Reminder Re: Killing Email Accounts

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Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2011 1:34 pm

I am sure no one here is doing it, because Eater members know better. But just in case someone missed the memo, I would like to humbly ask my fellow baiters to please not kill lads free email addresses. It doesn't hurt them as they will just open a new one, but it does (a) make it harder for potential victims to find information online about the scam mails they receive and (b) destroy baits in progress. I lost two lads over the weekend to shut-down email addresses. Now I will have to go abuse my last remaining one as revenge. Twisted Evil

http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=105921

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2011 2:33 pm

I think that most lads' email adresses get shut down by the email service admins, they even killed some of mine too

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2011 3:31 pm

^^ I'd say the majority are closed by other means. It happens a lot that people receive the scam and then report it to the mail provider. Victims (either potential or those that have fallen) seem to do this quite a bit.
All it takes is one email with headers and the provider will close the account.

That's not something we want to see happen. Not only does it screw with our scambaiting but the guys over at scamwarners.com and other victim sites rely on some of those addresses as a means to identify lads.

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2011 5:55 pm

^^^I agree, and many mail providers are making it increasingly easy to report addresses as scams. Even in Thunderbird, if you right click on links or email addresses there's an option to "report email scam." The intentions are certainly good, but it does more harm than good in the end (in terms of lads having new addresses that aren't in posted scams online).

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 4747

It’s been said before try to make sure your mugu writes down your email addy.

I think the majority of addy killing happens by other means. I had one mugu who couldn’t get more than one email out before his account was killed. He was trying to explain the details of his offer. He went through four or five accounts.

Then his domains started dying, I plead the fifth on the domains. Twisted Evil

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2011 9:24 pm

About email addresses...

Have you ever been conversing with a scammer and suddenly he had his email shutdown mid-bait? How many times has he replied back with a new one?

For me, this has never happened. Once their email got closed closed, they have never made contact with me again. Personally, I think that the decision to report or not report should be made given certain circumstances.

So this is where the fork in the road is incepted. I will formulate a decision tree and post it on this thread shortly.

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2011 9:45 pm

I think the same about non paysite dating/social site fake accounts.

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2011 10:51 pm

Beat him to it and ask for his back up email, his secure email and the last resort email, just in case. Then answer his questions at random over his emails, so he has to figure out who/what you are and what your script status was. Your emails are all collected(rerouted) in the same inbox of course. Wink

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 4747

he had around five different email addresses that had been shut down.

He would explain the deal I would reply and my reply was bounced back.

though I wouldn't put it past other mugus to try to shut down other mugus accounts.

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 1:27 am

JimBoy wrote:

Personally, I think that the decision to report or not report should be made given certain circumstances.

There is not really a gray area when it comes to this. Sure it sucks to loose a lad during a bait but it really sucks when trying to help victims when free email accounts are shut down. I see it over and over at Scamwarners where an email address is posted and another potential victim finds Scamwarners. If not for the email posted and the scammer using the same address the victim may loose money.

There is NO good reason to shut down free addresses. We can't control what the rest of the world does but as we baiters have a higher probability of communicating with scammers we should certainly not report them.

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 4:08 am

^^ Well, sure I understand your reasoning. If we warn those who are potential victims, then of course they stop conversing with the scammer. But people are still being scammed today, no doubt from not knowing. To truly end this epidemic is to educate all. This has its problems of course. We could either warn profusely, or intercept profusely, but fraud will still remain a big part of our lives. So we should do what we can. We can catalog every scam email known to mankind, so that when targeted people search, convincing results show. Or we could take many other measures such as consuming their time and money (hey that's us).

I'll attempt to reveal the benefits of closing down emails and what I think about it, though I hope that people point out flaws in my judgement that I may be otherwise oblivious to. I am not calling for an elimination of warning people from scams. No, no, that is quite the opposite of what I and most likely what all of you want. I am merely calling for an additional part for the system already put in place. A mere lubrication for the gears. Why not send out a warning for the scamming email and then report the email once that's done?

