A few Questions

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Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 3:52 am

Okay im totally new to this, and have no idea where to start, i have a few questions that i wanna ask:

What is 404?

What are trophies?

Do you guys send any account info they send you to the police?

Why do you guys use g-mail alot and what are 'catcher' accounts?

Cheers

Billy

Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 4:09 am

Welcome!

billy2shots wrote:

What is 404?

HTTP error code for 'page not found', means it was deleted.

Quote:

What are trophies?

Things you collect from scammers like pictures, etc. as, well, trophies of your baits.

Quote:

Do you guys send any account info they send you to the police?

Bank accounts go to Alan and we close fake bank sites, beyond that the police don't really do much.

Quote:

Why do you guys use g-mail alot

It makes it harder for them to find us (physically) - they generally can't even find out what country we're in.

Quote:

and what are 'catcher' accounts?

They're accounts to catch scam emails for you so you can go through them later and pick out the ones you want to bait.

Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 4:23 am

Thank you so much youve been a great help Smile

, but i have a few more (sorry) everytime i browse the site i find more things:

What are art baits? (because i saw someone who had a trophy of the x-wing from star wars that their lad made)

What are the church baits?

How do you use free internet voicemail accounts? and recommendations?

Cheers again!

Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 4:27 am

Art baits are where you try to get the scammer to make a painting/sculpture for you as a trophy. Church baits are about pretending to be a church who wants to donate to the scammer.

Internet voicemail: http://k7.net

Suggestions: Be safe, and have fun Smile

Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 4:37 am

thank you mate, i will have fun Smile

cheers

billy

Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 9:40 am

Hi Billy and welcome to Eater.

If you're going to bait (and you should, it's a lot of fun!) you might want to read up on some tutorials in the "Eater University" section of the forum and maybe ask for a mentor - an experienced baiter who can guide you through your first couple of baits.

Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 10:52 am

Hey Billy,

Welcome! Whilst they may be in several places, all of those questions answers are already on these forums, or can be deduced by context. It is worth reading, reading, reading until you get a feel for things. People are happy to answer the occasional question of course, but you'll find you can answer your own questions by reading a lot here.

As for the '404' thing, it's just left over from recent history and a current legal proceeding against another party, the 404 refers to the fact their website was removed from the internet, so is a bit of a jibe, nothing deeper or more mature!

Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 12:53 pm

Hi Billy2shots! Very Happy

Glad to have you and would like for you to read this:
http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=51

This is also helpful:
http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=122306

Have fun and tell all your RL friends "goodbye!" Wink

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 21 Jan 2010 Posts: 10

....to get scammers to contact me?

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 26 Sep 2008 Posts: 689

... once you get into baiting you wont have time for a real life, so say goodbye to your mates now. Laughing

Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 2:48 pm

BillyJ wrote:

....to get scammers to contact me?

You can reply to one (or a few) opening letter(s) you find in the surplus forum. Alternatively you can sign a guestbook or 2. If you do, make sure it's one that does display email addresses but not IP addresses. (And that it has not been abandoned, i.e. it has entries that are younger than a few months.) When you sign one, please post something nice. It is technically vandalism or abuse. Think what you would not mind too much if it were your guestbook on your site. The nice thing about the surplus forum is that baiters get 100s of opening formats, but only post a few that caught their attention (for whatever reason) so a bit of filtering has been done already.

Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 11:33 pm

N N N isn't joking. Say goodbye to your mates now!

Or they'll report you missing and then that will waste the time and money of the police, ambulance, search & resue, brownies etc, etc....

You'll be found in your house baiting lads and you'll make the front page of the local rag ( cos there's nothing else to report) about how you were not missing at all but had discovered a new and amusing, but serious hobby.

And, that will be embarrasing Embarassed

Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 12:40 am

WElcome Billy from a fellow Rookie.

The site truly is like a college library- so much here it is hard
to digest.

I would HIGHLY recommend you go to the mentor section and
get one. If nothing else when you are in a bait it is good to get
advice - especially on the rhythm of baiting- which I will tell
you (at least for me) was something I was not even considering-
personally I think this is the hardest part of baiting that guys like
Nick make look easy.

