experience working with economic development groups through his job at Virginia Tech as an indicator of his experience in job creation.

Although Godsey worked to challenge Nutter from the right, Nutter fell back on his high ratings from the Family Foundation, National Federation of Independent Business and National Rifle Association as proof of his fiscal and social conservatism.

Godsey was recruited by the Roanoke Tea Party in June to take on Edwards, whom the group identified as a top target. Godsey spent the campaign speaking out in favor of limiting government, especially at the federal level; shaking up public education by letting parents send their children to the school of their choice; and limiting taxes by means including the repeal of property taxes — a primary income source for many localities.

From The Roanoake Times

How did it feel for you? Was it scary?

Why did a relatively minor earthquake just hit the US east coast? Tracy Grant attempted to explain this rare event to small children in the Washington Post:

How did it feel for you? Was it scary? Cool? A little bit of both?

...The U.S. Geological Survey, an agency that keeps track of earthquakes, offers a good way of thinking about earthquakes. Put your fingers together as if you’re going to snap them. When your fingers are together, they don’t move up and down or side to side, but when you snap, your fingers move and slide apart. The same thing happens with pieces of the Earth’s crust. Most of the time, the Earth’s rocks are together, just like your fingers, but in an earthquake, the rocks slide apart. 

Joseph Farah of World Net Daily had a stab at explaining the event to the sort of grown-ups likely to vote for a Tea Party candidate:

Occasionally God really does shake things up as a sign to us of the consequences of disobedience and indifference to our Creator.

Yes, I really believe that.

I welcome the ridicule that will inevitably come from a statement like that. 

It would rude to ignore the impressively-mustachioed Mr Farah's kind invitation to mock, so here's my take on the whole divine displeasure hypothesis. I haven't yet come across a convincing reason to supposed that the universe is under the control of a sentient being who takes a special interest in the human race, but let's imagine, for the sake of argument, that such an omnipotent higher intelligence is looking down at our world through a celestial microscope.

If He/She/It was looking down at the USA recently, it wouldn't be too fanciful to attribute the recent earthquake to the Creator's head being repeatedly banged against His/Her/Its desk in sheer frustration after seeing the list of Republican Presidential nominees. Having endowed the human race with the faculty of reason, it would test any deity's patience to see the inhabitants of the most powerful nation on earth reduced to choosing their future leaders from a rag-bag of gibbering loons who'd disgrace a contest to elect the Village Idiot of the Year.

Seriously though, Joe, that's one epic 'tash. If you ever quit the day job, there's always a place for you in a Village People tribute band. All together, now:

Young man, there's no need to feel down. ..
.
Hat tip.