However before I dwell anymore on that notion I must make it apparent that keeping email accounts intact for the benefit of victim is heavily reliant on whether or not victims search for the email address or not. If potential victims start Googling email addresses and come up with all sorts evidence for AFF, then all the better. The victim has correctly identified that the person they are corresponding with is indeed more than willing to snag their cash. But what about those who don't even attempt to search for their lad's email addresses?

And why do people Google search other people's email addresses to begin with? Because they are suspicious? Because they want to know more?

Say a potential victim initiates a query for a scammer's email address and nothing pops up--does that fact alone confirm that the person they are searching for isn't doing anything wrong? I wouldn't think so.

Surely those who begins the searching in the first place are already at a lower risk for being scammed than someone who isn't. It's because of their initial doubts, their concerns.

Truth is, although posting and warning about scammers helps educate and provide critical information for targeted victims no doubt, and should be continued indefinitely, some people lack the intuition to do research and search for these email address in the first place. The elderly and those fairly new to the internet are just to name a few.

I'm afraid time is running short, and I must conclude. Below is a flowchart designed to illustrate the events that may occur if an email address is reported to the provider. I must warn beforehand that it looks confusing, so I apologize for that along for the length. It also may be incomplete and fail to reflect all situations in which an email may be report or how a victim would react.

http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/4846/flowcharto.jpg

I think one of the strongest points of reporting the addresses is that contact is immediately dropped with the scammer. Of course it may be easily be picked up again but an email closure may be enough to arouse suspicion of victims. I believe that a combination of both email closure and a healthy dose of warning is a good method to help further dampen the long and short-term effects of email fraud.

Cropped image.- Connie

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 4:27 am

JimBoy, while your decision tree is interesting, it:

1. Is blowing out the forum.
2. Does not take into account other people have been at this much longer than you have.
3. Doesn't have logic to it.

If, closing down email accounts got RID of scammers, they would all be gone by now.

Most scammers have multiple emal addresses in their back pocket already.

You say "If potential victims search using email addresses..." We KNOW some do search by email address. Maybe you should read some threads on ScamWarners before you begin to pontificate. I can see though that I am banghead

so I am going to not to be part of this discussion.

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 4747

I would agree that account closing has a grey area. Though I don’t do it now, I could see where it would be justified on certain cases.

My last report of abuse caused a cyber café to lose their provider. This was years ago, and the provider actually really had a zero tolerance toward net fraud. The provider had filters set up and the email I provided proved the filters had been bypassed.

Also kill which account most mugus the one they mail from or the one they are using to conduct the scam? More often then not they are two separate accounts

killing sending accounts probably will not harm a bait, but will also do little to screw with a scammer

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 9:25 am

One bank in Florida is very active at shutting down the email of scammers using the real bank credentials to "reactivate" a credit card or deal with a "blocked payment" They openly mention the scam on the real bank homepage and ask for copies of the emails to be sent to Abuse. I think they have a 24/7 person on the job as I received almost a dozen phishing emails regarding my account that I don't have. I promptly replied to each to bait and everytime the mail bounced, each time from a new addy. I have a feeling the banks would prefer the scam accounts get immediately closed before there are many responces from vics. The super fast shutdowns have prevented me from baiting them.

Almost all of these I get come with an already dead email.
The ACH transaction (ID:02505632 ), recently initiated from your checking account (by you or any other person), was canceled by the other financial institution.

Info on the real organization,
http://www.nacha.org/news/newsDetail.cfm/RecentBusinessNewsID/236

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 1:52 pm

^^^ Most phishing emails are sent from domains that the legit banks are getting closed down. They do a very good job at it and most hosts/registrars will cooperate in getting phishing sites/email domains closed as they understand phish.

I really can not see any benefit of closing a lad's free email account. By the time you get it closed, they will have a new one up and running. And I really think the only ones that think closing the addies is a good idea are people that have never worked with the victims (like over at SW).