Also as you have found vets are more than willing to respond to
requests (and I have posted my share of elementary questions).

As to time- I am running my first (that started NOV 2008) and my wife is convinced I have a Ivory Coast girlfriend- it take A LOT of time if
you want to get a trophy and perhaps attempt a safari.

Welcome!

Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 12:41 am

billy2shots wrote:

What is 404?

A series of 3 numbers which you can put in your avatar if you want to raise my blood pressure.

billy2shots wrote:

What are trophies?

This is a fairly broad term referring to something "physical" (usually in a digital sense - if that's not too much of a contradiction to wrap your head around) that you've received from a scammer. Examples include angry voicemails, silly documents custom-tailored for you, and - of course - the infamous sign photos.

billy2shots wrote:

Do you guys send any account info they send you to the police?

Currently, there's a much more efficient method of having their bank accounts closed down (we avoid closing e-mail accounts as it hinders them not), and that is by submitting them to an enigmatic figure known as "Alan". There's a thread explaining the process in great detail right over here.

billy2shots wrote:

Why do you guys use g-mail alot

GMail masks your IP address, thereby preventing your lad from calling your bluff when you claim to be anywhere other than where you really are. Honestly, most lads are unfamiliar with how IP addresses work, and usually also unaware of their existence, but why risk an epic safari for something so minor, right?

If your characters don't ever plan to leave the area where you reside, then there's not much stopping you from using any other e-mail provider. Although, I will say that GMail has a very nice interface.

billy2shots wrote:

what are 'catcher' accounts?

When you seed a guestbook (which I'll expand on in a moment) you provide the address of a "catcher" account, which collects all of the scammers' opening formats you receive.

billy2shots wrote:

What are art baits? (because i saw someone who had a trophy of the x-wing from star wars that their lad made)

Exactly what they sound like. You bait a lad into creating a piece of art for you. Be it paintings, portraits, murals, sculptures, whatever. A great modality indeed. Very useful for putting those lazy scammer hands to work for a good long time.

billy2shots wrote:

What are the church baits?

Hands down the most efficient modality EVER (although, that may depend on your writing style). In short, pretend to be a leader or member of a church, and either offer to donate money to them, or claim to not be allowed to help them (be it at all, or enough) if they are not members. What I will say, though, is that pulling off a good church bait (at least for me) requires quite a bit of legwork on the baiter side. That said, I usually avoid them unless I have a REALLY promising lad.

billy2shots wrote:

How do you use free internet voicemail accounts? and recommendations?

Are you in the United States? If so, get started with Google Voice. It's unbeatable.

Not in the United States? Well, if you're willing to do a little bit of work, you can get an IPKall number and sync it up with Gizmo5. It's not as easy as the former suggestion, but I've set up instructions on how exactly to do it (with photo tutorial) right over here.

Alternatively, if they're available in your country, buy a prepaid SIM card and let the lads flow.

Finally, if all you're interested in is a number to give to your lads so that they stop asking you, then you can go for a voicemail-only solution, such as K7. Prefer a UK number? Use Flextel.

As far as this specific question goes, let me make it clear that I've tried every single thing that I've suggested (except for the prepaid SIMs, which are not available in the US), and I can confirm that they all work, they are all anonymous, and - best of all - they are all 100% free.

BillyJ wrote:

....to get scammers to contact me?

The Surplus Forum is a nice and easy way to do it, but one must keep in mind that those lads will have a lot of baiters contacting them and will most likely not be quite as responsive as your own personal pet. If you just want to bomb a buttload of lads with vulgarities in as short of a time as possible, there's the frequently updated 419Baiter list, conveniently separating each address with commas to enable streamlined copy-and-pasting into the BCC field. If you prefer to be clean, you can also use this list for picking up many lads at once through a vague ASEM. Do keep in mind, though, that - like the lads in the Surplus Forum - these ones too will be flooded with baiter solicitations.

