Suggestion

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 22 Sep 2012 Posts: 9

Why not collect email addresses, scam letters and feed them into an Eliza program that floods the scammers with so many fake responses that they can't find their real victims?

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2012 5:54 pm

Hello and welcome to Eater Smile

There's a simple reason for that. Lads use free e-mail providers such as yahoo or hotmail, because it's - well - free. If a lad's box is bad (filled with spam and such crap), he can simply create a new one, which we can't keep track of. We'd rather have them keep their boxes, so victims can google the e-mail addresses and find them on Eater, Scamwarners or other anti-fraud sites.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 22 Sep 2012 Posts: 9

That makes sense, but I have a free email account and it has thousands of emails in it. Still not full.

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

Hi ConradCA,

Sorry in advance for a long reply but as you probably know all to well development is rarely simple. It is typically long and tedious.

I once had the same mind set as you.... very recently in fact. I was coding up and programming a bot script similar to ELIZA that would in bulk reply back to the scammers with a random reply. The problems here become multiple though and I have since stopped coding the bot due to some baits I am working on.

The first problem is this: imagine a scammer hacking a student or teacher's .edu email box to spam with. It is done quite often because they tend to get around spam filters much easier. Now the student or teacher claims the box back after the bot has disregarded the fact that the scammer said very clearly in the email body 'write me back [email protected]." The teacher or student is now stuck conversing with a bot that just will not stop replying back and the bot is essentially trying to bait what we call an innocent third party here.

I am definitely not saying that it would be impossible to get around the problem described above. You can always program in rules and modify the way the bot would operate. However that is only one scenario where the bot has potential to fail. Could you program in rules for every eventuality that would be fail safe in protecting innocent third parties from getting hit by your bot? I think you could, yes.... but that would be years and years of development. Another thing to think about these days: even the automated means of warfare like UAV's still have a man behind the computer at the command and control center.

Regarding what TheProbie is saying: He is not talking so much about filling up the mailbox quota but the fact that the scammers can just fire up another couple hundred boxes to get out of what you have essentially made (a spam bomb). Are you going to find every box? No. Automation is nice in that it does efficient work and fast, but you are never going to find all of the boxes and hit them all even with some cloud based ELIZA.

TheProbie is also saying the quality of the bait goes down hill fast between something like ELIZA and an actual human baiter. Human baiters can think outside of the box and do more damage to the lad one at a time. To be honest the trick to an ELIZA for scam fighting is not the bulk it handles but the quality of the reply it sends back to the scammer. This is again something that would take years to program up. I would encourage you to take a look at a few of the baits around here and then ask yourself this question: can a bot do this much damage?

Welcome to eater -- if I may make a suggestion: grab a lad and have at him in a real bait. You may quickly see that ELIZA would be to simplified of a system for this internet blood sport. Very Happy