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Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

I trust Mocality's technical chops enough to believe that the IP traffic is coming from where they say it's coming from.

I agree with this.

the callers claim to be from Google, and Getting Kenyan Businesses Online is a genuine Google initiative

Claiming to be a member of something legitimate on a phonecall is scamming 101 - it's usually very hard for the person on the other end of the line to verify it immediately.

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So a team of rogue callers (some of them with indian google ips) pretending to be google pretending to be partners of mocality call numerous kenyan business numbers and promote google initiative. What's the point and who pays for that nonsense?

I'm not arguing with that at all - I think there is a very good chance someone at Google Kenya is about to get very fired.

BUT I do want to point out that relying on what unverified people say on the phone is very bad practice, and leads to an enormous number of social engineering security problems.

Yes, if you're going to try to make money by scamming people, obviously you're going to try to seem as legitimate as possible. And they are not necessarily trying to "promote google initiative." According to the transcript, they have you come into their office and presumably sign up for their hosting after they developed the website. All they have to do is throw up a couple signs in their office that say google and no one is going to know the difference.

edit: i'm also not saying google is NOT behind it, im just saying wait to hear all the facts.

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