[Question] What are the origins of Scambaiting & this fo

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 21 Mar 2020 Posts: 3

Hello everyone!

My name is ScammerFisher and I am new to Scambaiting. I started scambaiting since I thought it was hilarious and en effective way to deter scammers. However, I have a couple of questions. When did scambaiting start? Who/what group of people started the activity? And, what is the history of this forum?

I just want to understand the community. I apologize if this question sounds too trivial.

Have a great rest of your evening/afternoon/morning.

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2020 4:08 am

I can’t speak as to all your questions in perhaps the most satisfying way, but I’ve been around here long enough and read enough to take a stab at some of those questions (I’m guessing they are answered in the FAQs or Eater University if you were to look, but as I personally can’t remember and there is always more to be said, I’m not holding that against you or myself):
1. I imagine scambaiting has been around as long as there have been scammers. If you mean “how long has it been codified like it is here?”, that’s really a hard question to answer. I’m quite willing to bet that people have informally been grouping together to do this for a while. This forum was started in 2003, but I’m guessing even on the Internet things existed before.
2. In the context of Eater, a user named Shiver Metimbers, who pops in occasionally to say hi at the most surprising times. Otherwise, who really knows?
3. That’s a very broad question, and the answer depends on what you’re particularly interested in. Forum gossip, who has been moderator or admin when, who’s been banned, what inside jokes there are (Steward)? Baiting history (go through Eater’s Greatest Hits and read up)? Something else?

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2020 4:51 pm

Welcome, ScammerFisher!

Your questions are awesome! I'm not sure I can add much more to what MrMystery314 said (reading those threads is fantastic advice) but I want to thank you for even asking the questions! We really love it when new people want to learn what we're up to and why we do what we do. Thank you for having that wonderful inquisitiveness!

We really hope you'll join in on the fun!
Kitty

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2020 7:11 pm

There have likely been jokers/scambaiters/people wasting scammers time since there were scammers sending letters claiming to be imprisoned Spanish princesses in the 19th century. As for this forum, you can read great old school baits from our earliest members in the Letters Archive to get a feel for baiting before the age of facebook, video chat and Instagram.

Some of us who joined early (I came in about a year or so after the forum started) came over from another site that wasn't a forum but used to just post back and forths with scammers that people would submit (much like the letters archive that I linked to above).

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