scam – stlplace

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I am aware of two right now. They provide cellular data for travel. I haven’t personally used them yet, but may try out later on as I see fit.

MobiMatter (official website; reddit)

Sally (Reddit; heard it from Teacher Mike YT video 1st)

And one to avoid: I bumped into this junk 易博通 eSender last summer, when we were traveling in China mainland and HK. We were hoping to get a mainland mobile phone number for 网约车 rider share car services. After spending some money and back and forth with the customer service, we realized it’s a scam. We found it because they advertised heavily on WeChat.

Other choices:

International roaming

T-Mobile roaming: heard good things about them. Quite a few friends used their international roaming in CHN.

MintMobile International Roaming (minternational pass): their price is quite competitive. Last year I used their pass for my summer trip. This year I may not need it as I am not going to Canada and HK this time. (Update 06/02/25) I still bought the 10 day pass with data due to technical difficulties of connecting to gmail via other means. One thing to note: it cannot be used as hotspot for the MacBook. So in other words, I still need to find other ways if I need to use Gmail on my MacBook (not super critical if I have Gmail on my iPhone).

And I already got a China SIM card. Btw, MintMobile made Canada roaming free since summer/fall of last year.

Side note: from iPhone 14 on, the iPhones sold in the USA no longer have physical SIM card slot (they have eSIM instead). Meanwhile in CHN, a physical SIM card is still needed for a mobile phone – that’s one reason you may consider bring an iPhone 13 or older if you travel to CHN. The reason you may need a mobile phone number is it’s required if you plan to get a Uber 网约车 in CHN. Taxis sometimes are not available and many taxi drivers drive for 网约车平台 too. In that case the two eSIM apps may not be sufficient for you. Because all you have is a mobile phone number outside of CHN which will not work for 网约车。

Note: I still receive spam calls on mint mobile when I travel – and they call during the night, the carrier could not mark them as “spam likely”. This is true for China Unicom SIM card too (the spammers call during the day).

Verizon TravelPass: much more expensive than MintMobile

Note for all the options above, you can get to Google etc. without doing anything special, just like you are in HK.

VPN: obviously you still need your own internet, usually it means Wi-Fi. This may be handy if you need to get to YT or Netflix, because you would likely burn through whatever your data plan fairly quickly if you stream.

Avoid the traps aka the financial fraud

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(Update 02-16-2026) Scam on rye: The inside story of a $100 million deli fraud – I recall this saga.

(Update 12-30-2025) Reuters – Trump’s funding cuts put America’s consumer watchdog on the brink of collapse. Quote a bit here (below):

Warren said that as a law professor studying bankruptcy she saw that consumer protections were weak and fragmented, and that America needed a single federal agency dedicated to protecting consumers from unfair, deceptive and abusive practices.
“I was stunned by the number of people in financial trouble who had lost a job or got sick but who had also been cheated by one or more of their creditors,” she told Reuters. “For no agency was consumer protection a first priority, it was somewhere between fifth and tenth, which meant there was just no cop on the beat. If the CFPB is not there, people have nowhere to turn when they get cheated.”

Personally, I feel the lack of personal finance knowledge, as well as bad math, are contributing factors for people getting into financial trouble.

(Update 11-08-2025) Couple loses $180,000 from retirement savings after accounts hacked. I suggest avoiding the TastyTrade company mentioned in the article. That’s also one reason I am a bit skeptical of upstart like Robinhood App. It appears though Robinhood has decent security measures in their app.

(Update Dec-16-2024) The fintech company that collapsed and took $90 million of people’s life savings with it: The collapse and bankruptcy of fintech middleman Synapse in May has left more than 100,000 Americans locked out of a collective $90 million of their own money, prompting a class action lawsuit. (I don’t know how much money can be recovered for the victims though).

(Original) One downside of the free speech in this country, is one can hear or see all kinds of shenanigans or “God damned lies” on TV (both network and cables), on radio, and the latest and greatest the social medias.

Examples of financial frauds in America I read today 11-22-2024 Friday:

CNBC: ‘I have no money’: Thousands of Americans see their savings vanish in Synapse fintech crisis : this one has impact to thousands of people. Here is a YouTube video that explains the situation – Yotta Bank & The Problem with Fintech! It’s somewhat to see Joe Rogan and Marc Andreessen talking about this. Note the Synapse was backed by the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. This is confirmed at their website too. Fat cats usually get away in this country, btw. Talk about Marc Andreessen, personally I felt he is full fledge MAGA now (google is marc andreessen maga).

Synapse is a Andreeseen Horowitz company

Google search “treasury department warning on yotta”.

WSJ: ‘I Don’t Know Where to Turn or What to Do.’ His $763,094 Retirement Fund Is in Limbo. subtitle: Richard Whitacre transferred his entire 401(k) into an account offering a ‘guaranteed’ 15.25% return. Will he ever see his money again?

(This probably is rare, but I suggest to avoid it) An investor says he put 98% of his retirement funds in Trump Media stock and won’t bail because Trump has a ‘secret’ plan. Since the Enron and WorldCom debacle, many companies started to remove company stock as an investment choice in 401k plans. Personally I think it’s a wise choice. In fact, I noticed the company I used to work for, Siemens, did divest my Siemens stocks (not a lot), and put it in a target date portfolio. Not all companies are doing that though: e.g., I know Arch Coal (now Arch Resources after the emergence post bankruptcy), used to offer the company stock in its 401k plan – note that stock became useless when it went through bankruptcy about 10 years ago. GE had similar issues: it didn’t go through bankruptcy, but at one time its stock went down a lot before its eventually company split (the original company was split into 3 companies).

中国企业家3千万美元搭上川普获邀任顾问 : don’t just walk, run away from this guy and World Liberty Financial if you could. I remember Warren Buffett famously said he won’t pay $25 for all of the bitcoins. But he was duped by this 孙宇晨（Justin Sun）guy – when Warren was just trying to raise money for charity.

Major’s Rule Number 1

If something is too good to be true: IT IS A LIE e.g.: ‘guaranteed’ 15.25% return (annually?) – Run not just walk, when you hear this kind of guaranteed return.

Major’s Rule Number 2

Refer to rule number 1

PS: my YT podcast on the same topic, in Mandarin Chinese .