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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 09 Dec 2008 Posts: 19

What would happen if I took all the emails from the Surplus 419 Scam Letters section, and sent each one of them 10,000 replies from several hundred different email addresses?

I know it's easy to get a new email account, but it seems like this could waste an enormous amount of the lads time.

Any thoughts?

Harpo

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 8:25 am

@ Harpo,

I'm at a loss to figure out what you would achieve, or think you'd achieve.

Firstly, it's pointless spamming any lad, they open and discard email addresses faster and more often than I change my underwear,

Secondly, it's highly likely that your ISP would have you shut off for spamming.

Thirdly, you would severely piss off, annoy and aggravate those of us in here and Scamwarners who try to collect information about scammers, and their email addresses are the one constant that we have to use to operate Scamwarners with.

In case you don't get where I'm going with this, WE DO NOT SPAM THE LADS EMAIL ADDIES,

Thank you, Happy New Year, Welcome to Eater, Read the Stickies, apply for a Mentor etc etc and DON'T SPAM THE LADS

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 8:36 am

scammers have a delete button too, you know.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 09 Dec 2008 Posts: 19

What I would hope to achieve is to put some scammers out of business, or at least severely limit them . I thought the goal of scambaiting (aside from the entertainment value) was to tie up the lads time and energy, thus keeping them from perpetrating real scams.

I'll admit I don't know much about scamwarners - I have looked at the site, but don't understand how anyone gets warned, unless their email is actually intercepted, or Nigerian agents are employed.

I also don't understand what seems to be a contradiction here:

irishemigrant wrote:

Firstly, it's pointless spamming any lad, they open and discard email addresses faster and more often than I change my underwear...

...and their email addresses are the one constant that we have to use to operate Scamwarners with.

In any event, each lad has a finite amount of time he can possibly spend on a computer. If that time is cut in half by the task of sorting through massive responses trying to find prospects and opening new mail accounts, isn't the goal accomplished to some extent?

Yes, I understand the inherent ISP problems, but they are not that difficult to overcome, or we wouldn't have spammers at all.

Please understand that I'm not trying to rock the boat - I'm just tossing out an idea that seems to have some merit, to me at least.

Thanks,
Harpo

Master Baiter Joined: 04 Dec 2008 Posts: 143

Harpo, what irishemigrant is saying is that if you flood the scammer's email, they won't bother sorting through it all, they'll just close the account and open another email address and carry on just as they did before.

And scamwarners will in the meantime have a warning up about the old address, but they won't have a warning up about the address the scammer has just created in response to your action. Which means when a potential victim gets mail from the new address and thinks to do a google search on it, no results will come up so they won't be alerted that it's a scam.

It takes your time; it doesn't do significant damage to the scammer (like two minutes to open a new account, that's *all*); and it makes it harder for potential victims to know who they're dealing with.

If you want to do some tangible damage, report some bank accounts or get some fake websites taken down - that costs them *real* time, and money too.

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 10:25 am

Quote:

Please understand that I'm not trying to rock the boat - I'm just tossing out an idea that seems to have some merit, to me at least.

That's because you're new here. If it was a good and effective idea, don't you think we'd already be using it?
One thng Scamwarners does is getting scammers email addresses on the Internet so that potential victims can Google for them.
We want to keep track of them. Making their accounts unusable causes us more problems than it does the lads.

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 10:27 am

Beside the fact that spamming lad accounts isn't practiced here on eater but the emails in the surplus are placed there for members to bait. That's the main point of surplus with the lads addy and format being googleable coming in close second. If you get a lad to abandon that account then the baiter won't be answered.

Spamming the accounts in surplus will keep the lad from being baited. Not to mention it will take him all of ten seconds to realize his account is over run. He will take his victim info and continue business as usual from another one of his accounts that he already opened. Lads, like baiters, have dozen of accounts ready at any given time. So not only is he not being baited but he didn't loose any of his victims.

I am not too sure how you can send a lad 10,000 replies from several hundred different addys but if you say so then okay but please don't do it.

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 11:08 am

@ Harpo

"Please understand that I'm not trying to rock the boat - I'm just tossing out an idea that seems to have some merit, to me at least."

Fresh faces, fresh ideas are good and should be aired and encouraged.

Mine would be to send a hand grenade sans pin with every mail to the lads.

However I have to agree with the others. Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.

Wink

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 1:20 pm

I think I too had this bright idea sometime in my first month.

The answer was, and still is a big no, complete with rolly eyes and stuff.

Quote:

What I would hope to achieve is to put some scammers out of business

Yeah. right, I'm sure they'd just give up and get an honest job.

