
Scam baiter: Why I risk death threats to expose online cons - uladzislau
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41518352
======
Top19
Wow cannot thank these guys enough. Every scam that is serious about making
money has SEO-carpet bombed Google to death, making any serious search for the
truth impossible (unless you’re one of those people who always knows to go to
the 7th page of search results).

Also here’s a pro-tip. If you’re searching for something and a bunch of
Youtube videos says “Is XYZ a scam??”, the answer is “absolutely yes”. Those
videos pretend to be honest reviews that wind up finding out that
“surprisingly, it’s not a scam and looks pretty good”, but it’s all a lie.

Other scams, usually by virtue of providing a 100% incentive based
compensation structure:

\- Selling mattresses

\- Real Estate sales or seminars of any kind to someone inexperienced

\- MLM or Pyramid Schemes

\- Typically anything that advocates obscene amounts of positive psychology
and a scientology like version of a Christianity

\- Insurance sales

\- Selling internet services for a company like CBeyond

\- Any college of any-kind that makes a profit short of coding boot camps (and
they’ll probably turn into a scam within a few years which is sad)

~~~
leggomylibro
>Any college of any-kind that makes a profit short of coding boot camps (and
they’ll probably turn into a scam within a few years which is sad)

You definitely lost me there - while there are scam schools and the cost of
reputable private colleges has ballooned from expensive through unacceptable
into stratospheric, higher education remains one of the best investments a
person can make in themselves.

Yes, vocational training like coding bootcamps or other trade schools can be a
way better path for a lot of people. And yes, the sort of bootcamp that
charges 5 figures to teach you the javascript framework du jour is probably
not worth what it charges. But a lot of bootcamps these days are partnering
with large companies to learn what sort of skills are needed and going with
income-based payment, something like X% of your income above $N for Y months
expiring in Z years. I wouldn't write them off.

~~~
Top19
To clarify I didn’t mean private colleges like Swarthmore, Westminster, or
Rice. Schools like Kaplan, ITT, Cordon Bleu.

Also I have no problems with coding bootcamps. But the schools I mentioned
above, whose avarice I feel like knows no limits, will eventually discover
“coding bootcamps” and make them into a brutal profit extraction machine with
laughable education value. But again, that in no way has happened yet.

~~~
rpeden
Kaplan did buy Dev Bootcamp a few years ago. I noticed that mentioned quite
often in the articles that came out in July about Dev Bootcamp shutting down.

I don't know anything about how Kaplan's ownership affected it though, either
positively or negatively.

Apollo Education (which owns the University of Phoenix) acquired The Iron Yard
bootcamp in 2015, and it is shutting down as now as well.

So in these cases at least, some of the large for-profit education providers
don't seem to have found dev bootcamps (in their current form, anyway) to be
very lucrative.

------
ggambetta
> Wayne May (not his real name)

Don't want to use his real name, probably for his safety considering it
mentions death threats, but half a page later there's a super clear picture of
him?!?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Unless he's a celebrity it's much harder to find someone from a picture than
it is from a name

~~~
macintux
That probably won’t be true within the span of time he’ll be active. Surely
Facebook or Google will offer some mechanism for face recognition.

~~~
bro-kaizen
You can probably just use Google's reverse image search and then look at the
"related images" pane on the right.

~~~
dvanduzer
I thought the article title was pretty silly; as a gregarious human, risking
death _threats_ is something I do on a daily basis just shopping for milk.

Anyway, I tried what you suggested. It was well worth it:
[https://imgur.com/a/dCFnx](https://imgur.com/a/dCFnx)

~~~
smnrchrds
In a dystopian future where assassination has been automated and can easily be
ordered from the dark web, a contract on Wayne May brings the end for humanity
...

------
bArray
Checked out their website, looks as if they could really benefit from somebody
with some web skills:
[https://www.scamsurvivors.com/](https://www.scamsurvivors.com/)

~~~
savanaly
I agree. It is not his fault that the equilibrium has settled this way, but
the fact is that it has settled at a point where ironically the design of his
site sets off my "this is a scam site" alarms. Not a confidence scam, per se,
but certainly a site I wouldn't be downloading any executables from and would
be expecting a popup ad with malware at any moment when visiting.

In reality I know he isn't doing any of that but the design unfortunately
signals he might be.

~~~
bArray
Agreed, I would offer myself but I'm not a web dev and could do more harm than
good. Firefox gives a yellow padlock for the site, grounds to think there may
be some security issues as a modern web dev _seems to_ have not touched it in
a long time.

Would be awfully nice for a UK based developer to offer them their services
for free and add some robustness against DDoS.

I would especially want to see some security audit done on their forum, looks
as if a security vulnerability could quite literally be life threatening.

------
jaclaz
I may well be too old-fashioned, but I tend to make some distinctions between
different kind of scams (not necessarily online).

The victim may well be a poor innocent (possibly elderly or kids) not-the-
sharpiest-knife-in-the drawer, as it happens (example) for those scam calls
promising they will fix your computer that has a virus or similar, or
solicitng for an unpaid (non-existing) invoice but a large part of the scams
are based on the victim having some form of "greed" or "lust" or however the
will to do something that would not be entirely legal or morally acceptable.

So, I personally find difficult to call "victims" someone that thought they
could get a zillion dollars "helping" a poor Nigerian Prince (or his widow) to
collect the fortune he accumulated offshore or those that are blackmailed
because they showed nude (or worse) on a webcam believing that on the other
side there was a nice looking girl.

This said, the data in the "form" for sextortion/blackmail "victims" here:

[https://www.scamsurvivors.com/blackmail/form/form.html](https://www.scamsurvivors.com/blackmail/form/form.html)

is IMHO something that noone, including and especially a "victim" of an online
scam should even _think_ of filling and sending to anyone (if not - if it is
the case - Law enforcement officials).

"Wayne May" is asking for exactly the same data that would make a
scammer/blackmailer happy:

1) Name

2) Date of birth

3) Location

4) E-mail address

...

5) _Link to (eventually uploaded) compromising video_

Most probably "Wayne May" and his helping volunteers are in good faith and
have the best of the intentions, and this data will never leak, but it is a
huge, huge risk.

------
partycoder
Problem with scams is that part of it is getting automated. Scammers are now
regularly scanning entire area codes looking for people to scam, usually
spoofing their caller id.

I called my phone company and blocked inbound international calls: problem
solved and no more scam calls.

~~~
briandear
So what happens if someone wants to call you internationally?

~~~
partycoder
In that case I just use voice over ip or a messaging app.

------
falsedan
Terrible short-form BBC reporting: here’s a guy who risks death treats to help
scam victims! Sorry, were going to quote experts & give generic avoidance
advice instead of sharing the threats or an example of how a victim was
helped.

------
mattbgates
I am fighting the good fight too with creating this website to expose the
exact messages of scammer so anyone searching... can find a particular scam.

[https://scamshare.com](https://scamshare.com)

Feel free to submit your scam emails to the website... the more in the
database, the better chance of hopefully protecting people from getting
scammed.

