In your experience, how often do the mugus write back?

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Not quite a Newb Joined: 14 May 2009 Posts: 62

I wait for a mugu to spam one of my real accounts and then reply from a baiter account.

I'm going off a small sample here, but only about a third of the mugus reply to my first letter, which is usually short and inquisitive, ie "you wrote about an ATM card? Was that for me?"

Interestingly, one of my baiter accounts got a scam letter saying it was from the FBI and warning me not to deal with people outside my country and that I should contact the Nigerian government instead. Nobody knows the baiter account except a mugu I jerked around earlier so I'm not sure how they got the address. I replied with a question and haven't heard back.

Is all this par for the course or should more mugus be following up?

Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 11:03 pm

I'd say a third response isn't bad!

I have sat and replied to ten scam mails one day, and got one response.

Another day, I've written back to ten, and got fifteen responses (by name - so one or more Lads must have 'shared me out' to others).

Some of my characters have been totally disliked by Lads, and I don't know why. One I even suspect might have been rejected because she always wrote in a certain font - I moved her to a near-identical email address, and wrote in the default font, and she gets replies now! (Others are disliked for reasons I am aware of, but I still persist, because when they do catch a Lad, that Lad is quite special/interesting/entertaining.)

Some of my characters, however (especially the divorced middle-aged woman) can't get rid of Lads I'd rather like to drop. Ah well, keeps them occupied, writing yet another unproductive mail every two days.

And yes, The Rejected Ones can turn up in different disguises too.

If you are happy with your opening mail-style, then carry on with it, and accept those that come back your way. If it is not enough, then go to Surplus and copy-and-paste a generic first response to a few more, until you get the number you want. It is a bit like any relationship: there needs to be some sort of 'match' between you and the Lad. The better the match, the longer the relationship will last. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Other times ... hopefully you'll be celebrating anniversaries!

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 1:14 am

I have wondered about this also. I have an account at which the persona is a middle aged small town woman. I originally used her and the account as part of a lottery bait and I need a "wife" to contact a lad after she found out her "husband" was dealing with the lad. Over the past few weeks I have had no responses --I mean none, zero-- from replies I sent to scammers from this account.

Is it possible they keep lists of real or imagined baiter accounts and ignore them?

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 3:16 am

I don´t believe they do that.

There must be some kind of "witchcraft" in baiting: Sometimes you get too many responses to deal with on good days, on bad days all your efforts seem to be wasted because of no visible feedback to you.
I believe in a concept of there being a seeding season and a harvest season in baiting. They change with each other and you can never know in front "will this week be a highly fruitful one or will you tear yourself up in the never-ending trust-building phase with lads?". Smile

For a long period of time you put in great efforts and nothing ever seems to come out of it, let alone big shiny trophies. Then all of a sudden, there is a week "full of forms and little trophies" making it all worthwhile again.

I have found this myself to happen a lot here. Tedious boring periods changing with excitement, little sleep and giggling all throughout the day.

Maybe they just need longer to think whether investment is worth it or not.

Or, the mass mail lists are of varying quality.

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 3:48 am

I seem to be really lucky in this for some odd reason i get responses to almost all my 1st mails i send i am kind of new to this so i thought it was normal.I just answer in normal format...Polite and short telling them i am interested to the proposal and how to procede from now on.....

Not quite a Newb Joined: 19 Feb 2008 Posts: 36

I have noticed recently, that occasionally I get the second, and the third script with no response from me. My email address must be on a sucker list, so sometimes I don't need to start baiting until the second or third page of the script.

Some lads are really keen. Wink

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 9:40 am

I agree with FrumpyBB - there are a lot of totally unpredictable elements in the rate of lad responses. It changes with some, all or none of the following: the weather, phase of the moon, day of the week, your character's style and opening message, extent to which the lad is being contacted by other victims and "victims", and so on....

I have figured out that a couple of lads are definitely finished with dealing with me - this was based on a careful scientific investigation of their first response emails. Or maybe they told my character they are not interested in dealing with a joker - clearly they've dealt with him before because they are right on the money (I do re-use this character because I have grown so attached).

Otherwise, I find response rates are the best (extremely high) if I reply promptly to their initial format emails (if they provide "alternative" email addresses, making sure I cc both of them) - reply rate drops off substantially as time passes from the intial sending date.

Content of the initial email also may matter (I'm sure this is part of the reason why mugu_eater is getting such good response rates) - response rate seems better if I give them just a brief first message than something longer. I also feel like I get a little bit more success when my first response includes a little bit of doubt (like "why are you contacting me" or "are you sure you have the right person"). But this probably varies from baiter to baiter.

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 26 Sep 2008 Posts: 689

I think also there's a huge turnaround of lad email accounts, they're getting shut down at a fairly high rate. If you send out to 100 brand spanking new addresses then a large percentage of them will have already been shutdown ... and you simply wont ever know.

The lad uses an account he spams from making it highly suscetiple to closure for a TOS violation so sets up reply to accounts for the few replies he does get from the thousands of emails he spams out to his victim lists.

Response rates outside of that are down to luck/chance/good response scripts and all sorts of other influences, so average can be anything from next to none to almost all ... and still fit into that normal distribution curve.

Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 9:33 pm

A bit over a week ago, I sent out my first emails. I replied to about a dozen scams in 2 days. I lost a couple after their 3rd reply. For every one that didn't reply after 2 days, I replied to a new random one.
Right now I have only 1 left from the original set: 9 days old, 8 replies. And another 2 that have over 4 replies.
Maybe it is because I totally ignore the 'important' stuff, like funds, my address ad phone number, and only sweet talk and comment on the little details (like whether they use celsius or fahrenheit in senegal). Also I haven't replied to any of them more than twice in a row without a reply back.

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