6 Ways People Got Screwed By Websites You Use Every Day

Here's how camgirls work. Whilst browsing the internet for porn, a customer sees an ad pop-up offering a private and personal show by an attractive person. Let's say a girl. The customer -- a man in this hypothetical situation we're constructing -- agrees, and after shelling out some money, he's connected to a video chat room with the girl. Then, via a system of typed messages and grunts, the customer requests the camgirl do various things, which she happily agrees to.

Killroy/iStock/Getty Images
"NOW HOLD YOUR HAIR UP AS IF IT WERE A MUSTACHE. DO IT SEXY."

But in some cases, this camgirl isn't real at all, and is nothing more than a customized porn video -- an archive of prerecorded ass slaps skillfully woven together by some dude sitting at a computer. Any hitches or blending problems get blamed on lag, and everyone walks away happy ... except possibly the dude making it, who probably thought he'd be doing more with that cinematography diploma.

bcerasani/iStock/Getty Images
"So long as you ask no follow-up questions, my job's going fine, Dad."

This isn't a well-hidden industry, either. If you know where to go, you can buy a collection of these video clips for as little as $10. We're not going to tell you where, though, because this isn't really a career we recommend, for a few reasons. One: These video packs are often stolen from real camgirls who went through all these motions, had them recorded without their permission, and aren't making any money from their resale. Second: This is exactly the kind of career which could end with you becoming the sex puppeteer for one of your relatives.

bcerasani/iStock/Getty Images
"So long as you don't ask how they got there, could you clean some viruses off my computer, son?"

The Hollywood Sign has long been a must-see attraction for tourists visiting Los Angeles. Perched in the Hollywood Hills, it looms over the city's skyline, serving as a metaphor for how important this one place is to television, film, and popular culture in general.

It also does a pretty good job of looming over the people who live in the hills below it, drawing in hordes of tourists who jam their streets, litter, and trespass. More troublingly, these tourists can get in the way of fire trucks which need to access these highly combustible hills. In short, the proximity of the sign can be a bit of a nuisance -- the kind of thing people who own knee-shakingly expensive homes don't like dealing with.

downtowngal / Wiki Commons
"This place is incredible. Let's close the fucking door."

So the residents fought back in the most devious way possible. Most tourists were finding their way into the neighborhood by using Google Maps, and then kind of blundering their way through the streets to get as close to the sign as possible. So the local residents got Google to change the GPS co-ordinates of the sign, directing any tourists to a lookout at Griffith Observatory, miles away. Even the "walking" directions on Google Maps ignored the public hiking trails people could use to legally access the sign. You could be standing underneath the thing, and Google would still direct you on a two-hour death march to the distant observatory.

Google Maps
Any closer, and they would still smell the putrid stench of the poor.

On the one hand, this is slightly defensible. There were real public safety concerns which needed to be addressed, and neighborhoods around the world have implemented all sorts of measures to calm and control traffic. On the other hand, fuck these rich guys. This was clearly done mostly for selfish reasons. One of them has even threatened to sue a blogger for directing tourists along these same public roads and trails. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck them.

Google Maps
If you set your coordinates for Mt. Lee Drive and arrive between midnight and a minute past, they might not release the hounds.

More generally, dealing with public safety concerns is kind of the job of the government, isn't it? Like, we're having all these fucking elections for a reason, right? For public roads to be hidden thanks to the actions of private individuals and companies is a little bit spooky.

Although Wikipedia can nominally be edited by anyone, it has a core group of editors and writers who wield an unusual amount of authority over the site. This is slightly cliquish, but a core group like this does serve as an effective guard against anonymous edits from people with usernames such as *WeEdDoNg420*8====D~~~~.

Wikipedia
"This botany article needs a section about how Hitler had some good points."

