06 August 2012

The Hero Facebook Deserves... But Maybe Not the One it Needs Right Now


[Or ‘Internet Scammers are a Cowardly and Superstitious Lot’.]
Over the weekend, my Facebook account was subject to a hacking scam; a message covered the screen when I tried to log in, purporting to be from Facebook themselves, informing me that my account had been sending out spam and asking for my personal details (including credit card details) for some poorly-justified reason which I can’t remember. Before I changed my password in a rather circuitous manner to get rid of this scam, I decided to have a little fun with it. So I filled out the details as follows:

First Name: Bruce
Surname: Wayne
Address: Wayne Manor
Gotham Outskirts
City: Gotham
State: NY (Almost tripped me up here, but then Gotham was based on New York, so I decided that was the easiest)
ZIP Code: 228
Phone Number: 2286261
[I made up some credit card details too, but they escape me now.]

Remarkably, the system seemed to accept all of this; its only problem was that my arbitrary mashing of number keys clearly didn’t resemble a credit card number. I decided not to keep trying, just in case I ended up accidentally putting an actual person’s credit card details in. Especially in case it really was Bruce Wayne.

As a footnote, I’ll switch gears to the Riddler for a moment. The ZIP code and phone number were not chosen at random. What’s their significance?

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