Split from Radio show thread: Ethics of the Chad Bait

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Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 8:50 pm

Stop fighting, you're ruining Christmas!

Trophy Videos · Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 8:52 pm

@MoB - So, hanging around YW made you dumber? Smile

There are worse things than that he could have turned you into. Wink

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 8:59 pm

Yeah, I thought about that, but I don't own any Lederhosen, so I'm immune.

-MoB

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

Whoo Hoo! I have finally gotten a trophy picture out of Luckey's Avatar! But Luckey, you spelled my last name wrong. Crying or Very sad

Nice post, MoB. Very Happy

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 9:30 pm

^^Wait. YOU'RE DirtMcDirtbag? How could I have been so blind. How could you do this to me.

Sadist.

419Eater is my life Joined: 14 Jul 2004 Posts: 281

The TAL podcast brought me back to the site after a long time away. I used to be a prolific baiter, but after awhile it became over whelming. It was like trying to empty a sea of filth with only a tea spoon. I'm proud of what you have done, and the mom bit made me nearly wreck. My only regret after hearing it, is that I wish I had thought of it. Congratulations on a bait well done. Congratulations on more publicity brought to 419eater. When you deal with this filth day in day out, running a lad to mental breakdown is like getting cake when it's not even your birthday. Keep up the good work!.

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 11:00 pm

Wow...what a pleasant blast from the past! Good to see you Maxx Very Happy

419Eater is my life Joined: 14 Jul 2004 Posts: 281

Hey! good to see some friendly faces still around. I miss this place...a lot. And hearing this bait on the TAL radio was all the push I needed to come by. I'll be busy catching up over the next few weeks I'm sure. Oh and one more comment on the radio show, I too would not have shed a tear if he ended up 6 feet under.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Sep 2008 Posts: 16

Pastor Frank wrote:

Welcome npr_listener.

npr_listener wrote:

3) What proportion of baiters have a problem with pretending to represent a church?

I am curious as to why you asked that question. I mainly bait as a Bishop of a church and usually target charity and church scams.

Thanx for the welcome. I wondered for two reasons. First, I have some evangelical friends who would take that kind-of seriously. It's interesting to try and understand where people draw their personal lines, and why.

The other reason I asked is because I think I recall someone commenting on the Chad Safari thread that s/he doesn't like doing them. It didn't occur to me at the time that the aversion might be due to the "overused" modality as described by Simba, rather than for a religious reason.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Sep 2008 Posts: 16

luckey wrote:

npr_listener wrote:

2) To your knowledge, have baiters ever actually used the tactic of sending small amounts of money to encourage the scammer to keep going (and/or to continue communication)?

Chris Hansen sent a few hundred dollars to a scammer when he did his piece on 419 scams for Dateline. (Here)

At the time I was a little revolted, but given how much publicity that show generated, it was well worth it. I also think the show may have made that money back in advertising dollars. Wink

*
In principle, I wouldn't send a penny. That is partially because I really don't want to see them get any money at all for their efforts, but it's also because it seems like cheating to me. I enjoy the challenge of stringing them along with fictitious payments that always seem to be just slightly out of reach.

I asked about that because somehow for me the idea of paying scammers to string them along crosses a fuzzy line. Strangely, it "feels" ok for them to be lured to potentially life-threatening places with just words, yet it feels wrong if baiters were to pay them to engage danger or humiliation.

I think for me it has something to do with the concept of exploitation. (Aside from the obvious fact that it's not a good idea to reward people monetarily for trying to steal.)

This whole subject of baiting is interesting, because it seems to test my own internal boundaries of ethics; I can feel something is right or wrong but I'm not entirely sure why.

419Eater is my life Joined: 14 Jul 2004 Posts: 281

npr_listener wrote:

This whole subject of baiting is interesting, because it seems to test my own internal boundaries of ethics; I can feel something is right or wrong but I'm not entirely sure why.

It's something we've all struggled with at some point in our "baiting careers". After you spend some time on the site and you see real people who stumble upon the site desperate for help because they've lost so much it starts to make the ethics a little clearer...at least for me. The stories of people losing their homes are real. There was a girl whose father was murdered over there for 419 scam. She had to pay his killers to get his bones in a sack and then spent the night grinding them by hand in order to carry them home with her. The stories like that bring things in perspective for me.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Sep 2008 Posts: 16

FrumpyBB wrote:

npr_listener wrote:

Has anyone contributing to the thread actually been to west Africa, besides onyenekwu?

Of course

DionBouton has spent and still spends many years of his life in West Africa. He´s written an insightful text about some cultural backgrounds here Very Happy

Wow. That thread is totally spot-on. Thanks so much for the link.

The only thing that seemed to be missing was the fact that some businesses in west Africa don't like to take central African currency, and vice-versa. It's disconcerting, like travelling in England and having a waiter return your Bank of Scotland notes (which has also happened to me).

I felt nostalgic when France switched to the Euro, knowing that west and central Africa would be on a Franc-based system for a good while longer.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Sep 2008 Posts: 16

maxx wrote:

There was a girl whose father was murdered over there for 419 scam. She had to pay his killers to get his bones in a sack and then spent the night grinding them by hand in order to carry them home with her. The stories like that bring things in perspective for me.

