
Spying on Scammers [video] - nmstoker
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-51660982/criminals-on-cctv-scammers-caught-red-handed
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ipython
"What Jim did was illegal."

That sentence annoys the heck out of me. As in- somehow - his actions should
be vilified, yet the scammers _ON THE VIDEO_ are provided the benefit of
"allegations" against them?

It's very clear to me that we have lost trust in our public institutions
because they have failed us. It is trivial, given a lack of a certain moral
compass, to set up an international call center scam like the one in this
story. I receive at least 3-4 of these calls _per day_ on my own phone - the
scale is absolutely immense. And yet the person who successfully reveals the
depravity of what these people do is the one who is the criminal? To that I
say let the scammers try and sue him.

If the governments can't or don't have the will to solve the problem, I say
let the people do it for them. Before you accuse me of advocating for
vigilante justice, there is precedent for this sort of thing: the TCPA, passed
by Congress in 1991, provides for a Private Right of Action against these
telephone scammers - meaning that private individuals have the right to sue
the scammers, rather than waiting for collective government action. However,
this no longer works with the international scale of modern phone scams.

It's a classic tragedy of the commons. The cost of making phone calls over
VoIP is basically zero at this point. I believe that the solution is simple:
first, make the economics work against the scammers by making VoIP more
expensive and use those funds to create an abuse reporting and enforcement
mechanism; second, make the source of all phone calls completely transparent
to end-users (or at least power-users). VoIP abuse must be taken seriously
otherwise there will be no public telephone network left for the rest of us.
It'll just be a bunch of bots calling each other and us- what a dystopia.

~~~
pjc50
It's amazing how email spam exploded in the nineties and was fought over for a
couple of decades before the current uneasy truce was established. And now
we're seeing phone calls have the same problems.

You could even cross "charge more" and "authenticate senders" off the spam
solutions bingo card.

(This seems to be less prevalent in the EU, but maybe that's my imagination?
Or due to having only a mobile? We're certainly not free of tech support
scammers)

~~~
netsharc
Maybe the English language is the barrier to entry in most EU countries, AFAIK
the scammers mostly speak English...

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'm guessing it's not as much a barrier to entry, but it's making US and the
UK more cost-effective. There isn't enough competition among the international
scammers for it to make sense to start calling the rest of EU countries.

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THE_PUN_STOPS
Awesome to see ‘Jim’ on the BBC! If you like this, there’s a lot more on his
YouTube channel. His more adversial videos are justice porn.

[https://youtube.com/channel/UCBNG0osIBAprVcZZ3ic84vw](https://youtube.com/channel/UCBNG0osIBAprVcZZ3ic84vw)

~~~
buran77
While it's very satisfying to see the scammers being "pwned", unfortunately
there's too little real life impact on the scammer market. They operate from
poor regions where an overextended (possibly corrupt?) police force has little
incentive or possibility to pursue such crimes. From their perspective they
are essentially victimless crimes. The victims can't complain, they're are on
the other side of the world, too far to matter when there are more pressing
matters at home, and the fact that they can afford it lessens the moral burden
of stopping the crime.

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tartoran
Wow, kudos to this guy, he did a lot of work to uncover these scammers and
still uncovering more. I was attempted to be scammed by phone but quickly
figured out it was a scam, IRS never calls, but older people bite into these
scams. I think more should be done to prevent these.

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reallybigguy
If you find this sort of "justice porn" interesting you might enjoy listening
to Toao.net's "Lenny" bot. It's basically a telemarketer (and often scammer)
time wasting machine that often seems to lead to spirited outbursts.
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduL71_GKzHHk4hLga0nO...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduL71_GKzHHk4hLga0nOGWrXlhl-
i_3g)

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alex_duf
For what it's worth I always try to keep scammers as long as I can. Time spent
on me won't be spent scamming someone else.

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netsharc
Overuse of the glitch effects annoyed me... over-editing.

~~~
monkeynotes
BBC news has long been declining toward entertainment, just like many other
news outlets.

~~~
rjmunro
This was a clip from Panorama, which has been particularly bad for this kind
of thing. BBC News proper is not as bad.

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kwhitefoot
Ouch. That was unwatchable.

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me_me_me
It's funny how they credit "Jim Browning", but are careful not to mention he's
youtuber doing scam baiting videos.

~~~
willvarfar
I hadn’t heard of Jim before, but from watching the report, I understood he is
breaking the law and that it is all on YouTube etc etc. The report did an
excellent job of making that clear imo.