So while there can be debate and differing opinions on this topic, Eater has the policy to not close lad free email accounts. No decision tree is needed. Wink

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 3:15 pm

Agent1002 those are phishing emails, designed to get you to click on their links and enter your details so they can hack your bank/email/whatever. How would you go about baiting them exactly, if you *could* get a live email address? It's not the same as what we do here at all.

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 3:54 pm

@JimBoy all the points you are making have been brought up before I know there are several threads on this subject arguing for shutting down free accounts. The consensus and rule as Dora pointed out is we do not shut down free accounts.

Shutting down free email accounts does more harm than good. Victims do search email addresses especially if a lad is using a common name like Scott Johnson if you just google that name how many results would show up compared to googling an email address. If the lads email account was shut down and he changed it from one that was posted on an anti-scam site the person may not find the postings on anti-scam sites which is what we want. Will this save everyone? Of course not but that is an impossible task.

What you may not realize without spending time on a site like Scamwarners is people may be skeptical but not convinced it's a scam. This is especially true with romance scam victims. They do not want to believe they are being scammed and sometimes concrete proof like seeing the lad communicating with another victim using the same email address is the only thing that will convince them.

Trying to shut down or post every scam email is impossible. Not to mention what we come across from our catcher accounts and what you see in the surplus forums is only a very small portion of the scam mail. A lot of lads are using social media to find victims like Face book and all the dating sites. This approach is much more targeted and more than likely has a much better success rate than blasting out a 1000 scripts. If lads do anything they can and will adapt to find better ways to scam victims. This is going to happen no matter what but shutting down the current method of some lads can in my opinion force more lads to use these other avenues that are much more difficult for us to expose on the Internet.

I understand both sides of the argument and I do agree that shutting down a lads free email address may have a few pros but as already decided here the cons out way the pros.

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 4:21 pm

JimBoy wrote:

^

However before I dwell anymore on that notion I must make it apparent that keeping email accounts intact for the benefit of victim is heavily reliant on whether or not victims search for the email address or not.

It's not just victims who need those addresses for reference. Often, the victim doesn't know that they're being scammed. When contacted by one of our scam warners, having the lad's address to hand and being able to prove that it's been used in a scam is one of the most potent weapons in the arsenal. Quite simply, being able to show the victim that they've been scammed from that address is the easiest way to get them off the scam. Close the address down and the warner loses that means of proof.

Quote:

I think one of the strongest points of reporting the addresses is that contact is immediately dropped with the scammer. Of course it may be easily be picked up again but an email closure may be enough to arouse suspicion of victims.

Not in 99% of cases. The lads aren't stupid. If an address is closed, they're prepared with an excuse that normally satisfies the victim. For example, something along the lines of - This deal is so valuable, I had a suspicion someone was watching us so I closed my account and am now contacting you from this one.
As for immediately dropping the victim? No. The lad won't even blink. He's guaranteed to have the victim's contact address and will just get hold of them with the excuse ready to hand.
Is the victim going to be suspicious? Perhaps. But within one of two emails, they're back on the hook. When they've managed to fall for a scam in the first place, they'll normally swallow any bullshit which the lad throws at them.

buried under 429 emails wrote:

I would agree that account closing has a grey area.

There's no "grey area" at all. Experience has shown us that closing accounts does far more harm than good.
If it didn't, we would be endorsing it instead of being vehemently opposed to it.

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 4:33 pm

bearkat419 wrote:

Agent1002 those are phishing emails, designed to get you to click on their links and enter your details so they can hack your bank/email/whatever. How would you go about baiting them exactly, if you *could* get a live email address? It's not the same as what we do here at all.

I have not figured out a full bait. I was going to respond to the your transaction... to get a follow up letter that reveals the scam so it could be posted, but the accounts go dead too fast. I could continue to do the Garbage in Garbage out much like we do with MG and WU numbers, names, etc to add lad frustration and bait for some phone calls with bad connections etc. Even Mr G may get my account emptied and shut down in a classic dolla chop, so it is working when the lad gets to it.. Haven't made it past round one so far. Rolling Eyes

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 4:45 pm

Uhm.... maybe this will help explain things. Cool

Phishing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing
419/AFF scams: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_fraud

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