Urgh. I can see why. Horrible story, but really good for illustration.

Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 2:57 am

One lad I'm torturing right now, at first I couldn't find his email address connected to any scam and for awhile, just a short while, I felt a tiny bit uncomfortable putting him through the hell I had planned for him.

Then, the other day, I finally found his email connected to a lotto scam and now I am more determined than ever to make his life hell. Now if the lazy bastard will get back to his box, perhaps I can send him on another safari, one he'll never forget.

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

npr_listener wrote:

I have some evangelical friends who would take that kind-of seriously. It's interesting to try and understand where people draw their personal lines, and why.

Welcome back npr_listener. I like your style of questioning, are you a journalist? I ask because you seem to want to get all the facts before rendering a decision.

For the record I am an Atheist/Agnostic from a Catholic upbringing. I despise scams that use the leverage of God to extract money, as belief is such a powerful and motivating factor in many peoples lives. When they use the ultimate trump card, that being God, to extract money, it motivates me as a baiter.

Edit: As to your second question, I don't have an answer.

Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 3:38 am

Welcome npr_listener! Smile

For the record, I was born in a Christian home and I despise scams that use God to extract money. Wink

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Sep 2008 Posts: 16

Pastor Frank wrote:

Welcome back npr_listener. I like your style of questioning, are you a journalist? I ask because you seem to want to get all the facts before rendering a decision.

Close. I'm trained as a scientist. And I love filters that make the world look different, and therefore require reexamination of the familiar. This concept of scam baiting is like that.

Quote:

For the record I am an Atheist/Agnostic from a Catholic upbringing. I despise scams that use the leverage of God to extract money, as belief is such a powerful and motivating factor in many peoples lives. When they use the ultimate trump card, that being God, to extract money, it motivates me as a baiter.

Gee, now that is even MORE interesting, because you don't just *not mind* religious modalities or prefer them for pragmatic reasons, but rather for moral reasons.

Just goes to show that you (meaning me) need to ask people things, rather than assuming you (me again) know the answer! Smile

@Corona:
Understandable. So for you, are religious baits OK? Because they're catching religious scammers?

Or do you think scammers would go after pretty much any kind of bait modality? Or does it depend on the particular scammer?

I don't have an agenda here, I'm just curious.

Mod edit: combined successive posts and removed extra unnecessary quote.
npr_listener, no need to requote what you're addressing each time and if you want to add something else to what you've said, please use the edit button. Thanks. -Ima

Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 3:52 am

@NPR
Speaking only for myself, I am a Christian, and I really hate the way the scammers I've talked to use God as a tool to commit crime.

I have no problem with the "fake" churches, and consider myself an evangelical.

Elite Baiter Joined: 17 Sep 2004 Posts: 1269

npr_listener wrote:

Or do you think scammers would go after pretty much any kind of bait modality?

I'm not Corona, but I think scammers will go after anything that has $$$. They use religion as a means to suck you dry.

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

@npr. I like the way you think.

Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 3:57 am

I don't do church baits and thank you GF, you took the words out of my mouth. Wink

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 18 Sep 2008 Posts: 16

Scarlett wrote:

@NPR
Speaking only for myself, I am a Christian, and I really hate the way the scammers I've talked to use God as a tool to commit crime.

I have no problem with the "fake" churches, and consider myself an evangelical.

The fakeness - yes, that was one of the things that made it seem like it should be OK (at least to me). If the "application forms" are so ridiculous as to be fairly obvious to a thinking person that the organization is a fake, then it really isn't baiting in the name of religion, is it?

(Although, some of those "genuine" religious movements out there seem so wackadoo compared with the mainstream that it is sometimes hard to tell!)

Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:00 am

NPR_listener:

In response to the sending money question...

While the word "vigilante" and the extreme nature of the story and some of the comments you heard or saw may make it seem like this is a community without rules or standards, this is not really true. There is a pretty strong code of ethics in the scambaiting community. Just a few of the things that are unacceptable in this community include: inappropriately harming innocent third parties, hacking, cashbaiting, racism, and social engineering.

Even though there are no written rules on the subject, in general, you'll probably find that very few baiters would send money, no matter how small of the amount, for a few key reasons:
-Even a small sum of money can buy internet time for the scammer.
-The scammer may use the MTCN number to help make a future scam more convincing.
-Sending small amounts of money would essentially be using intermittent reinforcement, a psychological technique that can be used to influence behavior, and it probably starts to cross the line into social engineering.

edit to reference the original question

419Eater is my life Joined: 14 Jul 2004 Posts: 281

Special_K wrote:

.....scammers will go after anything that has $$$. They use religion as a means to suck you dry.

I'll second that. I've seen them send actual x-rays from children (who knows how they got them). I've had them send pictures of them posing with an entire school of kids in order to convince me to send them cash. All of it verified to be lies...most of them invoked int he the name of god or christ It really bothers me to think that more than likely they've successfully used those modalities with success in the past.

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

npr_listener wrote:

some of those "genuine" religious movements

npr, What is your definition of "genuine" vs. mainstream religious movements?

Please answer in a PM so as not to interrupt the thread.

Edit: to add somethng

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