{"id":1250,"date":"2006-05-31T09:50:55","date_gmt":"2006-05-31T16:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=1250"},"modified":"2006-05-31T09:50:55","modified_gmt":"2006-05-31T16:50:55","slug":"my-dream-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2006\/05\/31\/my-dream-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"My Dream Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gordon Watts over at Life as a Physicist<\/a> describes a cool response to (crank) manuscripts purporting to factor large numbers (via The Old New Thing<\/a>). This reminds me of a scam I once dreamed up. The scam would consist of an email like the one here:<\/p>\n

\nDear sir or madam!
\nIn today’s modern world, an increasing amount of the world’s commerce is performed over the internet. Most people believe that such financial transactions over the internet are perfectly secure. They do not hesistate to send their credit card over “so-called” secure connections because they have been told by computer scientists that such transactions are secure. But are these transactions really secure? The main reason for the claims of security for these transaction is “that it is hard to factor large numbers?” But why should it be hard to factor large numbers. Certainly my computer can multiply large numbers very rapidly!
\nRecently, I was pondering this question with deep thought and it occured to me that indeed, rapid factoring of large numbers is indeed possible. In a brilliant flash of insight I have develope a new and revolutionary method for factoring large numbers. Thus I can break the codes used to protect your credit card transactions. That’s right: I can steal money from you the next time you use the internet. Now, I wouldn’t want to do this to you, an anonymous person who I am sure is a law abiding citizen. However, the U.S. patent office will not allow me to patent my algorithm for factoring. Thus I, the great discoverer of an amazing new algorithm will go away from my invention penniless. That’s not how capitalism is supposed to work is it. Thus I am willing to make the following deal with you. If you want to securely use your credit card over the internet again, I am willing to offer you protection from my algorithm for factoring large numbers. The Factoring Protection Plan(TM) will provide you total security for your internet transactions. And it only costs ten U.S. dollars a month. To subscribe to this plan, please click on this link<\/a>.
\nOf course, you may not believe that my algorithm can be used to efficiently factor large numbers. But I’m willing to share some of my results with you. For example, when I ran my program on the number
\n18819881292060796383869723
\n94616504398071635633794173
\n82700763356422988859715234
\n66548531906060650474304531
\n73880113033967161996923212
\n05734031879550656996221305
\n168759307650257059
\nmy program told me that this number is the product of
\n3980750864240649373971
\n2550055038649119906436
\n2342526708406385189575
\n946388957261768583317
\nand
\n4727721461074353025362
\n2307197304822463291469
\n5302097116459852171130
\n520711256363590397527
\nAmazing, no? Do you need any more proof that your next credit card transaction will not be secure?
\nI hope that you will make the correct decision and decide to subscribe to my
\nYours,
\nThe trapdoor breaker\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gordon Watts over at Life as a Physicist describes a cool response to (crank) manuscripts purporting to factor large numbers (via The Old New Thing). This reminds me of a scam I once dreamed up. The scam would consist of an email like the one here: Dear sir or madam! In today’s modern world, an … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “My Dream Scam”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-science","category-funny-ha-ha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}