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+-- Forum: Hacking (https://sinister.li/Forum-Hacking)
+--- Forum: Social Engineering (https://sinister.li/Forum-Social-Engineering)
+--- Thread: Philosophy of Social engineering (/Thread-Philosophy-of-Social-engineering)
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Philosophy of Social engineering - bzskyline - 04-11-2024
Its clear that we are happy with SE'ing big companies like amazon, but is it ever morally acceptable to manipulate individuals for personal gain? Where do you guys draw the line between regular tactics and unethical?
I personally think if the company is capitalist (i.e. works to exploit excess value from its workers), then it deserves to be destroyed, because its driven by something that will destroy human enjoyment
RE: Philosophy of Social engineering - vexif14501 - 04-12-2024
(04-11-2024, 06:45 PM)bzskyline Wrote: Its clear that we are happy with SE'ing big companies like amazon, but is it ever morally acceptable to manipulate individuals for personal gain? Where do you guys draw the line between regular tactics and unethical?
I personally think if the company is capitalist (i.e. works to exploit excess value from its workers), then it deserves to be destroyed, because its driven by something that will destroy human enjoyment
i don't think this is right at all. no legal things are good
RE: Philosophy of Social engineering - ragdoll - 04-21-2024
I think Social Engineering is bad when people do it against small businesses. But with large corporations it feels more fair in a way especially with inflation.
RE: Philosophy of Social engineering - Oni - 04-24-2024
Minimize harm to individuals, avoid greed, and stop while you're ahead. I can respect people that steal out of necessity/desperation, but not people that abuse methods into oversaturation.
People will go to extreme lengths to rationalize their behavior. At the end of the day, if you're stealing from a large company it's not going to hurt the CEO/board. The employees/customers will be the first to get screwed. Layoffs, pay cuts, price increases, stricter RMA procedures... you name it.
RE: Philosophy of Social engineering - Jiggly - 04-24-2024
(04-24-2024, 06:09 PM)Oni Wrote: Minimize harm to individuals, avoid greed, and stop while you're ahead. I can respect people that steal out of necessity/desperation, but not people that abuse methods into oversaturation.
People will go to extreme lengths to rationalize their behavior. At the end of the day, if you're stealing from a large company it's not going to hurt the CEO/board. The employees/customers will be the first to get screwed. Layoffs, pay cuts, price increases, stricter RMA procedures... you name it.
I would say the same as Oni. I can understand thinking that larger companies "can afford it", but the reality works a little different. Anything that hurts profit will be reclaimed via cuts to the budgets for employees, higher prices for customers etc etc, as Oni says.
It would be silly SEing thinking you're not hurting anybody just because it's a larger company, though the "hurt" is spread more thinly across a larger number of employees/customers so the impact seems lesser.
RE: Philosophy of Social engineering - BLKVED - 04-24-2024
Totally acknowledge that I'm stealing, but todays money lost all worth, Hitting major stores is totally fine in my opinion, because they tend to use manipulative tactics to get the maximum profit, we tend to forget that these people have teams dedicated to get ppl addicted.
Never steal or deceive normal ppl like you and me, I totally despise this behaviour like the ones we see time to time in this forum (selling fake/replicas and scamming average ppl)
(Larger companies)If they didn't exploit normal human beings they wouldn't make that much money
RE: Philosophy of Social engineering - Woo - 04-24-2024
I wrote about this a while ago.
Personally, I do not have objections against people who do it every so often. Somebody wants something nice for free? Sure go ahead, but as somebody said earlier, everything has limits.
I read about someone doing the broken bottle method to 9 retailers, twice from each retailer, in one month..... If you ask me, this is where greed and ease come in, do not take an immense amount of goods which are above your means because it will constantly raise the bar higher and higher. Getting a $50 item refunded for the first time is electrifying, but then the bar goes up to $100, then $300 and eventually a stupid amount, which comes with insane risk. I feel for some people at this point, they don't even get satisfaction from getting an item for free, but rather begin to expect things should be free. SEing becomes a high people want to catch.
This not only saturates this gig for everybody doing this occasionally in a more respectable manner, but also puts the social engineer at risk of a criminal record or even prison time, which in hindsight is not worth it.
Moreover, many social engineers never realise the ramifications their methods are causing (pls don't hate yet, read on). DNA is one method I personally avoid at all costs, because it only ends up landing the postie who knocks on your door in hot water. Sure, the postal company is the one ultimately losing money in this situation, but at the same time you are unrooting somebody's means of living. I do not consider being a postie is glamorous, but people put up with it to put food on their family's tables. Before somebody says "the postal company can't prove the postie did anything wrong" it doesn't matter, they're the last point of contact for a good to be delivered, and are the easiest to blame.
