What I did on my Winter vacation

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Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 2:50 am

My lovely wife and I spent our holiday in Ireland - the entire month of November 2007. Yes, both Northern Ireland and in the large, unnamed land mass below it that has no weather (at least according to the BBC). Two weeks or so into the trip, we found ourselves in need of a laundromat. Here in the USA, a laundromat is generally self-service. In most of Europe, one leaves off bundles of clothing and vast quantities of pounds, Euros, or some other currency worth far more than lowly US dollars, and goes away for awhile while ladies tend to the business at hand.

So here we are in Limerick, Ireland with two hours to kill. Just two blocks from the laundromat, in what seems to be the primarily Polish district of Limerick, is an upstairs internet cafe. The cost is quite reasonable at only 1 Euro per hour. My wife and I are seated next to each other, and to my left a gentleman of seemingly African persuasion, as are the vast majority of the denizens of this particular establishment. Most of my internet activity consists of cleaning out spam; there's precious little real mail. When I come across spam that is an obvious 419 or lottery scam, I move it to the DRAFTS folder so that I can eventually forward it to the proper authorities with the full header. Unfortunately, in the USA, the authorities have precious little interest. I happened to mention a particularly egregious (both amusing and obvious) one to my wife, she looks at it on my screen, and the gentleman to my immediate left suddenly rises up and runs out the door. He has not logged off his computer, and seems to have internet time left. Being basically snoopy, I look at his monitor. There, on his monitor, is a copy of the very 419 spam I mentioned to my wife. I am not the addressee, but someone else at my domain is. Amazing. He also left his hat behind (oddly enough, it was raining in Limerick at the time), but I did not believe it courteous or even wise to touch it.

I ran across 419eater yesterday afternoon, March 23. I have yet to go to bed because I have been reading every one of the exchanges documented in excruciating and hilarious detail by Shiver Metimbers and others.

Am I just loopy from lack of sleep or is it actually possible to laugh one's ass off? Has Shiver etc. actually retired, or is he just resting up in a nice, quiet room somewhere until called out of retirement to do battle? Perhaps he got a job.

After returning home to California, I was thinking of engaging in a bit of baiting myself, but that was before I ran across this website. Obviously, I have stumbled into great hall full of knights armed with a toothpick.

Has anyone had such a close, albeit accidental encounter with a lad at the very head end of a 419 scam?

Finally, why does Yahoo.co.uk insist that the scam e-mails I forward to them do not come from Yahoo accounts? These are the real addresses as shown in the headers, not the fake "reply to" addresses.

Sorry. I need a nap. I shall return later to study. This subject has obviously been plumbed to great depths already.

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 3:00 am

Hi Jelloyroll, welcome to the Eater.

I'd say that was one nice way to bait the lad out of time and money, albeit by accident. But you surely have cost him part of a Euro (or maybe even a bit more, depending on how much he paid in advanca) and precious time to scam victims.
Well done!

In future though I recommend to use safer ways of baiting, because said gentlemen could have decided to wait for you outside in order to convince you to keep your mouth shut.
How to bait safe you will learn here quite quickly, it basically involves not using any details that might in any way be linked to you, using a fresh new mail-account from a provider that strips your IP (like GMail) and not hunting lads out of the internet-cafe. Wink

A lot of information is spread all over the place in stickies, and also applying for a mentor is always a good idea.

All that said, have fun, grab some popcorn and enjoy the ride.

By the way, you might want to tell your wife she might want to join a sewing-club or something like that, since you won't be having much time for her from now on. Wink

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 3:04 am

Moved here from Main - more appropriate. Very Happy

Welcome to Eater, Jellyroll.

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:48 am

Jellyroll wrote:

Has Shiver etc. actually retired, or is he just resting up in a nice, quiet room somewhere until called out of retirement to do battle? Perhaps he got a job...
Sorry. I need a nap. I shall return later to study.

Guess he is counting the money he has received out of so many trunk boxes that were delivered to him everyday while he was still an active baiter Smile

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:56 am

Welcome Jellyroll. Interesting that you should inadvertantly stumble into a real ladnest in Limerick of all places but we do know that lads operate out of Dublin so perhaps not so surprising.
Reporting spam/scam emails to Yahoo (or whoever) is probably a waste of time unfortunately as you have discovered but sometimes they do take action to close the addys down. However, the lads can and do get themselves a sparkly new addy in a heartbeat so it doesn't stop them.
If you really want to strike back then read the Stickies here which contain all the information you need to start baiting safely, read a round the forum generally to get a 'feel' for how it's done and then say goodbye to your spare time.........

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