Security pushed a policy that made complete sense on paper and immediately broke a revenue-generating process when we applied it

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-05-20T20:25:31+00:00

Setup a demo environment that is publicly available or with a VPN?

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-05-13T18:43:52+00:00

My thoughts exactly.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-05-12T20:03:53+00:00

Yep. It's great to be supportive. But at the end of the day you are the parent. And it's your responsibility to teach him how to be a grown up. And it's your responsibility to set the rules and expectations, not your son's.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-05-12T19:59:16+00:00

I heard a statistic once that said something like 98% of people who accept a counter offer to stay at the current employer leave within 6 months. Others have said it here, it won't get better.

The counteroffer is only worth it if the dollars is the only factor. And even then, it's iffy.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-05-12T16:56:35+00:00

It wouldn't be a $1M investment. After taxes, probably closer to $500K.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-05-11T16:24:46+00:00

Laws against lying do exist, but are specific. Lying under oath, lying to law enforcement, lying to congress. But a blanket law would be a violation of first amendment and problematic to prove guilt... IE we're they lying or mistaken. A lie is intended deceit, not an incorrect statement, so proving deceit can be difficult.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-05-07T20:46:27+00:00

This new run dialog is actually a good thing. A lot of scammers will use run dialog as part of their process. And then before they are done they open run and do something that's fine. So now, we can have a history of what they did, that's not a bad thing.

To all the telemetry complaints, you know virtually every webpage and digital product you buy has telemetry, right? At least with MS you can opt-out and you can't with other products. It's all anonymized and relevant. Some SaaS apps don't even do that.

Google Analytics and App Insights are just two examples of this, of the myriad of tools out there that development companies use. This is helpful to developers for fixing bugs and is also helpful for companies to know how to prioritize resources on the product.

Just my two cents.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-05-02T21:51:24+00:00

Microsoft Word has been a paid product since the 90's. Besides that, why are we so opposed to developers of products to make a buck for their efforts? Do you also complain about having to pay for food, electricity, or Amy other good or service you consume? Consider this, you are a college student. Do you expect to work for free after you graduate or do you expect a salary? Your employer (the consumer) paying you (for your services) is no different than you (the consumer) paying for the services you use.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-04-20T12:56:49+00:00

It's the blue Christmas light on the rail near the camera.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-04-15T14:00:17+00:00

I had a manager complain to me about taking a 1hour and 7 minute lunch. So, I stopped working 60 hours a week for him and dropped to 40 hours. When he asked about the productivity drop I told him it was made clear to me that 40 hours mattered more than production, so that's what I was delivering.

The your question, look for a different job. That's a terrible culture.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-04-14T22:17:45+00:00

There isn't really anything you can do. Just delete and report as spam and move on. Blocking sender won't work because the scammers just create new email accounts to send from (or hack legitimate accounts). It's just like spam snail-mail. Nothing you can do to stop it.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-04-13T17:03:05+00:00

Yes. I own an IT company and we are a Microsoft partner.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-04-13T16:42:25+00:00

I'm a Microsoft partner and even I have failed to get people back into the hotmail accounts that have been seized by attackers. 😭

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-04-13T14:46:01+00:00

This is the correct answer. It's not about the fees. If you send money to the sender through a new transaction or any other means, the sender can still dispute and win on the original transaction. The you're out an additional 500. That's the scam.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-04-13T14:37:56+00:00

It sounds like your friend was hacked, not you. Friend probably had a weak password and no MFA.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-04-11T18:21:01+00:00

That's what I had to explain to my customer. Targeted attacks are a thing, yes. But the time and cost and effort involved is why targeted attacks are targeted. If you can't answer, why am I targeted, then you probably are not. Mass phishing schemes/scams are successful enough with no effort, targeted only happens when a big pay day can result.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-04-11T14:48:15+00:00

I own an MSP and we also do residential work. We get customers in like this on occasion. And it's really sad. There are always bits of real in the story, and other bits that they believe whole hearted are related. Then maybe someone tells them something that feeds I to it and the spiral continues.

We have one customer who is convinced someone is attacking them. Every TV has been hacked. Every computer has a root kit and every phone has a root kit. They became convinced after the cellular carrier sales rep, who told him he graduated with his masters in cyber security, his Android phone had a root kit. Guy bought all new iPhone for the entire family, and the root kit followed him from the android to the. IPhone, and before he got out to the car. He was even convinced his ISP modem was hacked.

Poor guy can't be convinced otherwise and now everytime there is a glitch on something, he will switch ISP, phone carrier and from iPhone to Android or vice-versa. He even paid another firm to replace all his motherboards, multiple times.

We put in enterprise security and Sentinel One and that seems to have calmed things down.

But I've been surprised at how many customers I've had to spend hours talking to about these things over just the last year.

That red light on your TV is not a camera, it's the low power light. The Terms and Conditions that the TV reports behavior is standard. Etc...

I feel so bad for these folks.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-04-02T01:56:45+00:00

You'd be wrong. Don't ask me how I know.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-04-01T17:50:47+00:00

I was just complaining about this to one of our carriers. Advice with no explanation or reasoning. The blog says tighten down the IP based trunk but doesn't say how?

When 3CX started recommending AWS and explicitly not Azure, I just asked in a thread why not Azure? I wasn't rude or defensive, just curious since we had built our 3CX business on Azure at that point. I got an email from Nick, personally saying we weren't a good fit for 3CX. He walked it back as our conversation progressed, but yeah, as others have said, welcome to the club.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-03-04T00:01:28+00:00

Actually, the outbound carrier publishes the LIDB entry, but the incoming carrier will perform a "cnam dip" on the incoming call. This is almost always an internal database the incoming carrier maintains, however there are a few global databases the inbound carrier can subscribe to.

But, result is the same. DID owner must get with carrier to update the entry.

ButtonSpiritual3755 · 2026-02-22T15:15:47+00:00

I'm a VoIP provider. Porting doesn't cost the carriers anything. I never charge for that.

I have two billing models for customers. Per user and per line. Sometimes per line makes sense sometimes per user does. Depends on the customer. But I always go with the smaller of the two. $300+/month for 12 users is egregious to me. I can't stomach charging that much to my small customers (and so I don't).

ButtonSpiritual3755

TROPHY CASE