For me, I stick with MEB or WIR because it's several times harder for the company to pinpoint blame onto somebody, thus the big corps absorb the costs.
I suppose to really answer your question, what is ethical exactly? it's some ambiguous marketing bullshit they want to use to sell you some bananas which were unethically sourced.
RE: Philosophy of Social engineering - futterbuckz - 04-26-2024
SEing is soft stealing. It is unethical by definition. We are not FiGthInG cApiTaLiSm, we are not Robin Hood, and we are not on a mission to avenge anyone. What we do here we do for our own materialistic gain and profit.
Let's not make excuses for it. We find flaws in a system and exploit them to our benefit at the expense of someone else, either to enrich ourselves or because we itch for crap we don't need. Nothing to be proud of. Do I personally care? No. Is it morally wrong? Absolutely. Does it prevent me from doing it? Hell no. But the line is crossed as soon as you start SEing. If you rationalize why you're doing it -- especially with the badly digested economics knowledge of a bombastic teenager -- there's no end to where you can go. Best you can do is remaining honest with yourself so you can keep a moral compass that will prevent you from directly harming individuals.
RE: Philosophy of Social engineering - talrodil - 04-28-2024
On the most surface level, SE is of course unethical and sometimes illegal. You are receiving goods which you are not entitled to. This directly or indirectly will necessarily harm individuals to various extent.
But then it gets muddy real fast.
Taking advantage of Amazon's policies and system flaws is unethical and wrong at first glance, and will hurt individuals eventually, sure. But Amazon is a company built on exploitation. They wrote the rulebook on harming individuals. If you are bending the rules of this rulebook, is it you harming individuals, or are you simply pushing the limits of Amazon's harming of individuals?
SEing mom-and-pop stores on Ebay or at your local street corner feels different. It's a dick move at first glance. They're just trying to make a living, often times at a tiny margin. But -- is it REALLY your fault if they're forced to work on such tight margins and taking advantage of simple exploits in the existing system causes them to suffer greatly?
SEing an individual person directly, by cheating them out of money or selling something worthless to them seems awful at first glance. But -- people pay insane amounts of money for worthless bullshit all the time. If they're so gullible to give it to you by their own volition, is it REALLY your fault?
My point is, it's so easy to justify these actions and make excuses to make yourself feel better. Ultimately I think there's a line that shouldn't be crossed and SE should never be used for maximum gain or profit, especially if it means that someone loses their job or can't eat just so you can have the latest toy. This is not a productive activity and contributes nothing to society or the welfare of humanity. But I also think that major companies and economic systems are built to abuse and take advantage of individuals, so it's only right that the individual fights back just a bit.
RE: Philosophy of Social engineering - Elsdebo - 04-28-2024
Always interesting these threads. Who is to judge who?
Mothered once advised to stick to small items below 400$. 100 once then 250 another. Once or twice a month max. Sell for cash. You can at moments exceed this into a eg laptop on a well aged account. Stay small and within your means. If your friends or family ask questions or joke about your new items it is a sign you have accumulated too much and must cool down. Your SE adventure is another secret life and most likely will be alone one. That is the price you pay and it is a good price to be honest if you manage to stay away from the sinister thoughts.
Do not talk about it to your casual friends. It will be tempting but do not do it! If you want to talk about SE do it on this forum.
You can point them to the website or explain the concept of SE but that's it. They will have to do the research themselves to get the knowledge just like you did. Don't brag about it and dont try to convince them. They might be excited at first but will they have the perseverance needed or will you have to babysit them?
Why can't you share this great wonder with them?
Because you will be marked as that person who does thievery things. They might give up at the first failed SE and call this a stupid waste of time but you've outed yourself as a thief in their eyes and you can't take that information back ever. And there is a very strong social judgement attached to thieves since time of cavemen. They will become lowkey suspicious of ALL your activities. Something gets stolen out of their appartment? - "Well you're that guy who does thievery things right? Maybe you had someting to do with it."
If you have a big argument with this person later in life it can threaten to use that information against you. Especially when you are surrounded with economical unfortunate souls.
You will feel very bad when you get caught because you had something going for you. It will turn you inside out with rage and sad emotion because suddenly you fall from a comfortable survival method to even lower than before you started SEing.
DNA makes the lives of the drivers hard so limit that. Treating humans as complex creatures human is a godlike superpower.