So are we training these guys?

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Guest

I once read that in real estate, 10% of the agents make almost all of the money. The rest come in and give up after a year or so.

I'm wondering if the same holds for mugus. That is, we're spending our time on the 90% that aren't going anywhere, which is why they're so desperate and willing to bow to our whims. The 10% are more organized, read sites like this, share information on marks, and recognize people like us within about 3 nanoseconds.

If this were true, it would mean that as our baits get more and more outrageous, we lower our chances of catching the 10 percenters to basically nil, and spend all our time on the useless 90 percenters who weren't going to be successful anyway. And worse yet, we're providing fertile training ground to the 10% by teaching them how to make more effective scams.

Thoughts?

Posted: Wed May 12, 2004 10:52 pm

Well....even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes. So those 90% would be more successful if we were to quit. Straight baits could be more effective against them, but the outragious baits are also very effective. Shocked

Posted: Wed May 12, 2004 10:53 pm

Well, we're probably not going to have much success catching the 10% anyways, but we'd be keeping someone in the 90% from becoming a member of that 10% if we discourage them enough to quit.

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 01 Apr 2004 Posts: 751

I'm just trying to get my first trophy. What do I care about 90% and 10%? It's not my problem ... just give me my trophy so I can tread on the hallowed ground of the Trophy Room. Surprised

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 12:44 am

It's true that the more sophisticated and successful groups will twig if your story is outrageous, but often the power of greed overcomes the power of logic Smile

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 12:48 am

They are more successful than you might think, and most of the ones you write to have successfully scammed people. Even the dumb ones, they have their more experienced ogas helping them and dropping kickbacks in return for passing victims up the ladder and milking them the whole time. There are a few unsuccessful scammers out there, but chances are, the scammer you are baiting, has successfully scammed and will do again.

Don't ask how I know this. Wink

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 3:40 am

Groovlstk wrote:

...but often the power of greed overcomes the power of logic Smile

That's exactly how the scam works. Victims often know the deal sounds fishy but are willing to go ahead because the lure of money is just too great. Luckily, we can turn right around and use that on the scammers, and thus we get guys like Steve Ebe and the Chief. Laughing

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 4:20 am

i recently contacted my first trophy, barisha ronkey, as another scammer. he told me his name is kezeen and he's been doing this for 4 years.

and i thought he was completely stupid. but if he's kept it up for 4 years he's bound to have made a little pocket money.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 6:42 am

I have another post about exactly this in a different section of this forum.

I once developed a genetic algorithm for something unrelated to this. No patent awarded. Crying or Very sad

The scammer is not important, but the spam is. If we can analyze the spam, at the rudimentary level, we can identify COMMON boilerplate that is likely to indicate that they all come from an individual or a few people.

That helps law enforcement in the short run because they can pin more counts on one guy when they get him. Headers show the source, content shows the author. That is a great benefit, but wait, there is more.

Under the assumption that a successful spammer has more resources and is likely to duplicate successful methods, association of spam using "DNA sequencing" could lead to CONVICTIONS by allowing proof through the use of statistical methods. Coupled with a packet-sniffer program, it could actually eliminate spam in transit REAL-TIME with very little damage to "real" packets AND no notice to the lad. That is a holy grail. A whole week of spam messages could be eliminated in seconds and the lad will never know what went wrong. haha.

There are other uses, but one interesting application that we might use as a group is the introduction of a mutation. If we can group up on a mugu, for instance, Princess Adja, and convince her that her silly approach is a winner, she might influence others and skew their pitch, rendering whole generations of new spam as useless as .... well... viagra spam is to 5 year old children.

To your question about learning, the thing I worry most about is that their language skills are improving through mimicry. As J dog says, most of us are pretty literate and logical compared to the usual tabloid reading populace. We really could be giving them practice and sophistication. On the other hand, we are not representative of people who are likely to be their targets, are we??? , so we might not be giving them any skill at negotiation.

I think you are right to worry that they are BORG-ING us. If you really are worried about this, here is what you can do.

1) Respond positively to any stupid suggestion.
2) Respond negatively to any rational argument or suggestion.
3) Confuse the lads and waste their time. In a genetic/reproductive situation, wasted time means fewer mutations and "generations".
4) DO teach them stupid English idioms and archaic weirdness.
5) DO NOT teach them to forge documents or find other ways to do what they do.

What do you think? Please post ideas here.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 7:43 am

Quote:

DO NOT teach them to forge documents or find other ways to do what they do.

The forgery aspect of it is a little late, there is a whole cottage industry of forgery in Nigeria. But, the point you are making in them not becoming too proefficent in Photoshop is a valid one.
As for educating them, that is darwinism at work, and can't be helped. The sword may be two edged, but when it is the only weapon at your disposal...

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 7:55 am

It's easy. The 90% works for the 10%. You will only get offers from the 90%. The 10% are really not going to bother with spamming folks and getting the abuse (and the baiters!). That's the work for the 90%. If they think you are for real, you will be handed off to the 10% that will start to scam you for more and more untill you're empty. Just like a farmer milks his cows. A percentage of the money milked will be handed back down to the 90%.

Keep the 90% busy and they won't have time to pass real people up to the 10%.

Guest

Like I said before... It's a prostitution ring. The 10% are the pimps, and the 90% are the whores... The 90% are doing the work for the 10%, while the 10% get 90% of the money.

Guest

Very interesting discussion. I liked Buta's suggestions, and I love the idea of characterization of spam mails. I wonder if something as simple as a baysian characterization would work effectively.

Tweety, Master Shake and others -- do you actually know this, or is it supposition? Just interested...

