The Bandit wargame is aimed at absolute beginners. It will teach thebasics needed to be able to play other wargames. If you noticesomething essential is missing or have ideas for new levels, please letus know!
Note for beginners
This game, like most other games, is organised in levels. You start atLevel 0 and try to 'beat' or 'finish' it. Finishing a level results ininformation on how to start the next level. The pages on this websitefor 'Level ' contain information on how to start level X from theprevious level. E.g. The page for Level 1 has information on how togain access from Level 0 to Level 1. All levels in this gamehave a page on this website, and they are all linked to from thesidemenu on the left of this page.
You will encounter many situations in which you have no idea what youare supposed to do. Don't panic! Don't give up! The purpose of thisgame is for you to learn the basics. Part of learning the basics, isreading a lot of new information.
There are several things you can try when you are unsure how tocontinue:
- First, if you know a command, but don't know how to use it, try themanual (man page) by entering 'man ' (withoutthe quotes). e.g. if you know about the 'ls' command, type: man ls.The 'man' command also has a manual, try it. Press q to quit the mancommand.
- Second, if there is no man page, the command might be a shellbuilt-in. In that case use the 'help ' command. E.g. helpcd
- Also, your favorite search-engine is your friend. Learn how touse it! I recommend Google.
- Lastly, if you are still stuck, you can join us via chat
Our #1 priority is your happiness and every experience with our discount-shopping service should be a 5-star one. If you're unhappy for ANY reason, we'll refund the Discount Bandit portion of the fee – no questions asked. No ifs, ands or buts. If you have a problem, we'll do whatever it takes. Exceptions to the sale, which are common with flat-discount coupons. The exact sizes of eligible items — a grocery store may have a sale on 2-liter bottles of soda, but not on 20-ounce bottles. If there's no fine print, the coupon definitely isn't legitimate.
You're ready to start! Zuma casino game. Begin with Level 0, linked at the left ofthis page. Good luck!
Note for VMs: You may fail to connect to overthewire.org via SSH with a 'broken pipe error' when the network adapter for the VM is configured to use NAT mode. Adding the setting IPQoS throughput to /etc/ssh/ssh_config should resolve the issue. If this does not solve your issue, the only option then is to change the adapter to Bridged mode.
Imagine that you visit Restaurants.com and purchase a gift card for a friend. During the checkout process, a screen asks if you want to save ten dollars on the purchase you just made, and it shows a single 'Continue' button, as though this is just one more step in the process. On the next page, you are offered information about some kind of discount club that will give you cash back on the purchase you just made, and there's a box for entering your e-mail address. You do so, thinking to yourself, 'What can they do with my e-mail address, right? I'll at least get some more information on what this is all about, or maybe I'll sign up for this free trial. Can't hurt, since they don't have my payment info.'
You think nothing of it for months until, on one rainy Saturday, you look more closely at your credit card statement and wonder why you're being charged $12 a month for something you don't remember signing up for. Digging through your previous statements, it's clear that the mysterious charge recurs monthly, and has been going on since you purchased that gift certificate.
When you call the 1-800 number listed next to the charge, you find out that you're a member of a 'rewards club!' Congratulations! That $10 savings has now cost you $70 plus twenty minutes on the phone—and all from entering an e-mail address at a retailer you thought to be legitimate.
Actually, you don't need to imagine the scenario; in reality, it happens all the time. As one frustrated user wrote about her membership, 'Becoming an on-line member to an organization seems obvious when entering an e-mail address, but paying for it is another matter. I did not give my credit information for the purpose of signing up for a membership. I gave my credit card information to Restaurants.com for a purchase of a gift certificate only. If my credit card information was used for more than that purpose, it was done so without my knowledge or authorization.'
She's not alone. The Senate Commerce Committee issued a scathing report (PDF) about similar practices today, a report in which it tore into three specific online marketers (Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty) which 'use highly aggressive sales tactics to charge millions of American consumers for services the consumers do not want and do not understand they have purchased.'
AdvertisementIt's a lucrative business to be in. The companies have pulled in more than $1.4 billion in revenue over the last decade, splitting the take (which is pure profit) with the merchants who provide access to their checkout process. The 'membership programs' that the companies offer have racked up 35 million enrolls, and the committee estimates that four million Americans are enrolled in the programs right now.
