Slashdot Mirror
The SEC and Fake Investment Sites
An anonymous reader sent in: "Our web-based challenge for the day: find the SEC's fake investment sites! The SEC claims to have seeded the web with fake investment sites in order to teach naive web users and investors about the dangers of believing all you read and investing without research. These sites have telltale signs of online investment fraud, and if people manage to overlook or ignore those issues and attempt to invest money, informs them that they have made an unwise decision. The SEC says that these sites are intended to encourage wise investing decisions, or in more casual terms, to attempt to slap fools upside the head with a cluestick before they lose their money in a real scam. It's an interesting use of the web by a government-related agency."
On the other hand, though, it's kind of sad that there are people who actually invest in this kind of stuff. One would think that people would be (more) careful when there is real money involved. There are plenty of brokers out there, and while they may not give the *best* advice, they certainly wouldn't direct innocent people toward investments that are ovbiously scams. If you don't know what you're doing with your money, then take it to someone who does. If you don't, you're just asking for trouble.
On some level, people affected by these scams get what they have coming to them.
I love it. It is a great way to teach people not to trust everything they read on the net. And WhiteKnight, all the info is made up. The SEC made sure that you can't invest in the company or use the made up info to actually lose money. That was in the article.
We have often joked about doing something similar with viruses. Setting up a hotmail account and sending all the user in our department an attachment. The attachment would write to a log on our network and put up a dialog box that said something like "So you just ran a program from some joker on the internet. You've just lost all your work and your boss has been notified."
We haven't done it of course, but we dream.
For a change, this seems like an attempt to
passively *educate* the public, rather that
legislate our free will out of existence. I
would *FAR* rather have the US government
waste our tax dollars on this than on passing
horrendously complex laws that impose massive
fines and prison terms for anyone making
finanial claims not officially endorsed by
the SEC... Consider that, as someone already
pointed out, the SEC considered ENRON a "real" company...
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission do a similar thing in print publications. They run
bogus investment ads, including Geep - the amazing Sheep/Goat hybrid and Jellyfish Farms. The numbers actually put you in contact with ASIC, who'll tell you to be more careful with your money.
I admit, these are a little easier to spot than the SEC ones...
|>
Here be Dragons
Well yeah for you, me, and most of the slashdot population. We know what whois is... in fact, if anyone is like me, they do a whois whenever something seem fishy about a website. However, what about some joe-shmo looking for someplace to put his money? He's still trying to figure out why he can't get the stock symbol for the internet company.
This is completely different for one important reason: in all of those cases, the government or the "trapper" is trying to force the citizen to commit a crime, then arrest him or her. In this case, the SEC is helping save people from fraud by raising awareness. A citizen who signs up to trade at SEC sites is not doing anything illegal, he or she is simply setting himself or herself up to be defrauded.
To bid on these shares, you must quickly e-mail us the number of shares you wish to purchase, together with your major credit card number and social security number (for identification) so we can reserve your slot.
Thanks, SEC! Now I now where to listen for plain text emails containing social security card and credit numbers. So perhaps you are teaching people a lesson, but who's gonna pay when they become real victims of identity and credit card theft?
The way they are handling this is just as irresponsible as the people who would actually email sensitive information.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Hold on. Are you actually proposing that the government should festoon everyone's mb with fake "Get Rich Quick" offers in order to "educate" us about fake "Get Rich Quick" offers?
The web site idea already strikes me as more "Internet litter" than anything useful. Habitual saps will be habitual saps, and many of them already know that. This is a class of people that will, upon learning that the SEC site is a fake, feel crestfallen at the loss of an opportunity, and then immediately resume their search for someone who can take their money. It's more a matter of self-esteem than ignorance, IMO.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Need. More. Sleep. Ignore parent post.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
"You just accidentally voted for George W Bush! That was extremely foolish. But it doesn't matter because the outcome of the election is up to Enron and the Supreme Court."
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
any site that fails to use a BGCOLOR tags in its body definition immediately comes under suspicion. i browse using netscape, and the default background color for undefined pages is "Netscape Grey" and not white, as it is under explorer.
as soon as i see graphics with white halos hovering on a grey background, i know the site is run by an inexperienced webmaster, and any information on the site is likely fraudulent.
take, for example, Slashdot's light mode...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Dummy. Taxes are to distribute the wealth of your economy to those less fortunate.
OK, probably a troll, but just in case you're really that misguided... Let's just presume that your idealistic notion is accurate (although it's demonstrably false; see below, where this rather-long response ties back to the SEC site topic). What are the real implications? The surface implication for those who can't think more deeply is that taxes are a fairy tale come true -- steal from the rich and give to the poor, very Robin Hood. But how noble is that really? There are some deeper implications that many taxpayers might find immoral, such as:
Actually I could go on but I'm on my lunch break and must wrap this up before it is time to go back "on the clock" to support those on welfare. (Actually, I'm being partially sarcastic; read on for the debunking of that notion, along with the debunking of your original idea about what taxes mean.)
So if, as you incorrectly state, taxes are to take from the rich and give to the poor (where 'poor' -- according to you -- includes poor in mind as well as bank), this "noble" idea is only noble on the surface, and evil lurks not far beneath.