The best way to get your own pets is to seed guestbooks. I referred to this earlier, this is how you do it. A bit of background information, when lads harvest the addresses in a guestbook, they will often leave markers to let other scammers know to keep off. After all, no matter how naive a person is, no one will believe they won five lotteries in one week. However, since these scammers are pretty greedy, not to mention not terribly sharp, they will often (read: always) disregard these markers and harvest a previously harvested guestbook.

Now, what this means for a baiter, is two things. Firstly, you're bound to get a good, regular flow of lad formats from a guestbook entry. But second - and more importantly - you can easily locate contaminated guestbooks by searching for these markers in Google. Isn't it great when lads help you hurt them? The most common markers used are "mugu" and "guyman". What you want to do is search for those, and also add the current year in the field to prevent old entries on abandoned (even if only partially so) guestbooks from coming up. For example, if you were to search now, you could type in "mugu guyman guestbook 2010". You might want to give the ones on the first page a miss. They will have a few more baiters than the later ones.

Finally, don't forget to leave a respectful message on whomever's guestbook you post. Remember that they do belong to an innocent third party with no connection to advance fee fraud. If you can't be bothered to look at what the site's about, a brief "GREAT SITE" will probably do. Not all guestbooks will display the e-mail address automatically, so you'd want to put it in the text field as well.

Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 2:35 am

NickTheCop wrote:

A series of 3 numbers which you can put in your avatar if you want to raise my blood pressure.

Advice taken Very Happy

(Yes, I'm a very mature person. What gave you the impression I was immature?)

Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 3:33 am

Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 6:08 pm

Nick
Is the distance from Abidijan to Accra 1,500 KM- if so I think i have my calcs messed up- my lad is getting ready to make this trip.

Are Safaris measured one way?

What is the best way to measure distances (Google Maps will not seem to cooperate).

I might not be giving my lad enough credit- he balked at at Abidijan to Cameroon safari (which i thought was 1500 km) and seems willing to make the Abidijan to Ghana trip which I thought was 250-300 KM. Can you tell me how to measure safaris?

One other question_ how does one get credit (I can verify or will verify the IP change)- do I need to submit the e-mail proof to a mod?

THANKS!

Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 1:17 am

Skeeteroen wrote:

Nick
Is the distance from Abidijan to Accra 1,500 KM- if so I think i have my calcs messed up

Is that a reference to my sig?

For the record, my Accra to Abidjan safari involved two lads. They traveled by road, and the shortest route on the freeway is just about 300 miles. By the time they got back, they had each traveled 600 miles for their trips (yes, that includes the return trip). So, collectively they had traversed 1200 mugu miles. That's where the number in my sig comes from (I don't know where you got 1500km).

Lest I be accused of safari fraud, as you can see, I do have the from and to locations in my sig so people can calculate it whichever way they please. Personally, I like to calculate the total distance. After all, were they to not make the return trip (which DOES cost them just as much as the trip there), they would be stranded (which is actually better).

Skeeteroen wrote:

Are Safaris measured one way?

This is the explanation in the sig icons sticky. It doesn't seem to say whether the number is one way or both. Personally, I've never had an intranational (as opposed to international) safari, save for the Nodo one where he'd traveled (measured one way and in a direct line) 800mi/1300km. So, as you can surmise, I've never really been concerned with figuring out whether the 200 miles minimum refers to the trip there only, or the total. Ask a mod.

Quote:

Hats are for safaris. I believe the general rules for safaris is 200 miles distance travelled (which is 321.86800 kilometres) OR an International border crossing. Getting a lad to travel this distance is the goal. In order to legitimately claim a pith helmet the journey would also have to be IP verified, OR verified by the lad's change of country code of his mobile phone number.

Skeeteroen wrote:

What is the best way to measure distances (Google Maps will not seem to cooperate).

Plot paths with Google Earth. It's also great for planning safaris.

Skeeteroen wrote:

I might not be giving my lad enough credit- he balked at at Abidijan to Cameroon safari

While what I'm about to say is not really related to the topic at hand, I'd like to give you a tip anyway. It's a lot easier to get lads to travel between the ECOWAS countries as they don't need a visa to do so. Cameroon is not part of ECOWAS, and so a lad may have trouble, and certainly will spend a lot of time and money, getting a visa (or trying to).

