Unfortunately, no, not really. They are absolutely able and willing to confiscate your devices at any time once you’re on Chinese soil, and once you’ve lost physical control, that’s the end of trust for that device. Even beyond that, it’s not unheard of for there to be vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc that make your device susceptible to wireless attacks. IMO it’s not worth the risk.

Here is just one example of this type of thing uncovered by The Guardian, New York Times, and others in a joint investigation: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/02/chinese-border-guards-surveillance-app-tourists-phones

Do not bring your normal personal devices to China. They are notorious for injecting spyware on foreign devices at every opportunity. Use a freshly formatted device and create all new accounts to use with it.

Regarding services: do not use self-hosted services unless you you spin up fresh, isolated instances of your services for use while abroad and spin them down afterwards, including formatting any OS they were hosted on.

Regarding VPN: because we are assuming that any device used in China is compromised, do not connect to your VPN unless you have set up a segregated VLAN and are connecting through a VPN server instance created specifically for use while in China.

Basically, assume anything you use in China is compromised. And assume your connections are being monitored. And assume that any device you are connecting to from China is at risk of being compromised. So everything needs to be segregated from the rest of your network and set up specifically to be deleted after you’re back home.

I work in the digital security sector and I’m not this paranoid.

Banks are about making money, full stop. It does not serve their interests or the interests of their investors to proactively spy on customers for the state unless they are a state-controlled organization like you’d find in places like Russia and China. Will they respond to requests from law enforcement? For sure. They want to maintain good relationships for help with things like fraud and other financial crimes. But they are not in the business of doing the cops’ work for them for free.

There are so many reasons why organizations conduct various forms of user research unrelated to marketing too.

As another user mentioned, A/B testing a mail format is one example. Measuring click-through rates on various types of messages to track what works and what doesn’t is always valuable. There’s also value in getting browser/device statistics - how many people open emails on their mobile device vs web browser vs desktop email client, etc. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Banks are about making money. User research helps companies make money by making data-informed decisions that drive profitability. It’s really that simple.

And again, tracking pixels are extremely fragile. They really only work in aggregate over a large population for statistical analysis. They’re way too unreliable for much else. There are lots of better ways to achieve the same and better results if your goal is monitoring individuals

I’m not trying to discourage you from protecting your privacy by blocking trackers. I do it myself in various ways because it is a good practice to protect your privacy, identity, etc.

I’m just telling you that they didn’t freeze your bank account because of the tracking in emails.

There are so many ways these trackers can break and they are almost always anonymised as aggregate metadata anyway by the tracking service

It is far more likely that they have been trying to call you or have expected some kind of response to the mail they are sending but have not received any contact from you in a long time

Yikes. That’s a LOT of money to be received ~weekly from an international source.

That means this has been going on for 2-4 months

This amount of money is likely to be reported to tax authorities if it hasn’t been already.

Is your son a talented artist of some kind? Musician? Video editor? Anything that might get them a contract job online that could be billed in different amounts each week? (A typical job would pay the same amount every week, whereas if they’re billing for “hours worked” it will be different each time)

I’m trying to be as generous as possible with explanations but I think you are right to be concerned (unless your son has a reason he would hide money from you, like a history of having his possessions disrespected or taken from him)

They wind up broke, sure, because the house always wins in the end. But that doesn’t mean they’re broke all the time. Winning is what makes it addicting in the first place. You’re up $100. Then you’re up $1000. Then you’re down $2000. That’s how it works

There are several possibilities unrelated to lovers. As others have mentioned, cryptocurrency is likely. Selling drugs is also possible. Organized crime in China is very real so it could be other things besides drugs.

It could also be a relatively legitimate side-hustle. Art, music, or video production could yield this kind of money for a big project, especially over time.

If they’re not paying taxes, this is a problem no matter what. That is too much money for the banks to not take notice and report on it. This needs to be addressed either way.

How much are “big transactions”? That will help us understand what kind of payments are being received.

I would love to see the list of Republicans in Congress whose districts/states WEREN’T carried by pro-Trump zealots and who WOULDN’T lose their seats if they went against Trump.

Hint: it could fit on an index card, double spaced

Stack Overflow mods finally get what they’ve always dreamed of: no more repeat questions.

StackGPT: begins every answer with “closed as duplicate. Here’s a previous answer I provided to this question…”

Not that I’m aware of? I know there is a single politician who is notoriously far right but I’ve not heard anything about the entire government being fascist.

My brother lives there. He loves it. High taxes but they’re used well for the benefit of the people

Make approximately $1.2m USD investment in any combination of property, businesses investment, etc. You still keep the equity. But it’s basically “add money to the Dutch economy in this amount”

I’m leaving.

IMPORTANT PSA: most people won’t be as fortunate as I am. Look into “digital nomad visa” options. These typically last six months to a year, and many countries have them now including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and more. Requirements will be slightly different for each but it can be an option to escape while you figure out next steps!

That being said…

I’m very fortunate to have family wealth, a high paying, niche tech job, and contacts in various places around the world

Current front-runners are The Netherlands where I could “buy-in” or Japan, where my employer may be able to sponsor me

FiveThirtyEight, specifically:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-benchmarks/

I would like you to direct me to any images or posts on fedi or similar that instruct people to call the numbers provided INSTEAD of calling government authorities

Because while your post explicitly calls out the instructions in these image as being wrong, giving the specific impression that people should call the numbers you provided and NOT political orgs (because you speak very critically of the political orgs, insinuating they should not be called), every post I’ve seen with political org numbers has simply provided the information without additional comment

Your initial post reeks of manipulation in an effort to drive people away from the political orgs.

Those orgs serve a very specific purpose that is NOT covered by the state and federal offices you’ve told people to call. Those government offices are not a replacement for the services provided by the political orgs and you should not be presenting them as if they are

Recounts do not include submitting new votes.

And either way, good luck getting a partisan controlled office to institute a recount or re-vote in the current political climate.

You are gambling on the hope that the problem gets fixed later. This is a terrible idea.

And local election offices - often under partisan control - have no obligation to assist individuals in getting their ballot cast.

You are either being extremely naive to the realities on the ground, or intentionally disingenuous.

The gift isn’t the crime.

Telling people you’re holding a sweepstakes, collecting their information based on that statement, and then not holding the sweepstakes and instead giving the supposed prize to someone of your choice is the crime

It’s called fraud

You assume their goal is to get him off entirely and not to simply shift the crime to a lesser offense

None of the resources detailed in this post provide any form of immediate assistance to resolve an ongoing threat to your ability to cast your vote.

They will not help you find a lawyer. They will not help pay for that lawyer. They will not contact law enforcement and apply pressure to have them respond in a timely manner.

These should NOT be your first call. They should be who you report to after the fact to pursue long term remediation.

If you are a Democrat, call a left-leaning political org with sufficient funding and an army of lawyers.

If you are a Republican, call a right-leaning political org with sufficient funding and an army of lawyers.

THEN call the folks in the OP

If your ballot is never cast, it can’t be fixed later. The best the folks in the OP can do is punish the people who committed the crime. They can’t get your vote counted. The political orgs are specifically set up to help in real-time to make sure you and everyone else at your polling place gets to vote NOW!

Except it is a violation of the law, just a different law. They defrauded the public by collecting something of material value (registrant information) under false pretenses. It’s textbook fraud

Which is why allowing the right to use the label “pro-life” was a cardinal sin of the Democrats’ strategy

I’m literally pro-life: I support saving lives whenever and wherever it’s reasonable to do so

But I’m pro-choice, because I don’t think I should be the one to decide for everyone else which situation is reasonable and which isn’t. Also, women deserve basic fucking rights and bodily autonomy is, like, the number one most fundamental right

We really ought to change the nature of the conversation: it’s not “pro-life”. It’s pro-enslavement, pro-religious-tyranny, and pro-absolutism