"meathead's father-in-law" ESQ please stand up?

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Not quite a Newb Joined: 13 Feb 2007 Posts: 24

Seems my employer's outbound antispam filters caught me a baiter. But I have to confirm it's a baiter and not a scammer so I don't go slamming the email account closed in the middle of some fun.

When you forward the fresh lad tips off to someone else, it triggers our filters just like if you were the original sender. Too much of this and my alarm goes off, and I get all itchy.

This time though, I check the remains in the trap and see they signed it "@rch1b@ld Bunk3r Esq" so now I gotta contact you and ensure you are indeed a baiter, and not a higher level mugu complaining about his mates.

So, is it anyone here? I sent a confirmation email to the baiter posing as Council for a certain charitable organization, you can either reply there or reply here, hopefully I'll hear before customer service puts a round in the chamber.

thanks!

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:41 am

Please don't try and get the email account closed if it's a lad. They can set up a new one in minutes and it could ruin any baits going on with him.

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

This is VERY odd!

See this thread.

http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=116838

Not quite a Newb Joined: 13 Feb 2007 Posts: 24

HA HA!!! That's the one.

OK, I'll put an exception in the filters for ye.

No need for the full quote. TS

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

But how did you get an email with that name.. I just made it up 2 hours ago, something is strange here.

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:48 am

bighouse... more like big brother if you ask me. Shocked

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

Bighouse, would you PM me the complete email address..

Not quite a Newb Joined: 13 Feb 2007 Posts: 24

~Pastor Frank,

I'm psychic.

Actually, not really... I work for the service provider. I'm actually the anti-spam czar. Lads use the service too, so we have outbound email filters tuned to their templates. Someone forwarded a series of lad emails, all of them were held in the queue and I was alerted that we had a scammer via our filtering alerting mechanisms.

I checked the evidence in the queue, and lo and behold, it's you.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 13 Feb 2007 Posts: 24

Rodus Longus wrote:

Please don't try and get the email account closed if it's a lad. They can set up a new one in minutes and it could ruin any baits going on with him.

the accounts we close are the main accounts from which they blast out their scams. not the 2ndary email addresses they use to continue the communications.

sorry to ruin the fun, but keeping a business on the network is the job

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

small world

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 1:14 am

bighouse wrote:

the accounts we close are the main accounts from which they blast out their scams. not the 2ndary email addresses they use to continue the communications.

It may be more effective if instead of closing their spamming accounts, you simply intercepted everything they sent from them. That way the lad thinks all is rosy and sits back waiting for the replies that will never come.

And post a few here in surplus letters so that we can keep them busy... Twisted Evil

Not quite a Newb Joined: 13 Feb 2007 Posts: 24

callum wrote:

simply intercepted everything they sent from them. That way the lad thinks all is rosy and sits back waiting for the replies that will never come.

that is actually a more accurate and better description of what the filters really do. generally the lad's test emails go through, but their mass campaign gets intercepted and from their perspective appears to be delivered, but in reality it is held back. once I'm alerted, then they are whacked.

this results in a huge pile of email held in the queue, imagine tens of thousands of lad emails sitting there all sent over the course of hours and hours, not moving. I've regularly seen 12 to 14 hours worth of effort put into the process of new-email, copy/paste, send, click ACK button, rinse, repeat, create new account, copy/paste, send... based on the initial delivery times of the mail notes.

In fact, I designed the system after joining this forum and having someone suggest that it was a bonus to leave them hanging.

I've offered in the past to forward the intercepted lad's initial emails, and have done so to a few baiters on a very limited basis, but would like to do it as a matter of course on a daily basis, but can't copy/paste them in a timely way.

If someone would like an automatic feed of fresh email addys, I could certainly add their email address to the processing scripts. pseudo code for the geeks:
sql outbound 'select body from evidence' | grep '@' | mail [email protected] or something like that

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 2:37 am

How many emails are we likely to get each day using that method? Just wondering if my catcher account would be totally inundated or not.

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 2:47 am

Bighouse, please touch base with Bombardier who runs the shuttle. He may be very interested. Very Happy

Not quite a Newb Joined: 13 Feb 2007 Posts: 24

yrubraj wrote:

How many emails are we likely to get each day

I track all this stuff daily, last 60 days is max 24, min 0, average <5. Many of these are related, like when the same work from home or lottery scammer hits on the same day.

Since January? 1097 individual laddy accounts, all with 3rd party contact addresses.

it's a lot of lads. It would be ideal if I can figure out a way to post those to the surplus area, in retrospect.

the last time I had this conversation we devolved into a discussion on the ethics of taking over laddy accounts Laughing

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 2:55 am

That's a manageable amount for me for sure. I'll PM you my email address.

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 5:06 am

Bighouse wrote:

the last time I had this conversation we devolved into a discussion on the ethics of taking over laddy accounts

I'm sorry that happened. I clearly can't speak for everyone but there are many here who thank you for what you are doing.

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:17 am

^^^Ditto what B.A said.

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