Here's a wee map of the ECOWAS countries.

Skeeteroen wrote:

One other question_ how does one get credit (I can verify or will verify the IP change)- do I need to submit the e-mail proof to a mod?

I've always understood the piths to work by the honor system. In other words, there's a mutual trust that no one will be small enough to crook it. Although, lately there's been a bit of an uprise in fraudulent piths, including one intercontinental one. It's been sorted by the mods, but I'm not aware of a new modality being put in place to replace the honor system.

That said, if you're a vain, immature glory-hound like me, you'd probably WANT to start a thread about your safari and put all of the headers up anyway.

Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 7:17 pm

Nick
Thank you for the reply. I have actually been studying or trying to study your baiting modalities (I can't resist this word really Laughing

)...

But I have come to realize it is like a hacking golfer trying to study Tiger Woods (me being the hacking baiter and you being the Tiger Woods of Baiting). So now that I have cleared the flattering modality of this post out of the way Laughing

... actually that analogy is pretty well straight on- it seems to a rookie like me that you could probably have a lad take a deep ocean dive if you really decided to...(prehaps a challenge for you??)

I do appreciate the advice. All kidding aside the tip on the ECOWAS was excellent and something I did not even know about (of course I had never heard of Cameroon prior to my first bait either)- because I did advice (Luv that word also) my lad on the entry requirements from Nigeria to Cameroon which invoved a visa and typhoid shots (which I hoped he would enjoy). So it appears from Google Earth Plot (I was using Google Maps and you can imagine the results I got there) my lad's one way trip would qualify from Abdijan to Accra.

Thanks for your help- on my first virgin bait after studying at Eater U for a while- and I have ,what I consider to be, nice tropy photos and I think- that my lad is going to make the trip from Abidihan to Accra- but he is a wriggly little thing and getting him to do anything other than beg me for money has been a challenge.

Thanks for taking time to answer my questions.

PS I mis wrote your mileage on the safari- my mistake here but "I plead for forgiveness and mercy " (another Line I love!!!)

Have a "splendifourous (Can't help my self) mode of enjopyment" this weekend and thanks again

Skeeter

Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 11:58 pm

Hi Billy,
One of the rules here is to get the lad to do the work. I have a lad explaining what 404 is.

http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=174208

I would consider it a trophy. An even better trophy would be to get a free premium membership out of it. Which reminds me, my membership needs renewing an someone promised me a year if I got an animated gif of a lad doing a 404.

Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 3:45 am

Skeeteroen wrote:

you being the Tiger Woods of Baiting

Aw, shucks. Smile

Skeeteroen wrote:

I do appreciate the advice. All kidding aside the tip on the ECOWAS was excellent and something I did not even know about

Safari baiting is like chess. You need to plan your adversary's possible moves, as well as your own. If you don't do that, you'll have a limited idea of what to expect, and therefore less of a chance to be prepared when a hurdle comes around the corner.

Skeeteroen wrote:

my lad's one way trip would qualify from Abdijan to Accra.

Border crossings qualify automatically, even if the distance is not sufficient.

Skeeteroen wrote:

Thanks for your help- on my first virgin bait after studying at Eater U for a while...

Thanks for taking time to answer my questions.

Just out of curiosity, and I'm not trying to discourage anyone from asking questions on the forum, but did you apply for a mentor? Mentor's can be a great resource, and you seem to not be going anywhere soon. If you haven't applied and don't want to wait in the "line". I don't mind taking you on and guiding you through a safari. I did 3 with another mentee in the first month. Smile

Let me know. It'll be refreshing to have someone that doesn't bail after having you write out your whole introductory speech. Rolling Eyes

Skeeteroen wrote:

my mistake here but "I plead for forgiveness and mercy " (another Line I love!!!)

I certainly hope you love that line because you always respond with something for the lads to do to prove how sorry they are. Wink