Scambaiting Gets Comical; Internet Scammers All Dressed Up 178
Nurse Nasty writes "Scambaiting is a fun and relaxing full-contact email sport. It's all about baiting Internet and email scammers into exposing themselves and sharing that humiliation with the entire world. Recently I baited four different groups of Internet scammers into being comic book action super-heroes, and then giving them their own 10-page graphic novel. It's a bit of fun and eduction through entertainment." (Warning: The comic contains a bit of naughty language.)
Who are the victims? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who are the victims? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite. The 419'ers are proof of how technology and persistence can move people from the lower middle class to the upper middle class.
Re:racist (Score:5, Insightful)
Has ANYBODY noticed that these are fairly creepy and somewhat racist images?
Just curious--if they were white Europeans, would you be asking the same question?
Define baiting (Score:5, Insightful)
Have we just been baited into reading crap for no good reason? Does that qualify as scam? Scam baiting? Or Baiting scam?
confused (Score:2, Insightful)
so you're trying to promote your unfunny comic about baiting scammers by spamming it all over the place?
Re:419 Scams are named for their law they break (Score:5, Insightful)
An obvious scam the government can't afford to shut down because of the taxes it brings in? We have one of those too ... its called the tobacco industry.
Re:Slashbaiting (Score:5, Insightful)
Nurse Nasty is one of the regulars at 419eater.com, I doubt if they did this to generate traffic. The more peopel know about 419 fraud and the various methods used to scam people, the better. Even learning simple things, like why a check "clearing" doesn't, in the US at least, mean it is a good check; and may prevent soemone from being a victim.
You'd be surprised how many people aren't aware of how scams work. I ran into someone selling his bike; he had received a "money order" for the purchase, shipping, and an "opps, I sent to much please send me a Western Union money order for the overage less an a extra $200 for your troubles" overage. I explained to him that it probably was a classic overpayment fraud and either take the MO to his bank or police station and explain his concerns; or to simply send an email saying deal's off bank won't take your MO and tear up the MO. Either way, he was saved from a very expensive mistake.
Re:419 Scams are named for their law they break (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to mention that giant ponzi scheme commonly referred to as "The banking industry."
Re:Who are the victims? (Score:2, Insightful)
> engage in these scams are not just the poor and desparate
On the contrary, they have internet access on a regular basis. This pretty much implies that they are necessarily upper-class, by local standards. (This is not entirely the same thing as being upper-class by American standards, granted. But it's a *long* way from being the poor and the desperate.) Additionally, poor people in Nigeria would never have been able to put together some of those costumes. Also, they wouldn't have cameras to take the photos.
Re:scam baiting 9/11 metaphor (Score:4, Insightful)
In the scammers case, the boss wouldnt give two shits if someone spent a day dressing up to do what an email asked.
Making it funny it raises awareness of the scam. Raised awareness of the scam means more resistance to the scam.
Re:419 Scams are named for their law they break (Score:0, Insightful)
Come on AC, at least tell us what they are. I'll give you another few, which may or may not be relevent in your jurisdiction:
Alchohol, it's worse for you than marijuana but heavily taxed and therefore relied upon;
Cocaine (CIA), see Alchohol
Any form of pre-paid telecommunications, - Capitalism used to mean that we get more for cash down, not less! Now there are people (like me) who dont have the steady income for a debit card, but do have the income for phone contracts and bundled minutes but who are forced to squander many times the amount that contract holders pay, cos they won't sign you up for a bundle of minutes, decent internet package (ie > 1Gb / month) or anything else contract-related, without a debit card. Even if you have a lump sum with you and ID in their store, no sorry, to get a contract you need a debit card.
If you are in the UK and you think you know different, I need a decent comms contract pre-paid, I have my own HSDPA handset, I need decent internet and a bundle of minutes for NO MORE THAN 5p each God they gouge you all of them at 35p why is no body else kicking off about this like me? Have you all got debit cards? Am I the exception? Or have other intelligent, but poor people fallen through the gaps in digital divide??? God, I have webservers, I have domains, I even have a company but can I get cheap calls like everyone else? No cos I'm not 9 to 5 so I cant have a debit card.
And yes, this is a rant but it is EXTREMELY insightful, nobody else is saying any of this and I'm telling the truth, albeit in a slightly ranty way this affects me every second of my life at the moment. I AM MORE POOR BECAUSE I HAVE TO PAY UPFRONT. I will repeat my original assertion- cash down is supposed to give me more in return than cash lent to me, but it's going the other way thanks to banks and debit cards, and lack of access to them.
And, no, neither is it offtopic. It's a direct response to the parent, which is a direct response to that parent, which is a reply to an ontopic root post.
Re:Who are the victims? (Score:1, Insightful)
Waste your own time you mean. Those 'real victims' are greedy and stupid. You can't protect those from themselves. Scam baiting doesn't solve that in any measurable way.
Re:Who are the victims? (Score:4, Insightful)
Erh... no. It's like carrying monopoly money in your purse so the next thief gets nothing but colored paper instead of money.
