asjmcguire

Been the victim of fraud. Unfortunately - yes.
When I was younger and Chip ‘n’ PIN was becoming popular, many smaller shops had a Paypoint machine that would print the entire card number and CCV on the receipt. I was so paranoid about fraud, especially given that there was sufficient information printed on the receipt that anyone could do an Amazon order with those details. I used to get a black permanent marker and scribble the details out before putting the receipt in the bin.

Imagine my horror when a decade later, I learn that I have been the victim of fraud, and a type of fraud it was entirely impossible for me to prevent. In the UK fraudsters watch for new companies popping up on Companies House and then use the details to go on a shopping spree. The way it works is like this:

They see my name, address and date of birth on the website. They are looking for a name that matches their surname and first initial. So for me that could be Alexander Jones for example. They go to a retail park and pop into Argos. They order several thousand pounds of stuff. When they go to pay, the person at the counter helpfully asks “Do you have an Argos credit card? If you apply for one today, we’ll transfer the balance of today’s purchases to the card” and armed with my address, date of birth and name, and a card that already has the same surname and first initial as me - they are accepted for an Argos credit card. Post nothing for the goods they just bought and leave the store. They go next door to JJB sports, and then whole process repeats. “Do you have a JJB sports card? If you get one today…”

They visited 6 stores in an hour and repeated this process at all of them. And a week later I start receiving credit cards…

It’s a surprisingly common scam (or it was), brought on entirely by the shops bring pushed to get people to sign up for credit cards…

I had to be on a register for several years, so if anyone tried to open an account or take out credit in my name, I would get a phone call to check if it was actually me.

According to my doctor - after diarrhea, it takes about 5 days for the digestive system to start working properly again (because the bacteria has to build back up to enough). So that would be my recommendation. Have diarrhea and then it doesn’t really matter what you eat after that, the poster would be back home again before they had to worry about pooping.

As someone who has diarrhea anytime I’m going to be in a stressful situation - I can testify that it takes me about a week to “form” poo again.

I think it would be awesome, but - my understanding is that AMA events tend to require quite a bit of moderation. Do we have good enough moderation on either platform yet - to be able to cope with an event like this?

There is a theatre attached to our house. It has only existed since 1991, before that it was a single story machine workshop, and before that - all manner of other things. There is a large Theatre Pipe Organ in it, and we host midweek groups who come down on their special outings (WI, Probus Club etc). One day we had one of these groups in, and as usual when they left we went around the building checking the toilets etc to make sure everyone was out. Most of the time people arrived by coach, but sometimes if the group was closer to us, and a smaller size, they came in cars.

This day we checked everyone was out, and as usual quite exhausted - we locked up the building and went through to the house for a smoke and a coffee before heading back through to tidy away the plates and bowls and start collating the left over scones, butter, jam, cakes etc so store in a fridge and pick our way through over the next several days.

On returning back to the foyer - the fire extinguisher which sits on a bracket on the wall, was sitting upright in the middle of the floor. It couldn’t have fallen off the bracket, because it would be laying in it’s side near the wall in that case. It was sitting upright - a good 3-4 metres away from the wall. There is simply no way it could naturally have ended up where it was - without someone physically putting it there. But the building was locked, and we would definitely have noticed if it was there when we locked up the building and left, because we would have had to walk around it to leave the building.

In the UK we call them daddy long legs, I don’t know what they would be called in the US - though I think it might be horseflies(?). Anyway I was told at School that IF they could break human skin, they would be deadly to us - but they haven’t evolved that ability - yet. So I think they would be who I would befriend first - just in case.

Suspect if we went down that road though, the next thing would be - can we add some sort of filter over the camera stream, to make the potential customer look like they NEED to buy my products…