interesting article I found

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Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 1:05 am

It asks this question: "Does scambaiting make a noticeable difference to the prevention of internet fraud?"

Quote:

So I've recently found out about scam-baiting, and I've discovered a whole community around just wasting the times of scammers, such as 419Baiter and the-ex-baiter.

A lot of the people there are quite passionate about it. Some have set up fake websites, banks and stuff in order to fool the scammers.

Most also think that what they do makes a difference by wasting the scammer's time and effort and acting as a deterrent. My question is, does it?

Mostly it seems to take more time and effort for the scam-baiter. So given the number of scammers out there, it doesn't seem like it could ever scale to be an effective solution.

Furthermore, if it was successful as a deterrent, wouldn't it be in, say, the FBI or Google's best interest to start producing software that automatically baited scammers in order to waste their time?

Lastly, these schemes seem to have increased not decreased.

Can anyone actually offer any research which suggests that scam-baiting is an effective deterrent and that the scam-baiting has a measurable effect in lowering the incidence of internet fraud?

Source, with comments

Fixed your coding - TS

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

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 2:06 am

If I cared about whether or not I was saving the world..I would give up.
I'm doing something and I do not do it in a particularly amusing way.

Go to fake banks..nothing funny there. Just hard working folks taking down scam sites.
Romance baiters causing havoc, straight baiters getting bank accounts and CCs. The amount of banks, cc's that we report must be incredible.

We get tattoos, safaris, trophies and mind blowing movie scripts. We even get lads arrested. And rarely..we get them to profess to change their ways.

Do I get some pleasure from this? Absolutely. Do I enjoy causing misery to my fellow man? No, but when they ask for it, we are prepared to respond.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (women) do nothing."(Edmund Burke)
To everyone here at Eater that does SOMETHING to combat these lads..here's to you.

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 2:49 am

If it didn't make a difference, why did they DoS us? I guess that the percentage of attempts to scam going on at any one time, not counting the initial script which is spammed, in which the apparent victim is a baiting character, is at least a few percent. Add to that the mules, bank accounts, and fake sites we get shut down, and that amounts to enough lad pain that they retaliate.

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jan 2009 Posts: 1440

Well, it may not act as a deterrent, but one thing we know for sure is that a lad on safari who is streded in hash conditions, isn't scamming anyone for however long he's streded.

Knowing that you're the cause of lad misery and suffering (if you're really doing a good job) is reward enough in itself. Very Happy

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 4:59 am

VX wrote:

If it didn't make a difference, why did they DoS us?

Excellent point that I left out.

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 5:06 am

I know one thing, and one thing only.
Every fake site I get suspended, via however many reports it takes, cannot victimize anyone. Period.
A scammer loses his investment in hiring the fake-site maker and/or paying for the privilege, and most likely his hosting account as well.

Is this resourceful? Damn right it is. I'll never know how many innocent people are 'saved', but that's not the issue. The issue, to me, is that an obvious scammer is taken to ground, with help from the hosters/registrars who are working with us. They cannot possibly have enough eyes on the back of their heads to keep up with the tide.

In the end, I work to keep innocent people away from these cretins. Imagine your grandmother or grandfather getting an email, asking for their bank account information. Innocently, they respond. The looting begins.

It gets worse, but I'll spare you the details.

My friends who stred lads in hash conditions are another side of the same coin. My hat is off to you, I don't have the imagination for it! But give me a dodgy site, and I will find the right person who will take it down, legally and without question.

ooooo

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 5:27 am

I have a site on my list of watched domains that every so often (including several hours ago) pops up at a new address, then an hour later is gone. Apparently some hosters look at the DB or SW or here, notice it's a scam, and pull the plug. Every time that happens, the lad loses money, even if he spews out a million messages in the hour the site is up, because by the time the potvic responds, the domain is down. Someone got one yesterday, became suspicious, and posted on the SW thread.

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 5:50 am

^^Yes. Lads will try to host-jump, and there are people on his butt making sure he sticks to his cafe chair. Cool

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 11:16 am

Such a negative approach to baiting.

If it were not for baiters there would be no SW or SS who are doing a great job helping victims and their families.