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 1:40 pm

Actually, you might give them all some new scripts to use - in itself not a good idea.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 09 Dec 2008 Posts: 19

Minette wrote:

...if you flood the scammer's email, they won't bother sorting through it all, they'll just close the account and open another email address and carry on just as they did before.

If they have ongoing scams using that address, they will have to sort through it - or they risk losing valuable responses.

Mr Tambourine Man wrote:

One thng Scamwarners does is getting scammers email addresses on the Internet so that potential victims can Google for them.

How many potential victims actually Google the email address? I would never even have considered it, and I'm very internet savvy. I would Google a distinctive portion of the message, or a name used in it.

Ghost wrote:

If you get a lad to abandon that account then the baiter won't be answered.

And neither will the actual victim - unless the lad sorts through the mess.

Mr Tambourine Man wrote:

If it was a good and effective idea, don't you think we'd already be using it?

Are you saying there can be no new developments in the battle against scammers? I've seen a lot of new ideas put into action on this site, and I expect this process can continue...

Honestly, I'm not trying to be dense here, I just don't see it. Even if the scammer abandons an email account, he still has to attempt to re-contact his ongoing victims with a new email address. A certain percentage are going to notice the change and wonder what is up. If he explains the change, he must either go off script, or write a new script in explanation (which he is liable to bulk mail, and restart the process!). All of this will take time.

I realize there is a high value placed on the entertainment factor of scambaiting, but to me the goal is to save victims. I can't imagine we are at crossed purposes on that point. Regardless, I appreciate the responses.

Harpo

Not quite a Newb Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 41

Quote:

What would happen if I took all the emails from the Surplus 419 Scam Letters section, and sent each one of them 10,000 replies from several hundred different email addresses?

How about this: it is just pointless.

What do you do when your inbox gets spam? You just delete or ignore, yes? Maybe you fiddle with your filters?

Why won't a lad do the same?

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

Quote:

How many potential victims actually Google the email address? I would never even have considered it, and I'm very internet savvy. I would Google a distinctive portion of the message, or a name used in it.

As someone who is very active on ScamWarners, I can tell you that I answer queries every day from potential victims asking about scams. Some people do google the address and find ScamWarners that way. I am then able to give them further advice and support. Others email me with an inquiry and then *I* search the address and send them the evidence, which helps convince them of the scam more easily.

I admire that you want to be able to help victims.

Please, please, please, do NOT spam the lads, it makes our work in victim education and support much harder.

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 6:09 pm

If you really want to hurt a lad, bait him. Try getting bank accounts and websites shut down. It costs nothing for a lad to make a new email address but getting a new website or bank account usually costs considerable effort, time and often money.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 09 Dec 2008 Posts: 19

Maybe I'm not making myself clear. I don't care how many emails the lads send, they can't scam anyone unless they get a response. If the email they used to send the scam is flooded, they won't be able to sort out the genuine responses, at least not without an enormous effort. And if they abandon an email, every scam sent with that email is now basically dead.

Aside from loss of entertainment, where's the down side?

Harpo

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

Maybe you're not reading the replies here. Wink

If we take the time to publish the scammer's email address so that victims can find it and then you spam the lad, he'll drop the email address, probably retaining the info on his active victims, and sign up for a new address in minutes. It is futile in terms of hurting the lad and only harms our efforts to publicize his address.

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 7:43 pm

Harpo wrote:

Even if the scammer abandons an email account, he still has to attempt to re-contact his ongoing victims with a new email address.

and a good scammer will do just that.

He will have all his information backed up by copying it to another (similar) e-mail address and then almost seamlessly carry on from there.

He can come up with a hundred excuses as to the change if a victim ever challenges him. Over the short time I've been baiting I have had many a barrister change his address from [email protected] to [email protected] for a variety of reasons.

also .... the vast proportion of mail that you find in "surplus" are only Lad's Catcher Accounts, which they expect to be closed after a short time .... reply to one and generally you'll find you have to contact someone else at another "safe" address.

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 7:44 pm

The other thing is often lads send out emails from one address, but all their replies go to another address. They use that to filter out spam and obvious "jokers".

If you are still determined to send out mass emails, my suggestion would be sending out mass insult letters with a known scammer's phone number on it. That would cause him far more aggravation than having to take 10 seconds to set up a new email address.

ETA: Spot types faster than I do. That's what I get for playing poker online.

