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Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 5:24 pm

The scene:

Lad1 sends the usual "millions of dollars in this account - we need to act now to stop the government getting hold of it" email. Oddly enough, this email comes directly to an account which has only ever been used for baiting & only very sporadically (let's call this 'Bait1').

I replied from a completely different account ('Bait2') telling him that the owner of Bait1 was dead & I was his attorney sorting out the deceased's estate. Got a dialogue going, gave Lad1 (fake) address & telephone number. Lad1 introduces me to the bank (Lad2) & I provide them with the same fake details.

Meantime I also respond to Lad1 from Bait1, claiming to be the deceased's son. He responds by giving me the same details as he had to Bait2. Meantime Lad2 had advised Bait2 that fees of $3600 were required by WU. Bait 2 stalls for a while.

Lad1 then introduces Bait1 to Lad2. Lad2 also advises fees of $3600 required. Bait2 had already told Lad1 that he was having difficulty getting hold of Bait1. Looks at this point that Lad2 is trying to get the fees from both Bait's.

'Great' I think, he's trying to rip us both (!) off. Now the fun can start. Lad 1 has now introduced Bait1 to the 'barrister' (Lad3). Bait1 eventually sends Lad2 a Secure MoneyGram transfer which directs him to Scrooge's site.

At this point things start to go wrong. I got an email from Scrooge to let me know that Lad2 had logged in to answer some questions, but also he'd googled v3r1fys3c.com.

Today, Bait1 received this email from Lad3:

Quote:

PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT ME AGAIN YOU DO NOT HAVE AY BUSINESS OR ANY INHERITANCE HERE.

YOURS TRULY.

MAD BISHOP

EATERS?

IF THIS EMAIL IS NOT INTENDED FOR YOU, PLEASE CONTACT US AT : [email protected] or [email protected] . YOU MIGHT BE COMITTING AN OFENCE IF YOU DON'T COMPLY.

Now, Lad3 had only ever received 1 email, played straight, from Bait1 (nothing from Bait2). Checked the headers, Lad2 & Lad3 are in the same range (82.128.1.xxx) - should have checked before, I suppose.

So, did I get careless, or are they getting smarter?

Think this is probably dead now, so if anyone wants to nail the barrister's head to the floor, please be my guest.

Master Baiter Joined: 05 Sep 2006 Posts: 170

Yeah. Google search gives 3 hits for "v3r1fys3c.com" to the forums here....

forum.419eater.com/forum/report.php?p=781151

forum.419eater.com/forum/report.php?p=782192

216.32.92.18/forum/report.php?p=783865

Perhaps a mod can mask these to (hopefully) avoid getting hits?

Master Baiter Joined: 18 Dec 2006 Posts: 123 Location: UK

I get the same results - this explains why two of my baits failed as soon as they got to the v3rifys3c stage!!! I've pm'd a mod and I'm going to have a look at them to see if they were masked at all... I'm gonna have to do the 3=e thing until I know for a fact that there isn't a problem with the masking process...

[Edit]: 2 and three have been reported to a mod, number one (Professor Charles Soludo vs. Howard Hughes [ONGOING BAIT]
Posted by lying is an art form on Fri Dec 22, 2006 12:05 am) hasn't but is in the PM to the mod.
It looks like the mention of the site in this first thread is within the largest quote (of an e-mail) of the post. It is not masked.

I have sent the PM to a second mod as, per sods law, the first one logged off as soon as I sent the message!

[Edit2] - Forgot to include omitted results - there are twelve!!!! Here I go again!

forum.419eater.com/forum/report.php?p=781151

forum.419eater.com/forum/report.php?p=782192

The new we have is and consequently you should visit that site to receive thefor the Western Union payment that has been made to you. ...

forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=86518

I LOVE this site: The person who came up with that site is a marvel!! I use it a lot. I also use that e-mail site where you can ...

forum.419eater.com/forum/report.php?p=663991

forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=83377&view=next

Okay, a fresh new one blew my cover, just because I gave him the thingy before he had given me all his details... So I flamed him. ...

forum.419eater.com/forum/report.php?p=783865

You will need to go to and enter the verification code. Once you do that, answer a few questions, and it will give you the MCTN. ...

forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=80553

forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=663991

216.32.92.18/forum/viewtopic.php?p=684329

216.32.92.18/forum/viewtopic.php?p=661634

216.32.92.18/forum/report.php?p=783865

Here is the direct cut and paste:

forum.419eater.com ::419 Eater. Anti Scammer letters pages, forum, anti-scammer hints and tips.
forum.419eater.com/forum/report.php?p=781151 - 18k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

forum.419eater.com ::The new we have is www.v3r1fys3c.com and consequently you should visit that site to receive thefor the Western Union payment that has been made to you. ...
forum.419eater.com/forum/report.php?p=782192 - 42k - Cached - Similar pages

forum.419eater.com :: View topic - Auto Letter (New Baiter needs ...I LOVE this site: http://www.v3r1fys3c.com/ The person who came up with that site is a marvel!! I use it a lot. I also use that e-mail site where you can ...
forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=86518 - 25k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

forum.419eater.com ::419 Eater. Anti Scammer letters pages, forum, anti-scammer hints and tips.
forum.419eater.com/forum/report.php?p=663991 - 8k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

forum.419eater.com :: View topic - TropheesOkay, a fresh new one blew my cover, just because I gave him the www.v3r1fys3c.com thingy before he had given me all his details... So I flamed him. ...
forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=83377&view=next - 41k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

forum.419eater.com ::You will need to go to www.v3r1fys3c.com and enter the verification code. Once you do that, answer a few questions, and it will give you the MCTN. ...
forum.419eater.com/forum/report.php?p=783865 - 39k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

forum.419eater.com :: View topic - My First Bait (with pictures!)419 Eater. Anti Scammer letters pages, forum, anti-scammer hints and tips.
forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=80553 - 135k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

forum.419eater.com :: View topic - My First Bait (with pictures!)419 Eater. Anti Scammer letters pages, forum, anti-scammer hints and tips.
forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=663991 - 135k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

www.v3r1fys3c.com/Similar pages

forum.419eater.com :: View topic - Trophees419 Eater. Anti Scammer letters pages, forum, anti-scammer hints and tips.
216.32.92.18/forum/viewtopic.php?p=684329 - 41k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

forum.419eater.com :: View topic - My First Bait (with pictures!)419 Eater. Anti Scammer letters pages, forum, anti-scammer hints and tips.
216.32.92.18/forum/viewtopic.php?p=661634 - 135k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

forum.419eater.com ::419 Eater. Anti Scammer letters pages, forum, anti-scammer hints and tips.
216.32.92.18/forum/report.php?p=783865 - 46k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

Who.is is a website for performing whois lookups on domain names ...Who.is is a website for performing whois lookups on domain names for many popular gTLDs and ccTLDs.
webpod.whois.ws/whois_index/v/domain_list.v.0085.php - 250k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

PHEW!!!

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11857 Location: UK

The reason those forum links above are viewable on Google is nothing to do with masking etc, it's because they were posted in the PUBLISH YOUR WORK HERE part of the forum, and that area is not behind a login, which makes it Googleable, I have no idea why that particular forum is not behind a login, it should be really.

Master Baiter Joined: 18 Dec 2006 Posts: 123 Location: UK

@SP - That is strange! I would have thought the whole thing was...

Well I spoke to Chester, he's done the first few, and asked me to speak to a mod about how to change/hide the others. Looks like the owners of the personal sites will either have to be masked, or a mass e-mail to ask everyone to hide the site name?

[Edit] Chester has gone beddy byes after sorting five of these babies, have forwarded to another mod along with a small bribe...

Master Baiter Joined: 05 Sep 2006 Posts: 170

Ok. other than all the hits here on the publish your baits forum, there's one other hit. perhaps we can ask the mods over at pirate4x4 to mask/modify this hit?

www.pirate4x4.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-508189.html

Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 11:06 pm

Therein lies our problem. Once a modality becomes too popular and obvious to lads. Dead it, then create a similar site that does exactly the same thing under a different name.

Very Happy

I'm going through some of the links here. We're not going to be able to suddenly ask everyone on the web to start masking this. (Have to be a little realistic about it)

Scrooge's modality has caused more lad pain that anyone thought possible. It's been active for a long time, and not just eater members would be using it. We'll do our best at cleaning it up here.

Master Baiter Joined: 18 Dec 2006 Posts: 123 Location: UK

THANK YOU NURSE ET AL! clapping

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11857 Location: UK

Nurse Nasty wrote:

Therein lies our problem. Once a modality becomes too popular and obvious to lads.

That's not really the problem, the problem is the lads have Googled it and seen it on eater, all those forum links above are posted in the PUBLISH YOUR WORK HERE part of the forum, which is not behind a login, and as a result, it is cached by Google, if that forum was behind a login, there would be no problem relating to it being posted on eater, and there is only 1 result for it on another site, so it's not like it's all over the net on Google, just 99% on eater.

Out of interest, why is the PUBLISH YOUR WORK HERE forum publically/Googlebot viewable? I can't see any reason why it's not behind a login, there is nothing there apart from scambaits, which I would assume baiters would rather not be Googleable, what is the reason for not having it behind a login Confused

I can understand why the phonelads forum and the surplus letters forum are open for Google caching, but the other Confused

Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 11:31 pm

my understanding is that the publish your work here forum was for completed baits. since theyre completed, theres not much point in hiding the details of the bait from a lad.

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11857 Location: UK

^^^^^ Yes, but a lot of people don't use it just for publisihing baits after they have ended the bait, quite a few post baits in progress, I have done that before myself.

