402

Gen Z falls for online scams more than their boomer grandparents do (www.vox.com)

submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

111 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Gen Z falls for online scams more than their boomer grandparents do::The generation that grew up with the internet isn’t invulnerable to becoming the victim of online hackers and scammers.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] phillaholic@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Running modified executables you find on torrent sites seems worse

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

Software is software. You're downloading shady software off the Internet anyway, but there's one key difference:

Torrent sites (such as The Pirate Bay) usually have systems of trusted uploaders. These are marked with a green/purple skull next to the file in search results.
A torrent with a large number of seeders (think: hundreds or thousands) is less likely to contain a virus because nobody honest would seed a malware torrent and it'd cost a lot to fake that many seeders across the world.
Torrenting software verifies the integrity of downloaded data. It uses a cryptographic hash function for this so it's impossible for a seeder to send you a tampered file (that is different from the file you intended to download). When you use a torrent file or magnet link, it contains the hash of the file so if what you receive does not match the hash then the torrenting software will discard it.

[-] ramblinguy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

I mostly agree with you, except that The Pirate Bay is mostly regarded as risky for software. https://rentry.co/megathread-all-purpose under "untrustworthy websites".

[-] phillaholic@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

This assumes a bad actor doesn’t flood the torrent with their own peers. It would be trivial to set up a couple hundred peers to distribute malware.

Not sure if it was ever confirmed, but some years back it was speculated that the MPAA or associated groups were putting out bad torrents full of broken files to stop people from pirating movies.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

A "couple hundred peers" is a lot easier said than done. That being said, it does happen and you are correct that having a lot of seeders doesn't guarantee a safe download.

All of the three conditions I mentioned are neither sufficient nor necessary for a safe download, but there is a strong correlation. Unless the torrent is official (e.g. official Linux distro torrents), there is always some chance of a bad download. The chance can be low but is never zero.

[-] gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

These are marked with a green/purple skull next to the file in search results.

do you think gen-z is able to somehow hover over the icons to see the tooltip and understand what these skulls are for when they're using their phone for everything?

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

Who is torrenting stuff on their PHONE?!

(Unless using it to control their PC remotely)

this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023

402 points (90.2% liked)

Technology

59710 readers

1827 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS