These photos were taken May 30th 2020.

For those who didn’t see, I received this weird USB taped on the inside of a box that had an electronic I purchased. The box seemed to have been opened and retaped shut though I can’t say for sure, it just looked like it had been taped two separate times (no pictures beyond these btw this is all just memory). I checked and double-checked the site I bought the electronic from, there was no mention anywhere of it coming with a free USB.

This was immediately following a time period where I had been…well, saying a lot of pro-communist, anti-capitalist, pro-violence things online and had been searching for guns and related materials to buy. This is all also following 2016, when two FBI agents showed up at my house (not entirely related to politics, I was not nearly as communist then as I am now, just for general violent threats and volatility) and I had been followed around by at least two separate cars for 3-4 weeks following their visit. Nothing else since then has been a FOR SURE FOR SURE instance of what I felt like was FBI sniffing me out, but ever since then I’ve assumed that I am, at the very least, passively monitored, even if just by cheap bots (which I’m sure every American is to varying degrees).

I am not at all tech savvy and have very poor information hygiene and sense of cyber security, I did not trust myself to try and access its contents. It gave me really dark vibes just sitting on my desk so I stored it in a secret safe place where it still is to this day (but which I will not be able to access for at least a month or two, if not longer–don’t want to say why as I don’t want to give away its position on the crazy off chance somebody is reading this that shouldn’t be). I knew putting this shit into my laptop would be STUPID even if it was just a crazy coincidence and totally harmless, I thought about trying to take it to a library but even then I don’t fully understand the consequences of what those actions would be so I didn’t want to mess with it. It has done nothing but collect dust for 2 years now.

I want to stress that I don’t know literally anything about this, it could just as easily be some sort of error and they accidentally gave me a free USB and I’m just tweaking out and being paranoid, just like they want me to be. I’m not trying to stir up a story about this, I don’t know if there’s any story to be had, but a picture was requested and I figured I’d share it with everyone because it definitely is, at the very least IMO, a weird little story with no resolution (at least not one that I am going to feel confident in pursuing).

EDIT: More random details

  • @pinkeston
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    2 years ago

    They just said they don’t have the technical know how

    Don’t pressure OP to fuck their life up for your entertainment lmao

    There’s very little for anybody to gain here and a lot for OP to lose

    • KiG V2OP
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      42 years ago

      Would it be worth trying it on a “burner laptop”? If they as @holdengreen says ~$30 I wouldn’t mind spending that to sate my own curiosity and everyone else’s. Is there any way doing that could brick something beyond the burner (my other electronics, my life, etc)? If there was any other risk involved I would have to say no but if all I was risking was wasting $30 I wouldn’t mind for this one weird thing.

      • @pinkeston
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        2 years ago

        Absolutely not. If you don’t know the insides out of that computer’s operating system and other security/software knowledge, you won’t be able to find out exactly what the USB is doing. If it’s malware of any sort, it’ll be completely undetected by design to the normal computer user

        If it just breaks your computer (unlikely, they accomplish nothing with this, monitoring is better to surveil the violent dangerous anti-American posting unhinged shit online), then that’s not interesting at all

        Worst case, it’s planted with illegal material (the stuff that Epstein gets up to) and the feds arrest you and take that computer and USB as evidence. Sure, the law says you’re innocent but do you have the funds, time, willpower, and desire to fight the FBl in an Amerikkkan court?

        • KiG V2OP
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          2 years ago

          Yeah monitoring seems most likely now that you mention it, and geez I didn’t even think of the “oops you have 15 TB of [***] on your laptop, how weird!” route…

          I still don’t want to destroy it just because I’m so curious, maybe I’ll save it on the off chance I ever met up with a comrade who super super knew what they were doing. But just the planted material scenario alone will ensure that I not only never try to use it, but maybe even put it somewhere even more secret that could never under any circumstances be associated with me. Thanks for the heads up on that honestly…

          • @pinkeston
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            42 years ago

            Np, I’m already anxious and paranoid af and given I work in tech that’s a terrible combination having read a bit into the capabilities of nerds with absolutely 0 life

            Btw, in the first photo you posted, your fingers are touching the USB so your fingerprint and skin flakes is already all over the USB. It’s already associated with you

            Also know that censoring the phrase you just censored does absolutely nothing to protect against bots scraping the internet and analyzing the words. There is no way to write down any phrase without having it be easily deciphered by some algorithm written by a team of cryptography PhDs. No cipher, no censor, no anagram, no known synonym that another stranger would know

            • KiG V2OP
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              22 years ago

              Just two more plain examples of how I am SO SLOPPY…geez…Holy crap and I can’t imagine how paranoid I would be understanding MORE of this stuff…I know just enough to know I know absolutely nothing

              • @frippa@lemmy.ml
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                52 years ago

                Nightmare fuel: the USB is just a decoy and that shit is a microphone attached to a wi FI antenna

    • @housefinch
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      42 years ago

      This, even I’m more technically minded and wouldn’t fuck around with rando USB, especially one attained under such conditions. This could just be made to purposely fuck up the machine that reads it as well.

      Going to xth physically destroying it, at least that protects anyone else who may encounter it and may be too curious for their own good.