Although it's easy to work up righteous indignation over the tactics on display here, the report notes that culpability goes beyond the marketers. After all, these memberships appeared at well-known sites like Priceline, and the committee says that 88 websites have earned more than a million dollars a piece by participating in such programs. Classmates.com raked in over $70 million. And remember, that's not revenue—it's profit.
Did they know?
But, to rehash the well-worn question, what did these marketing companies know, and when did they know it? Perhaps they had no idea that so many customers ended up repeating the words of the despairing Ophelia: 'I was the more deceived.'
Commerce Committee investigators dug up plenty of evidence that this wasn't accurate. 'Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty's customer service centers are almost entirely dedicated to handling the large volume of calls from angry and confused consumers requesting cancellations,' says the report. 'One Webloyalty employee acknowledged in an e-mail that most of its calls were from members who are questioning charges or want to cancel their membership, while a Vertrue employee had estimated that cancellation calls represent approximately 98 percent of call volume. The companies‘ internal manuals train their call center representatives to answer questions such as, 'what is this charge?' or 'who are you?'
An internal Vertrue customer survey found that 43 percent of visitors to its 'membership center' were trying to find out about 'the charge on my credit card that I did not recognize.' Another 44 percent had come to 'cancel the program.' A single person showed up to 'find out more about my membership benefits.'
The whole scheme was made possible by 'card on file' agreements in which customer credit card information was passed directly from the retailer to the marketing firm after customers entered an e-mail address. Most customers did not understand this was happening, and the marketing companies knew it, says the report.
Advertisement'In another presentation to a partner, Webloyalty bluntly stated that requiring the consumer to re-enter credit card information would hurt conversion. It noted, 'with data collection on the page [y]ou can expect at least a 70% decrease in conversion.' That is, asking people to enter credit card information would essentially dismantle the program. Dice rolling game in vegas. Affinion told a partner that the conversion would be up to four times higher if the data was passed directly, rather than re-entered by customers.
The Commerce Committee even got its hands on the information that customers entered into a Vertrue suggestion box online. These are the sort of responses that no marketer wants to see:
Spawn of Comp-U-Card
One interesting footnote to the investigation: all three of the companies singled out are based in Connecticut, and all three were started by former execs of Comp-U-Card, 'a Connecticut company that pioneered the marketing of discount membership clubs.'
Comp-U-Card was launched in 1973 and had a checkered history. After a merger with a company called Cendant in 1997, Cendant soon announced that 'CUC had falsely inflated the number of club memberships it had sold, thereby overstating its 1995-97 earnings by at least half a billion dollars. A later investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission determined that CUC had been filing false financial statements since 1985, and that the company‘s misstatement of its income 'was of historic proportions.'
CUC's founder was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and the company's vice chairmen got a decade. The men also had to repay $3.2 billion. Vintage slot machine.
Open the vault slot machine free. In a statement today, Webloyalty CEO Rick Fernandes defended his company and said it had changed its ways. 'Webloyalty offers subscription programs that can save consumers hundreds of dollars each year on entertainment, shopping and dining out,' he said. 'We believe the changes we have made over the years and continue to make show that we are committed to learning from our experience and continuously improving the way we engage with consumers.'
On August 1, 2009, Webloyalty changed its enrollment process so that subscribers had to enter the last four digits of their credit card to confirm the signup. On November 13, Affinion followed suit. Vertrue, which has not issued a press release since 2008, does not appear to have issued a statement.
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), who launched the investigation earlier this year, presided over a hearing on the topic today. In his opening remarks, he made sure to spread the blame around—especially to the merchants who partnered with these marketing companies.
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'What's happening is that many online merchants have decided to betray their customers' trust,' he said. 'For a few extra bucks in profits, these merchants pass their customers' personal billing information on to mysterious companies with names like Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty—companies that have a long, troubling history of misleading sales practices� American consumers shouldn't have to worry that their favorite websites are ripping them off during the checkout process.' Signs of gambling problem.
And Rockefeller ended with a threat: 'Starting with this hearing today, I think this Committee needs to start thinking about the legislative steps we can take to end these practices.'
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The final insult here to consumers is that almost none actually received their promised reward. 'According to information provided by the three companies, of the 34,262,674 members who were promised automatic cash gifts or other incentives, only 3 percent actually received the promised enrollment benefit.'