Guest

Let's just say that once you get into this hobby a little bit deeper, you "learn" a lot of things.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 2:26 pm

I don't now about the others but I actually know this.

Guest

Cool.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 3:43 pm

Holoman.

I am not exactly sure what you mean by a Bayesian characterization here, but I probably got a little too enthusiastic. DNA analysis is useful, at least in the American courts, to provide damning evidence in many trials. But its use in court is rejected in probably twenty times as many cases as it gets used in court. It is unlikely that someone like myself could ever get up in court and testify that it is 99.5% certain that Mugu x sent y spam on z day.

But, I mean, you might be able to say something similar to guide an efficient investigation. I can be 99.5% certain that this spam and that spam are not significantly different. That seems pretty weak, but it gets rid of a whole haystack full of false leads, murky connections, and obfuscation to get closer to the needles that we all know are there.

OK... this post got way longer than this. I will cut this short here. Suffice it to say that I would love a DVD ROM filed with as much raw spam with headers as I can get my hands on. I really want to crunch through this. If anyone wants to burn CDs and send them to me, please do.

Some other thoughts though... in the next post on teaching them....

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 4:23 pm

Are we teaching them to do anything that they would not normally do? Are we training master scammers? Well, that is why I was saying that the Photoshopping and forging might not be a good idea.

There is a recent thread on another forum with people asking for driving licenses, passports, etc. Sure it is fun, but if you can reproduce one and send it to them, can't they use your diligently prepared or selected template with their own picture for some scam purposes? Are we working for the mugus? This is why I wonder if Biff is really correct.

Quote:

Straight baits could be more effective against them, but the outragious baits are also very effective.

This is probably true in the short run, but over a longer period, the learning will catch up... they will BORG us. Is this why a recent poster was looking for foreign obscenities? Do the mugus already know ALL the English ones? Yikes. Sad

We should try to produce identities that will fool a mugu but not a citizen. That strategy renders our materials useless for their purposes. Use cultural references that they are not likely to be aware of. (Phil Mycrackin, Hugh Jardon are examples) Use language for documents that can include telltale signs of fraud that will be clear to citizens, but hidden from non-citizens. Unfortunately, it seems that English is well known to them and won't allow this for the US, Canada, the UK, NZ, AUS, etc.. Use images and names of famous (national) personalities that are not likely to be known by the mugus. There are many really rich and famous personalities in Japan. None are known abroad.

I dunno. I guess I will take precautions. I think teaching them is a valid concern. It should be avoided.

If they continue to expand to non English speaking countries, they face many problems, but they also have easy pickings for awhile.

MOre caffeine more caffeine Shocked

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 01 Apr 2004 Posts: 751

Quote:

but over a longer period, the learning will catch up...

This would be a concern if, at the same time they were learning to catch up, we were standing still. But from reading the writing around here, I'm pretty sure that will not be the case ... Laughing

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 5:13 pm

But it's not us who we're worrying about. It's unlikly that any scammer, however good, will ever get anything other then a runaround from a baiter. They may not send photos but we won't send money either.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 6:05 pm

There will probably be some scammers that learn to avoid the bait after being burned too many times but hopefully most of them will get tired of getting burned and give up (at least that is what I hope).

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 6:17 pm

Same thing for the cafes, the more effort that they have to put into figuring out what you ment in your emails, and the more crap that you send them to look at the more time they waste, the the N adds up.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 6:31 pm

You all have good points here, the main thing is that what we do can't make the problem worse, just the opposite. It is a law of nature: the more someone wastes his time the less time he has to do something profitable Very Happy

Nothing changes this.

This forum only has hundreds of members, not to mention the baiters who are ot members here. So there's a big crowd of people who bait the mugus. My hunch is that presently 419 scamming has a good reputation in countries like Nigeria, meaning that people see it as a good way to make easy money. However, due to the growing number of baiters, this has to change in the future. People start to see that if they get into the "business", they will just waste their time and get humiliated in many ways (see the Trophy room... Laughing

)

We could actively seek closer co-operation with police forces in the scam countries(Nigeria, South Africa, The Netherlands etc.) It's an easy task for the police to pick a mugu with a ridiculous sign from an airport. This is one big challenge; my impression is that the Nigerian police doesn't do much to stop the scamming. Of course in countries like Nigeria they have plenty of other things to do. But the fact is that scamming relates closely to other forms of crime(drug business, violent crimes, homicides, even international terrorism). Stopping the flow of scammed money to Nigeria would make things significantly more difficult for organized crime there. That's what scamming mostly is, I don't think that single "entrepreneurs" are very much tolerated, at least in Nigeria...

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 6:40 pm

I've had a hard time getting law enforcement to pay any attention withought actually getting scammed out of any money, maybe that's what needs to change. Kind-of a pre-emptive strike against 419

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 6:55 pm

Wipem Yass wrote:

This is one big challenge; my impression is that the Nigerian police doesn't do much to stop the scamming. Of course in countries like Nigeria they have plenty of other things to do.

Like collect bribe money? You might find that a lot of their officials are so busy doing this that they have little time to stop these people.

Quote:

But the fact is that scamming relates closely to other forms of crime(drug business, violent crimes, homicides, even international terrorism). Stopping the flow of scammed money to Nigeria would make things significantly more difficult for organized crime there. That's what scamming mostly is, I don't think that single "entrepreneurs" are very much tolerated, at least in Nigeria...

I'd guess a large percentage of lads are the bottum tier in very large crime organizations, which do terrible things like those you mention, as well as give to Caesar what is Caesar's, which is why no one wants to stop them.

I sure as hell would never want to be on any of these flights I pretend to be on.

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