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Dec 2005 Posts: 3551

Harpo,

Your point is understood. Look at the responses you've received. They don't come from inexperience. Even if you don't agree, I would encourage you to stick around, do some baiting yourself, and you will learn that this information is valid.

As for the entertainment factor, that is just a tiny part of baiting. Look at the signature lines of members who have responded to your question. There are symbols of arrests, fake banks that have been killed, safaris by lads, etc.

Smile

Master Baiter Joined: 04 Dec 2008 Posts: 143

The downside is that, in the combined years of experience of those on the board, when a mugu changes his email address, it inconveniences us a lot more than it inconveniences him.

Why this is so is down to a whole set of reasons; but it is in fact so.

New ideas are good. I've got new ideas too -- except one of them turned out to be an old idea that people have already discarded seeing as it's illegal, and the other I've decided to let percolate in the back of my mind while I get enough practice and background reading done to have a better grasp of whether it will work or backfire miserably. But if I still think it's a good idea then I'll ask and listen to what the more experienced people think about it, because they know the mugus better than I do.

It's great that you want to tangibly hurt the lads. And you can - by going after their bank accounts and fake websites.

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 7:59 pm

Pachanga AND Minette are 100% correct.

Let's say you send a lad on safari for a week or two. That's time he isn't scamming other people.

Let's say you report a lad's offshore bank account and Al4n gets it killed. That's money frozen that the lad has lost, plus the accomplice who loses the account becomes paranoid. Now you've just caused a rift in the scammer community. I personally love sending Al4n bank accounts as you can tell by my signature.

Let's say you bait a lad and he tells you to send the money to someone that you think might be a victim who he is using to launder money. You send that information to a mod and they warn the person. That person stops co-operating with the scammer and now the scammer has to go through all the time and trouble of finding someone else to do his work.

Or, you get a lad's fake website killed. Now he has to go through all of the trouble of paying someone to make him a new one.

These are just a few but all far more useful and often entertaining ways to make a scammer's life a complete hell. I love hearing their excuses as to why their website no longer works.

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 3:28 am

Not to belabor the point, but lots of times while in mid-bait I have email to a scammer returned as undeliverable and I can only assume that probably the box was closed because of complaints to the scammer's email provider. But within a couple of days they return with a new box and a weak excuse as to why they changed email (usually something to do with the "security" of the transaction). I would assume they would make new contact with actual victims and if anyone is going to believe they have won the National Lottery, or are going to stand in as next of kin, etc., they aren't going to be concerned by a mere change of email address.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 09 Dec 2008 Posts: 19

Understood, at least to some extent. I can't see the lads keeping records quite that good, but I'll take the word of those with more experience.

As far as victims searching by email address, I can't imagine it happening very often. I never considered it, and tried it after seeing it mentioned here, with basically no results. However, searching a name used in the email, or searching a distinctive portion of a sentence gives excellent results. Scamomatic.com also has a search that is quite capable of detecting scam emails based on text content, as well as a database of emails. I suppose the real problem is informing the potential victim about such resources before it is too late. And I still have a real hard time believing that anyone falls for these scams, though I know this is true.

I really do appreciate the responses; I've completed one bait ($58,000 check plus a bank account sent to Alan), have two others running right now, and plan to continue. But I still think there must be a better way...

Thanks much,
Harpo

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 8:30 am

I am very new her but have spent over 18 hours a day reading here since I've been here. I am baiting my first with no mentor. I have become very informed very fast to the whole idea of baiting.

Here's an example from my first and current bait. I was already informed if any problems that my barrister (lawyer) has emails at:

exactusername01@hotmail
exactusername01@yahoo
exactusername01@live
exactusername01@gmail

all so I would know it was him. Soley for the security of our transaction.

(above means that the username is EXACT at each provider.)

So unless you were lucky enough to come up with that variation for every provider he was using in your mass email.....it would'nt do any good.

All the emails in my catcher account arrive via one address but replies are redirected to another. The lads as explained above have catcher/spamming accounts also.

Hope that helps.

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 1:04 pm

I'm not 'piling on' Harpo, but this thread got my notice because I was the recipient of a mail bomb attack just yesterday. I'm convinced it's not a lad, but a do-gooder who thinks one of my email accounts is a lad account. How my email address got mixed up in his business I don't know, but one thing to consider is that sending mail bombs could be hitting ITPs. If the scammer sets his email to forward to someone elses address it's entirely possible the mail bomb could hit an unintended person.

The good news about my experience is that I was home and caught it while it was happening so a couple well-placed filters kept my account in action. Cool

. Had I not been there to thwart it, I would have just opened another account and moved on, just as a lad would have done.

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