ratio of victims to baiters?

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Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 7:13 pm

Are there any data that could indicate how many of the scammers' apparent victims are actually baiters?

Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 7:44 pm

I don't know of any studies, but I suspect that there are a LOT of victims. Keep in mind most victims do not come forward (out of embarrassment, etc).

The very fact that there are several tens of thousands of scammers active at any moment in time is some indication of their success - people would not be scamming if you could not make money off of it. If you assume that the average scammer gets ONE victim a month who actually pays him, and that there are 25,000 active scammers at any point in time, that works out to 300,000 victims per year.

There are probably several thousand active baiters out there (not all of them affiliated with 419eater) but we are way outnumbered both by the scammers and the victims.

Bruin

Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 9:24 am

I always thought the ratio might be quite high.

Witness, the amount of times a 'new' or amusing scam crops up (for example the 'I got your email from 419baiter.com' email) quite a lot of us all get the same one, and we all jump on it.

Having said that, there is no shortage of lads. Wink

Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 10:17 am

There was an email that a lad accidentally sent to many people, leaving the list of addresses exposed. Among the addresses were several obvious baiter names. How often does this happen, and does it give an accurate ratio?

Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 10:36 am

Well, I guess there are baiters and baiters, i.e. organised baiters like the ones around the Eater, and annoyed spam recipients who just want to annoy the lads back.

Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 11:17 am

vonpaso xlura wrote:

There was an email that a lad accidentally sent to many people, leaving the list of addresses exposed. Among the addresses were several obvious baiter names. How often does this happen, and does it give an accurate ratio?

This happens occasionally and gives a very inaccurate ratio - a lot of baiters get their scam emails from the same sources, such as scams posted in the Surplus forum, or other sites that compile scam messages (419baiter's list has come to attention recently).

Considering the full range of scams out there, I think the number of victims is inordinately high (who knows just how many people give in to a scammer's first request, then figure out that it's a scam but then stay silent about being scammed), while the number of (organised + active) baiters might be somewhere in the hundreds.

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 7:22 pm

There certainly are unfortunately plenty of victims and I would say they far outway baiters. One thing to think about is we usually deal with the absurd formats mainly because those lads are the smal bois and much more fun to bait. I'd think these formats like Nok formats have a very low success rate. The "better" lads are running the job, rental and craigslist type scams. A lot of people fall for these because the formats make a lot more sense to an unsuspecting victim then someone trying to give you millions of dollars from a trunk box.

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 9:47 pm

bravo95, I agree with you. I love fun baits, and maybe my next sandtimer will be thanks to the Idiot Scammer Of The Decade. But mostly I concentrate on those lads who probably get the most victims - the types that you name.

However ... don't dismiss the old predictable formats. Through ScamWarners I've learnt that people can be tricked by these too - including the Next-of-Kin scams. All that we do makes a difference ... and maybe stops the more ridiculous scammers evolving into something more easily believable ... because they are too busy waiting-and-hoping for payment from us. We believe every silly word they say - so why do they need to improve?

Bait the clever, but bait the stupid too ... let them think that their formats work!

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 10:22 pm

^^ I completely agree all lads need loving Laughing

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

Victims definitely FAR outnumber baiters. Crying or Very sad

While as Branwen says, there are still plenty of lottery and NOK victims, I think there are many more victims who are becoming victims not from an email that landed in their inbox, but from means that are less easily baited from than catcher accounts like sites and online ads, and, as Bravo said, make more sense to the victim. My impression is that there are a lot more romance, employment, rental, pet and auction site scam victims.

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

Theres also different types of scam which cant easily or safely be baited.

Years ago google used to list how many websites it indexed, these days there are literally billions, even if we all went searching we would only really scratch the surface of what is actually a scam, even with tons of experience its still easy to be caught out, even supermarkets ended up on TV selling fake wine lol, paid for organic food? paid for free range eggs? Chances are in our lives we have all been scammed, and those numbers are uncounted, so based on that there is a figure.

6billion -> 40,000 ratio.

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 4747

I think there are a lot more victims with baiters. That is why so many mugus continue, they have to be fairly certain they will succeed.

But I think there would be a lot more if it weren’t for us. I believe us sharing the love is having a dramatic impact.

Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:17 am

I expect that hitlads get a much higher than usual proportion of baiters, but most scams won't get any. There aren't enough baiters to go round.

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 5:43 pm

There is an article in the June/July 2011 issue of Reader's Digest Magazine, that focuses on internet scams (especially Craigslist scams) originating in one small town in Romania. The article suggests that there are some scores of scammers in this one town, that numerous W.U. storefronts have opened in the last few years, and that W.U. transfers of $10 million per year are being made to this one town.

Considering there are other ways to transfer funds, the real total is probably several times this level.

And this is just ONE little town.

Bruin

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