The team of clever people who give up their time to kill fake sites and banks are doing great work.

All I can do is report bank accounts and hope to get them closed, and where applicable account holder warned off money laundering.

The 'do nothing' brigade will never stand up and be counted and history shows what that means!

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 11:28 am

Agree with all that has been said previously in posts so I can only say "Ditto" especially on the DoS attack that occurred a few months.

If we are not hurting them, then why take our website down. IIRC for whomever was responsible for that DoS attack it cost them a ton of money to pull off that DoS.

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 11:35 am

Scam-baiting is also a very useful means of keeping up with new developments in the scammer world and trying to create better scam awareness and avoidance.

Knowing how these scams actually work in practice is essential to advising people how to avoid them.

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 2:11 am

This is a very, very good point, Firehouse. Smile

The baiters are the ones who document and analyse this stuff.

Thank you for the correction, TS. <3

Well, you know...with great power comes great responsibility. How would I be able to sleep with a stray URL code running amok? Laughing

TS

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 30 Mar 2012 Posts: 949

At the end of the day, we represent a percentage of the responses the lads have to deal with. This translates directly into lost 'profits' for them. And I can't tell you what that number is, but it's greater than zero.

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2012 7:02 am

There are always going to be more scammers than baiters and we're never going to be able to stop every scam and save every victim but then, as a certain squirrel of this parish once observed "It's not your job to unf*ck the world"

We do what we can do to slow them down, cause them grief and money and maybe even get them to the point where they realise they would be better off with a real job but in the end we do this (well I do) because it's fun and gives me something productive to do on my boring commute to work.

Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2012 3:07 am

Quote:

Thank you for the correction, TS. <3

Well, you know...with great power comes great responsibility. How would I be able to sleep with a stray URL code running amok? Laughing

TS

Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2012 5:20 am

We also pass them silly names, which sometimes they use, reducing their effectiveness. The loan lad calling himself Frodo Baggins probably got very few victims. And if you look at the latest military scam post on SW, you'll see a joke name that goes along with Eileen.

Master Baiter Joined: 20 Nov 2009 Posts: 114

Every time my baiting blog gets a hit from a search engine for an email address, name, or fake document used by a lad, there is someone somewhere who has either confirmed or become aware that the email they got was an attempted scam.

And I'm not worried about the time I spend baiting - it's a hobby, and I manage it accordingly. The time my lads spend getting baited is another story...

*** BANNED *** Joined: 26 Jul 2012 Posts: 1123

Quote:

Furthermore, if it was successful as a deterrent, wouldn't it be in, say, the FBI or Google's best interest to start producing software that automatically baited scammers in order to waste their time?

This comment struck me as funny as I have a program that works somewhat like that. It by no means replaces baiters as far as quality but in quantity it rocks the boat. It is definitely a work in progress and I hope to one day have it responding to scammer inquiries at a fairly precise level by using attributes and text parsing etc etc etc. It still is far from being able to do the amount of personal damage human baiters can do because we can think outside of the box. The program I run is definitely stuck in the box with whatever rules I program into the thing.

As far as effectiveness..... from reading above if you get DDoS attacked I would say you are at the very least pissing someone off. Congratulations. Very Happy

Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 6:02 pm

See my sig

Not quite a Newb Joined: 13 Jul 2012 Posts: 24

He who say it cannot be done should get out of the way of the person doing it.
Deductive reasoning alone suggests that we are wreaking havoc amongst the lads. Imagine the stress the lad feels, even dealing with a "legitimate" victim. He knows it could be a trick, but has no choice but to seek legitimate work, or continue in his safari. That alone is worth it to me.

Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2012 4:34 pm

While we're not the best possible solution to the problem (authorities cracking down more seriously against this would be), we're still doing a good job.

Every minute a lad spends sending mails to a baiter, he isn't using sending to an actual victim.
Every website we shut down forces a lad to spend money creating a new one
Every dollar a lad spends on a safari, he can't spend on resources that can be used for scamming.

Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2012 9:59 pm

Scambaiting is fun. Need I say anything more?

Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2012 12:36 am

Sometimes fun for the scammers too according to my current pet...

Quote:

I know you are playing me but i enjoy it lol.

I must torment him more.....

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