Consilience

As many of you know, I am currently working for Creative Commons and as such I am also always in the Creative Commons IRC channel, #CC. One of the unintended consequences of this abbreviation of Creative Commons is that it is also the abbreviation of Credit Cards (and “Change Congress,” come on Larry, branch out a little!). This didn’t really seem like a problem to me at first: who would have thought the #CC channel was a place about credit cards? Would people be applying for credit cards via IRC? No.

But, I forgot to account for the nefarious side of humanity. The people that are looking for an easy way to scam the world. On a somewhat regular basis people come into the channel and ask for credit card numbers. Scratch that, they DEMAND credit card numbers. A typical scenario is:


user1 enters #CC
< user1> !CC
< user1> ?CC
< user1> !give
< user1> give me credit card #!
... 5 minutes goes by
user1 leaves #CC


This has happened enough times that the /topic for #CC now includes this at the end: “Need credit card numbers? email tips@fbi.gov”

Today, however, I got my first personal request for credit card numbers. Since I idle in #CC, so goes the users logic, I must have access to credit card numbers to sell to people. Here is the full unedited transcript from our interaction:


12:03 Irssi: Starting query in Freenode with oera
12:03 < oera> hello, i'm here for buy credit card number, can you help me?
12:03 < greg-g> email tips@fbi.gov they can help you
12:05 < oera> ok thank but are you try this email?
12:06 < greg-g> they can help you
12:13 < oera> they can help me for going to jails ?
12:13 < oera!i=oera@eta91-1-82-234-203-250.fbx.proxad.net ["Leaving"]


Now, my response wasn't as good as it could be; it could be a ton more funny. What do you think I should say next time someone asks me for credit card numbers? I'm looking for snarky and/or punny responses.