Luckily, taxpayers can rest assured that taxes don't mean what you say they mean...
...but they should be made uneasy again by seeing, below, what they should mean versus what they do mean at present (speaking from the US perspective, to stay on topic of the SEC). By the way, what you implied matches neither what taxes are nor what they should be.
I stated above that your concept of taxes is demonstrably false. How could that be demonstrated? Follow the bouncing penny! Follow the funds to see where they really go. The bulk of tax funds go to government programs that are ostensibly for the common good. Not the good of just those unwilling or unable to contribute to society and the economy, but everyone. (Maybe it's different where you are, but around here we don't have roads and highways set aside for 'poor' people only.)
Had I not said "ostensibly," there would be no difference between what taxes are and what they should be. The difference is in the beneficiary. Ask yourself, who creates taxes (generally speaking; I realize there is some complexity, but it can be bypassed safely at the moment)? From an entirely selfish perspective, would it not make sense for taxes to benefit those who create them? Of course, our taxes don't go directly to our elected "representatives" (other than in the form of regularly-increased and already-very-large salaries), but taxes we pay do go, indirectly, to support the political careers of incumbents.
This really should be obvious by now, but you might miss it, since you claim to believe in something that is obviously not the case. So let me illustrate: Pat Senator wants to be re-elected. Pat Senator knows that a certain government program for the "common" good is particularly good for constituents in the district responsible for that re-election. Pat Senator also knows that the program needs funding, and that the burden of funding for it can be spread over a much wider population than the Senator's constituents. Time for a new tax!
Tax funds are only marginally used to "take from the rich and give to the poor." Vastly, they are used to support political careers, by supporting businesses that make campaign contributions and by supporting constituents who vote. So what should be for the common good, really is for the good of politicians.
This isn't news, by the way. I'm not telling anybody anything they don't already know -- just what they might prefer to ignore.
The question originally was, who pays for the SEC web sites? The implication, I believe, is why should taxpayers pay for these sites? It's a valid question -- for reasons already noted beyond the scope of my message, the SEC sites will do little or nothing to "help the poor." Are they part of a program to help the common good (really)? Are they part of a program that will help a politician's career? Or are they the result of a side-effect of a corrupt political system, that being insufficient "change control." In other words, perhaps they're just the result of somebody saying, "Hey, I've got an idea" and there being insufficient structure to prevent the idea from taking form without proof of validity.
Regardless, it sounds like a government-spec government program: An ineffective use (a.k.a., waste) of resources.
There goes my lunch hour...
No Laughing Allowed!
Now all i need to do is seed the internet with copies of said sites - however I will not tell the people about their unwise investing... rather I will take their investments and apply them to my world domination fund!!!
Thanks SEC.
I don't think the SEC really gets it. I've been wrong lots of times before and I might be here. Personally, whenever I see a website that contains something that I'm even moderately curious about, I click on their "order here" button even if I'm not going to order anything. My hopes is that they might have some additional piece of critical information that wasn't obvious in the rest of their sight (for example shipping costs, payment options, etc). The point is that I generally investigate a site pretty thoroughly before I commit to sending any of *my* information to them.
I doubt that I'm alone in this practice. What this means is that clicking on the "gotcha link" at McWhortle.com isn't really a gotcha. It's just part of trying to find out additional information about the company. If you really want to implement the "gotcha" I would think you'd have to delay the "gotcha" right up until someone actually is really ready to bid/purchase/whatever. You got to get to the point, I'd think, where people are actually thinking about doing this, and *then* hit them with the "gotcha". Otherwise, anyone who gets to the current "gotcha page" is going to dismiss it with, "Well, yeah I kinda thought this wasn't right. Glad I don't get caught by these things. Glad I don't have to worry about these kind of scams... on the other hand, check out this other site! Wow, investments in working cold fusion?"
I would think if you're trying to convince someone that they are too gullible, you got to catch them in the process of actually having taken the bait. Otherwise, they're not likely to learn.
$.02. Am I off my rocker?
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Stop, don't slashdot that poor server. Since July 14, 1998, they've only handled 52 hits, and counting (counting quite fast, actually).
And they're not the Securities and Exchange Commission but "La Société Informatique SEC [Service Enseignement Conception]"
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
It's a shame that our government feels compelled to play "mother hen" to fools and is spending money and resources to do so.
(insert favorite rant against liberal democrats here)
It's not the government's job to be your mama.
Nor will they ever, if every potential employer loses his or her money to investment fraud.
Nice post. Well thought out and presented. For the sake of this argument, a wealthy person is anyone who can afford a house and car. What we might call the lower-middle class.
/only/ purpose of taxes. :P Yes, I didn't qualify my statement, but you yourself admit that this is at least one of the purposes of taxes. Also note that I never said that this wealth was distributed in cash form (although it is, through some programs, obviously). This redistribution goes towards many things: education, support, training, whatever. That's still a redistribution of wealth in my opinion.
