How many times have you been smished this week?
PLUS another new product to guess, 5 Crazy Zuckerberg Quotes, and my own memetic cliché failed to launch
Back home with some decent sunny weather, as one of the purposes of an extended trip was avoiding cold and rain. I’m gradually getting used to a closet and drawers vs a suitcase again. Staying in one place feels odd, but writing MMT keeps me grounded.
EXPERIMENTAL RECIPES
I decided to rename this section to match the food theme.
MAIN COURSE: Smishing is being automated & added into cybercrime bundles
For me, the answer is once so far this week, but I didn’t get sucked into clicking on a 2 for 1 pizza deal. These are tantalizing clickbait lures that hurt your pocketbook.
Smishing, which is basically phishing using SMS, is expanding and being upgraded. (Phishing is a cyberattack trying to impersonate a legitimate institution - such as your bank, UPS or a department of the government - in order to get confidential information, usually via email). These improvements are compliments of cybercrime syndicates, many located in China.
The scale of attacks is mind-numbing. Here are two statistics to exemplify:
One recent security firm survey found smishing attacks in 121 countries worldwide
Research on just one crime syndicate found that there were over 1 million visits to scam sites in a 20 day period
Cybersecurity is one of my pet technology issues that I believe we grossly minimize. Consequently, cybercrime just keeps growing. There is now a new SaaS (Smishing-as-a-Service), the hijacking of Google and Apple wallets, and special software you can purchase that provides every smishing trick. Even has a great name: Lighthouse. Once again, these syndicates are providing better service than ordinary SaaS vendors (like Canva) with responsive customer service and transparent new feature development pipelines.
(I actually like saying smishing out loud.)
Here is an opportunity for an enterprising technology or business writer to stop evaluating every minute AI announcement and write a book for young entrepreneurial computer scientists called Build To Best: Tested Business Lessons from Cybercrime Masters.
SECONDI - 5 Crazy Quotes made by Mark Zuckerberg
Today marks the first day of the legal case that could result in the breakup of Meta. Mark was called to the stand this morning and may talk at length. To honor this honour here are 5 of his crazy quotes (It would take a week of effort to short list the craziest 5 as there are so many to go through)
“One potentially crazy idea is to consider wiping everyone's graphs and having them start again”. He actually referred to his ideas as crazy. Great introspection on this one which means eliminating all of your friends and connections to force you start over. That’s a growth hack for sure!
“We have a responsibility to protect your data”. Disclosed during the Cambridge Analytica case which conclusively demonstrated that Meta packages your data seven ways to Sunday for any and all resale purposes. This is the type of protection offered by the Mafia.
“Libra's mission is to create a simple global financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people around the world.” Libra was to be cryptocurrency stablecoin that, after hundreds of millions were wasted…..expended on it, was never released. Zuck should have partnered with Trump who seems to be able to launch a new crypto offering every month.
“And we want to create a similar kind of dial tone for the internet. So, the idea is that there’s a set of basic services that we think should exist, you know, whether it’s messaging or being able to know what the weather is, or food prices, or things like Wikipedia or basic search or basic social networking that I think should be these just basic services that everyone should be able to access.” This was just one of many quotes about internet.org, which turned out to be a mass customer acquisition strategy dressed up as philanthropy. A whole new generation of naive digital users only had access to what Facebook wanted them to have access to, with some horrible results in Southeast Asia.
“We believe the metaverse can enable better social experiences than anything that exists today, and we will dedicate our energy to helping achieve its potential”. The Metaverse journey has proven to be very expensive (detect a theme with his new ideas) with no real products having sizeable uptake. I think Meta is hoping for AI to distract from this ongoing disappointment that is embarrassingly baked into their name.
BONUS: “Ideas don’t come out fully formed, they only become clearer as you work on them. You just have to get started.” I think he has demonstrated a surprising lack of clarity on most of his ideas. Or else he has a protracted starting phase.
EXTRA HELPINGS: Special Tariff Exceptions
On April 3, 2025, I tried to create a trendy new cliché that would become a memetic expression. It didn’t. But they were plentiful examples of it in real life, and this week has just started. Come on, start dropping this phrase everywhere.
MENU MISTAKES
What happen to the old euphemism Harvest? This sounds like some old furniture in your attic
Wait. It will be smarter than all of us AND take all of our power. What a future we all have!
That’s a wrap for a busy Monday mostly spent itemizing then prioritizing all the to dos I have to do before my summer trip. Thanks to everyone for reading. Likes, comments, messages, restacks all greatly appreciated.
My fav Zuck quote = ‘We have a responsibility to protect your data’—spoken like a chef promising to guard your dinner while actively eating it.
I am so annoyed that I still have my FB and IG accounts active.
But I love my family more than I detest Zuck.
P.S. If anyone writes Build To Best: Cybercrime for Dummies, I’ll pre-order. Chapter 1: ‘How to Upsell Victims Like a Pro’ (with a foreword by Elizabeth Holmes).
PSS I voted.....
I think cyber crime is massively under-reported, too. Security in many organisations seems to be like in schools - way too little too late. The "experts" are way behind the criminals. At least that's what it seemed like when a reported an attempted scam to my bank.