To make sure you see the difference between beggars and thieves: Beggars ask you for money. Thieves trick you into giving it to them. The difference is that in one case it's your free decision.
Re:Brilliant Troll is Brilliant (Score:3, Insightful)
typo fail. it's always sad when someone tries to be clever and instead proves they're a failure.
Re:OMMFG. (Score:4, Insightful)
Erh... you might not have noticed that the fact that this is strung together as a "comic" is not the main focus of the whole ploy. Or, in other words, it's not the comic that is awesome. It's awesome that the person creating it managed to trick scammers into posing in such a way that they could be used for a comic.
Re:racist (Score:5, Insightful)
They're creepy and they're belitteling, demeaning and outright insulting pictures. That's part of the idea. Not because these people are black, but because these people are scammers. That they're black is simply quite logically considering they come from a country where most people are.
I'm quite sure they'd be just as belittling, demeaning and insulting if the scammers were white, yellow or polka dotted red and blue. It's not fun because they're black. It's fun because they tried to trick people out of money and got exposed and publically humiliated for being criminals. Not for being black.
Re:Pathetic (Score:2, Insightful)
A swedish man got scammed for about 800.000 SEK (roughly 120.000 USD) and the bank/police cant do anything about it. They prey on the weak and exploit them to the max, they deserve what they get.
Re:De-peer and 419 disappears (Score:5, Insightful)
Nigeria has already demonstrated that they shouldn't be online
I hope someone someday collectively punishes you and everyone you know for things a few people who live near you did so you can get a sense of how fair your suggestion is.
Re:419 Scams are named for their law they break (Score:5, Insightful)
Horse Shit.
There should be no schedule 1 drugs, or schedule 2, or any other schedule. Prohibition gained this country nothing but rum-runners and armed gangs in the 1920's, and the war on drugs has gained us the same thing since the 1940's. Prohibition is for morons, fools, and zealots - and there is no proven method to separate the groups.
Prohibition has not only killed tens of thousands of American citizens, it is today killing thousands of Mexican citizens, and destroying the poor excuse for a government that they enjoy.
Legalize and/or decriminalize drugs, let the potheads and crack addicts have all they want. Can't you hear Darwin? "Those fools have nothing to offer society anyway - let them kill themselves!"
If John Q. wants to blow 10 kilos of cocaine, LET HIM!! It's his right to die from an overdose if that's what he wants to do. Stop wasting resources on keeping him alive, just so we can persecute him for being a coke fiend!
As for my caffeine and nicotine addictions, I'll deal with them myself, in my own good time. I'll stop smoking some day. Probably the day the doctor pronounces me dead. And, it's none of YOUR business.
Who is posing for these pictures? (Score:1, Insightful)
Who is posing for these pictures? The real scammers, or poor people who have been paid by the scammers to embarass themselves? If I went around NYC and paid homeless guys to dress up funny and then made a website where we could all laugh at them, would that be OK?
Re:419 Scams are named for their law they break (Score:2, Insightful)
Runaway1956 Wrote:
As for my caffeine and nicotine addictions, I'll deal with them myself, in my own good time. I'll stop smoking some day. Probably the day the doctor pronounces me dead. And, it's none of YOUR business.
Taxman415a Wrote:
It wouldn't be any of my business if I didn't have to pay more for your health care because of your choices.
I say that it is still none of your business. It costs money for funding highways and airports to connect distant places in the USA, but that is not a reason to prevent people from living in cities far from each other.
They [addicts] end up in the ER (because they typically have no health insurance) or killing unrelated people in traffic accidents or whatever. Those both represent large costs to people that avoid the behavior.
These costs don't seem to be reduced by making drugs illegal to use or possess. As drug users don't seem to care if it is against the law to use their drug of choice. In other words, making an activity illegal does prevent that activity. We could simply tax drugs sales at a certain level and the incidence of drug use would be roughly the same as it is today.
It doesn't matter if the drugs are cheaper from making them legal, they still cost something and people that are addicted will still do whatever they need to to get more including crime and murder. Your argument would have been stronger if you could make a cohesive case for there being less crime and costs on a total picture basis, but you didn't bother with that. Also, your darwinian argument would be better if people tended to die quickly on drugs, but the majority just get strung out and are a drag on society.
These seem to be arguments for funding public education and treatment (rehabilitation), not prohibition.
I'm not really sold either way on it. If someone presented a really convincing case that the costs really were lower and particularly lower for the people that avoid the crap, then I don't really care. But most of the arguments seem to be from people that just want easier access to more drugs.
If most of the money currently spent on law enforcement of drug prohibition (including legal and incarceration costs) where instead spent on public education and treatment (rehabilitation) in combination with taxation and regulation (think smoking and drinking laws and taxes, although I don't think they are perfect, just better than other drug laws) I think that there is a good case to be made that the economic and social costs of drug use could be reduced significantly.
Re:419 Scams are named for their law they break (Score:1, Insightful)
Normally I'd say "citation needed", but in this case I prefer "you're full of horseshit and have no idea what you're talking about".
The cost of one months' worth of chemo is greater than the cost of providing a statistically average person with no long-term conditions for a decade.