Tuesday
(1)Guardian's crime correspondent reports that scam-baiting - replying to the emails and stringing the con artists along with a view to humiliating them as much as possible - is becoming increasingly popular with more than 150 websites chronicling the often hilarious results.
Mike, a 41-year-old computer engineer from Manchester, runs the scam-baiting site 419eater.com, which started two months ago.
Almost always the scammer will think you are a real victim and try their best to extract money. It started because I used to get a few emails, and although I knew it was a scam I never knew how it worked. I did some research, found out about scam baiting and decided to have a go. It's now almost a full-time hobby for me.
His site specialises in collecting pictures of the scammers in order to make it more difficult to find new victims. Using the pretext that in order to believe they are real people they need to take a photograph holding up signs with the name of Mike's character, he has succeeded in getting one fraudster to pose with a piece of paper stating: MI Semen Stains. Other sites feature similar pictures with signs reading 'Iama Dildo', 'Mr Bukakke' and 'Ben Dover'.
According to Guardian the oldest anti-scammer site is Scamorama, which aims to educate the public about the latest trends as well as waste as much of the fraudsters' time as possible. The original emails often claim the author has suffered a personal tragedy, usually the loss of a parent. A typical Scamorama reply claimed the recipient has also lost a parent in shocking circumstances, having witnessed their own father being shot. The email was signed 'Alfredo Corleone'.
I had a go at some of the stories on the 419 Eater website and I recommend you have a look too. Marvellous stuff. What a way to brighten up a dull morning.
419eater sounds great, but none of the pictures seem to work for me. Oh well.
It is inspiring though.
Posted by Ironchef at November 25, 2003 01:03 PM
Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka at SomethingAwful has pranked many a spammer. If you go to the Pranks section of the website, you will find lots of ICQ and email pranks, with spammers as the frequent targets.
Lowtax is a funny guy.
Posted by Alfred E. Neuman at November 25, 2003 01:37 PM
I've had a time baiting scammers for a while now. I figure that if I can tie up as much of their time as possible in trying to land me and if as many people as possible would bait them, they would face an impossible task in separating wheat from chafe. Maybe they would quit.
I've made a file that I automatically send to anybody who informs me that they wish to give me $10 Mill in return for sneaking $30 Mill out of their African country. I get maybe 1-2 a week of these. The file contains plausible bank names and addresses, account #'s, routing #'s, and come-on verbiage. My assumption is if I cause them to expend 10 minutes tracking a false lead, I've achieved my own small victory.
The good news is that the available spam filters are becoming increasingly more effecient and I seen to be facing fewer of these humanoids.
Posted by TomD at November 25, 2003 11:56 PM
Fantastic, well spotted, Gabby!
Am circulating this to my address list as a great pre-christmas warmup...
Posted by Tuscan Tony at November 26, 2003 07:52 PM