/is/ a reward, and that the freeloaders (the poor, the stupid) are perfectly happy to live off the backs of others. While we don't have time to debate such an axiom, it is not the axiom under under which I base my viewpoints. I believe people's primary motivation in life is to attain a social status by way of participating and contributing to the society they live in. Note that I'm not talking about material status, although in the world we live in, this is one of the only ways to attain and advertise one's position within the social heirarchy. Many an economist and phycologist have promoted the goal to contibute to one's society as the primary motivator of humans. I tend to agree .. while we equate money as reward in this society, the poor people I know are not as interested in money as they are to have the ability to have the resources required to begin contributing to their society. While the church of today is money, I'm of the opinion that it is only the sufficiently conditioned who has come to believe that people are only after enough weath to exist and/or to spend on consumption rather than self-betterment. Note, exceptions are abound, but I suppose I'm just saying that I believe the numbers fall more in the favour of those who wish to contribute rather than those who are truely content with receiving state-distributed welfare of various sorts. It is, in my opinion, only the widening gap in incomes and standards of living that are contributing to the increasing number of people who are so unhappy regarding their relative lack of wealth that they cannot focus on their desire to contribute to society in the first place. Ironically, most of the wealthy people I know (I work in that world) value money as reward FAR more than the poor people I know (I socialize in a very bohemian social circle). It's frusterating to see wealthy people suggest that poor people are driven by the same things they are, and then /withhold/ that very value to the point where these poor people can't afford the things that they both value .. food, water, rent, and cultural opportunities such as socializing. Consider the disproportionate amount of people in this society that wish to contribute in a vain that is unsupported by big business (arts, culture, non-quantitative branches of medicine, etc, etc .. whatever the wealthy elite don't value.) Essentially I am saying that withholding the redistribution of wealth, at least within a society that does not go to the ends of the earth to promote material gain as the primary human motivator, results in more people unwilling to contribute rather than people freeloading off the system.
.. some can, and do! But not enough, yet ...
... well, do a little reading from schools of thought that are vohemently opposed to by our current social and economic system.
Three comments:
1. I didn't say this was the
2. Your argument regarding the fact that people who get this money (the poor) are being rewarded for being sloth is based on the assumption that motivation comes from wealth. Ie, that money
3. > would it not make sense for taxes to benefit those who create them
Programs for the common good includes the poor. It's an obvious enough point that, certainly, those who create taxes should see a reasonable (by reasonable, this is set by the social barometer of the society the taxes are collected in) return in the form of programs and services that help them. I suppose that the relative contention to my point simply illustrates where that barometer is.
All of this is notwithstanding the most sacreligious viewpoint I hold: that much of the opposition to taxes is not due to those who 'freeload' on it, but rather the disproportionate and unhealthy value that those with wealth place on it. If only they could 'let go' a little and made poor people happier (and thus far more likely to re-enter society as a contributing member), they might come to realize that freeloading is, for all intents and purposes, a creation of the very populous who is so disagreeable with the idea of redistributing their priviledged earnings. And of course
4. Back to the real issue at hand. Free-market capitalism is touted as the system that leads to the most efficient use of available resources (be they material, or effort). It would appear that squashing investment fraud is one such way to ensure that those resources are fed back into the fast-and-furious system, much to the delight of the big business types, rather than to the shady ones who don't feed back into the system. Therefore, I charge that, if you are into the free-market capitalist school of thought, you'd believe that this does benifit everyone in so far as it ensures that all generated value goes back to the proper religion (if you will).
Obstinately is a good word, but please don't forget that nothing is a top-down system. The more people that perceive that taxes go to the fat cats, the more likely fat-cats will feel that their self-interest isn't as likely to hurt them in terms of their public relations. There are many ways to buck that trend (and it is getting worse), but being reluctant to contribute to the taxation system is a protest that ends up more on the backs of the already unfortunate (and, as you point out, all of us) than the well-off polician who, really, at the end of the day, could live with less financial perks to his job. Also, it's somewhat of a skewered viewpoint, as it relates back to my first point, and that part of this viewpoint is promoted by big business to swing your trust from the public sector to the private one. And if you don't believe all that
But really, good argument. I see your views, but I choose to believe that part of your axioms are resonsible for these 'freeloaders' we (well, you and others, not I) are so loathe to support through taxes.
"Old man yells at systemd"
The SEC didn't get Yahoo to write a story on them, they just released a press release through PRNewswire. Yahoo picks these up and carries them. Note both the "WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 /PRNewswire/" at the beginning and "SOURCE: McWhortle Enterprises, Inc." at the top and bottom.
This is an interesting episode of "crime jamming" and reminds me of strategies to reduce the population of unwanted insects. Criminals are exposed by dilluting their means to scam people with "neutered" sites.
I could see this successfully applied to illegal online gambling, murder-for-hire, illegal forms of pornography, perhaps even to nab would-be terrorists.
Unfortunately for the slashdot crowd, I could see the MPAA and other corporate orgs posting sites which catch people attempting to download software and content that they did not pay for. Hopefully, in this case, would-be bandits would only get Apple's favorite community service message: "Don't Steal Music".
- James
Only if I entered some personal information on the site and tried to submit it, then I'm likely to be a potential victim. But not before that.