But having a small group of people with such wide-ranging powers can lead to abuse. In an investigation code named "Orangemoody" (all of the good names were apparently taken), Wikipedia unearthed a scam wherein one of its editors would write an article about a company or band or whatever, and then hold it hostage until the target paid a small fee for its safe publication. The targets couldn't fight back by writing or editing their own article, because the scammer could use their eldritch Wiki powers to block them. It was essentially a slightly boring combination of cyber-squatting and blackmail.

It does get worse, though. After paying the initial "fee," these targets were presented a second offer: For the ass-clenchingly large sum of $30 a month, the scammer would then "protect" the article from vandals and deletion and things of that nature. That's right; some underpants-wearing would-be gangster invented a fucking Wikipedia protection racket.

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images News/Getty Images
"Got a real nice brand here. Would be a real shame if a citation was needed for that."

Then there's this scientifically questionable thingamajig which can monitor glucose levels without drawing blood. Or this magic ring which uses jazz hands to control smartphones. Or this umbrella made out of air and unicorn kisses. Less hilariously, there's this group, which has raised thousands of dollars to provide free energy machines to various humanitarian relief efforts. Thousands of dollars which might have been perhaps better spent on literally anything else.

Herianus/iStock/Getty Images
"Could we get regular energy instead? Like, grains or something?"

All these campaigns have essentially found a weak spot in the fraud-detection policies employed by these crowdfunding sites. Because they're actually making something, even if it can't do what's promised, it makes it hard to quickly identify them as fraudulent. You'd need baseline scientific literacy for that. The sites have to rely on their users to complain first, which is a lot to ask of their know-how. Even the media isn't entirely innocent (we never are). Consider our habit of writing glossy promotional material for every interesting laser razor that comes along.

Skarp Technologies
Who wouldn't want to go face-first into one of these?

And this all ignores the seedy truth at the heart of crowdfunding: Even the best-run, most honest, and most viable campaigns are asking people to make an investment whose best-case scenario is getting their money back, while all the professional investors involved are coming out with much, much more.

But with growth comes problems, and Airbnb has come down with some fucking seedy ones. Like having a pair of customers wake up to find an angry man standing over them, asking who they were, and why they'd drunk all his booze and also redecorated his dining room with a hookah. In that particular case, it was because that man's roommate was an asshole who posted the place on Airbnb without his permission. The exact same situation occurred with another couple, who went away to Burning Man and left their home in the hands of a house-sitter, who then flipped it for $2,000.

Or there's this one guy who's made what is essentially a gentrified slum, turning a Manhattan apartment into a 22-bed hostel where he forces his "guests" to sign a contract with some bizarre obligations. Like a minimum 30-day stay, a provide-your-own-sheets policy, and a "giving permission for your belongings to be inspected at any time" clause.

E. David via Gothamist
It only just stopped short of a requirement to don ritual shrouds.

And those are merely the ways owners have abused the system. Renters are even worse. Here's a case of a couple overstaying in a rental so long that it became squatting. Another well-known case involved these two jagweeds who stayed in an Airbnb for 30 days, making them legally un-evictable under local tenancy laws. It was only after great legal expense that they finally left, though not before dickishly threatening to sue the owner, claiming the house's water had ruined their espresso machine.

And hey, speaking of Airbnb being full of fuckers ...

In one case, a woman rented out her home for several days, only to return to find sex toys, lube, enema kits, and a refrigerator stocked with male steroids. And although you don't really need to be a detective to figure out what happened there, just to cinch it, she also found a business card belonging to Michael Lucas, a well-known porn actor and producer.

Soraluk/iStock/Getty Images
That is, well-known if you stick around to watch the credits. Which you probably don't.

It could be worse, though. Because it always can. In Sweden, some Airbnb landlords have discovered prostitution rings being run out of their houses.

Mark Rasmussen/Hemera/Getty Images
The new economy meets the oldest economy.

When Adam isn't praying for an internet apocalypse, he tweets. He also has an email address where you contact him with, well, whatever you want. He's probably going to end up regretting those words.

For more ways people beat the system, check out 5 Organizations That Gamed The System And Screwed The Public and 5 Brilliant Loopholes People Used To Cheat The System.

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