But even so, what's the point in lads being able to Google something after a bait has ended, that means you can't use that bait modality again if you have posted it in there, you new lad might Google your character names and see you there, it doesn't make sense to have it viewable at all.

Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 11:38 pm

I've just hidden Publish your work here from bots and non registered members.

BTW: the report.php can only be read if you are logged in.

Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 11:38 pm

But if the baits contain frequently used modalities (and many are) then it's educating the lads too. It's all very well to say 'well make up a new modality' but there's only a finite number of ways to stall a WU payment no matter how genius people are at thinking them up and some of the Old Reliable modalities are too useful to ignore sometimes.

I guess it's inevitable that a slightly more clued up lad will make Google his friend and do some background research on his maga, especially if he's even slightly suspicious now they are generally more aware of baiting ("gmail jokers", etc). It's collateral damage when you look at the overall numbers of lads who remain blissfully unaware they are being baited.

Master Baiter Joined: 05 Sep 2006 Posts: 170

Thank you Rover.....

And I still think it might be worth it to ask the folks over at pirate4x4 to mask or somehow obscure the reference. Since it's currently the ONLY hit other than eater to show up on google.

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11857 Location: UK

Cheers Rover, I have just sent a message to the admins at pirate4x4, asking them if they can remove the link on their forum.

Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 8:06 am

Ambdrvr2 wrote:

Yeah. Google search gives 3 hits for "v3r1fys3c.com" to the forums here....

Perhaps a mod can mask these to (hopefully) avoid getting hits?

This is brought up every couple of weeks here. The answer is to change the name of the thing. In future, pick words/names which dont give your site a page rank eh. It's not rocket science

"bait smart"

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 571

There's a reason we only registered the domain for 1 year guys. We can pack up and move to a new domain really easily. If it becomes a real problem we will very much consider it.

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

I thought Publish Your Work was public so the lad's modalities were visible to the public. No matter.

I've just had a silly thought. As I am sure most people are aware, there are some words that when put into posts are replaced with other text. One example is "s h u t t l e", which becomes "shuttle". It is impossible to make a mistake when mentioning "Usman Bello" and there are some others.

It would be useful if new terms could be added to that list, so terms like v3r1fys3c were always masked. There is some work to be done in inserting that text, and maybe a server space hit if masking is used.

Can I suggest:
1) An official process to ask for such
2) Maybe a $5 donation be made to 419eater for each one
3) Only useful changes to be made: We don't want "Lord and Emperor" appearing every time we type "JMRazor".

Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 10:12 am

thud419 wrote:

Can I suggest:
2) Maybe a $5 donation be made to 419eater for each one
3) Only useful changes to be made: We don't want "Lord and Emperor" appearing every time we type "JMRazor".

Perhaps a basic understanding of the internet would be suffice. I had none of these problems with any baiting tools I had online many years ago.

We will try and help out if any of these situations occur, a good example is what happened to s t ar ga te Laughing

But lets also consider, that this isn't 419eaters problem that people get rumbled this way and we are obliged to sort it because people do now and think later.

Just because we get the lads to do the work that doesnt prevent us from doing a bit of thinking Very Happy

-- take note mentors --

Evil Genius Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 715

My 2 cents:

- 1TV5 is good since there are a lot of hits for "Independent Television Service". v3r1fys3c was just what I picked when I created the original tripod site and 1TV5 wasn't available IIRC but it stuck.

- I should probably make the instructions on the page even more clear since I doubt that baiters intentionally try to spread it but some might not come to think of the problem.

- One thought I have is that if a lot of baiters that have some domain or site of their own have the possibility to stick some "legit" text about 1TV5 somewhere on it and then enter the url where it is as a search in google since that should result in googlebot finding it even though no visitors to the site will find it. Obviously baiters would have to be very careful doing such a thing since a mugu that is smart enough to first figure out that 1TV5 is something by baiters could then figure out that whoever is running that site (or can put such a text on it) is a baiter. So it would obviously mean that such baiters take the risk of smart mugus finding out that they are baiters but obviously mugus would have no way of connecting those people with user names here or characters in baits. If the first page of hits on google only contained such, "legit" hits it would probably convince mugus quite well.

Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:16 pm

Good ideas Scrooge. We could also publish a list of URL's which could point to search engines and have the search query appended to it so that users would only need to click on that url. I'm sure we could arrange a sizable number to do that. Even better, it's possible to arrange it so the scammers could contribute too.

The admins get many requests or even 'complaints' that certain things appear on search engines. No matter what you do, it might happen due to bad luck and sometimes unavoidable. If the text reaches other websites then it's simply a case of damage limitation, like Scrooge's suggestion. In most cases it's not a big issue or has any serious impact on anyones efforts. It's usually just another tin of.. "shit happens". Very Happy

Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 9:57 pm

After much slapping and debating / slapping and talking, we have decided to open up the publish your work here - to the public again!