Back in July, while I was laid up from surgery, I escorted the last of the “scene” out of my life. The hacker/troll realm intruded on me in 2010 and it’s taken all this time, four frivolous lawsuits, a number of unfounded federal investigations, and two career changes to finally get it out of my life. Looking back on those years, I see all sorts of things I should have done differently, but it is what it is.
Since then I’ve had a variety of pretext approaches - things that are not what they claim to be, and all are based on some sort of harmful intent. This ranges from broad phishing things that bump my hair trigger to one obvious federal undercover op.
There have been a couple things that bumped my hair trigger in the last 24 hours and I thought I’d show you guys the funny one …
Attention Conservation Notice:
Have you read Paranoia: Professional or Pathological? If not, you probably should, because as 2025 heats up we’re gonna have all sorts of deception and hazards in play.
Pretext:
What do you see here? The things that immediately grab my attention are that this is based on my LinkedIn profile. I am clearly open to work …
And all this approach knows is what’s in my extended information. For the record, I did NOT receive an ascii kitten, which makes me kinda sad.
Why does this approach not get brushed off without a second glance?
Context - because other things are happening now.
Novel manner of approach, usually this would be a LinkedIn connect.
They’ve got a phone number.
There is no domain, just gmail.
There is no domain, just an unadorned bitly link.
Handling:
I assume anything like this is a spearphish attempt and I handle them by keeping this attack surface locked up in Cloak. This is what’s on the other end of that bitly link.
Assessment:
Why is there bitly instead of a proper domain name?
The bitly link lets the operator track who is clicking through, at the cost of looking hinky and immediately raising a red flag for anyone with situational awareness.
My first thought was “targeted approach”, specifically aimed at me, which is a safe default interpretation. The operator who would do such a thing has Delusions of Adequacy, someone who’s got limited time/resources, and not a good judge of either my paranoia or skill level.
Having poked around a bit, this is probably a broad based effort at … there are a variety of possible motivations. Could be the first step of a fraud and the shaky construction is meant to shake out those who would catch on quickly. Could be a general profiling effort, which I think a lot of LinkedIn bots are, or at least were doing. That’s really slowed down, so maybe this is the first of a wave of plan B.
Conclusion: probably just broad automation at work. I’m debating calling that number tomorrow, but not sure how I would originate a call, maybe just connect 202-642-1717 for a bit.
Impulse control has never been my forte - called the number and it’s a fast busy.
I read that as confirming that it’s broad and clumsy.
Alternative:
If I were doing this with a specific target in mind I would take the following steps:
Burner phone.
new Google Voice number.
Proper domain.
Ensure website at least seems like the real thing.
The problem is … anyone that interests me enough to get me to spend $75 and an afternoon to set it up … is just as wary as I am. They would react just as I did here, minus publishing about the encounter.
Conclusion:
You really do need to default to “This is bullshit and I’m gonna handle it with welder’s gloves and a sharp stick.” That is an entirely reasonable stance in late 2025.
This is why I preach compartments and what faces the world should assume the worst.
This is why compartments need fail closed VPNs, so nothing follows you home.
This is why phones are Google Voice, no geolocation hazard with that carrier.
I could go on, of course, but I’m supposed to be doing that in digestible chunks for the new folks, not going all secret squirrel every time I think I hear a bump in the night. But this is just where I am on the second anniversary of the Hamas horrorshow that set off the Gaza genocide.
Love it.