
'Scam baiters' get a kick out of conning the con artists - ColinWright
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39884625
======
Stratoscope
I used to enjoy getting calls from Windows Support. My favorite was when their
rep told me to open the Event Viewer and I asked, "What's the hostname? We
have several computers at home and it sounds like it's important I get to the
right one right away."

The rep didn't know what a hostname was, so I explained that it's your
computer name and it normally shows up in the error logs that every PC
automatically uploads to the Windows Support team. She didn't see any
hostnames, and I told her there was a new kind of malware attacking support
centers and deleting hostnames from their logs to prevent people from getting
proper support. And her computer was probably infected!

I offered to help with some troubleshooting steps and mentioned that I had a
diagnostic program she could download to inspect and repair her PC.

She sounded just about ready to go for it, but then her supervisor came on the
line. I explained to both of them again about this new malware and how we
could repair it. And then they hung up on me! How ungrateful...

~~~
joshschreuder
That's magnificent. Imagine getting them to install ransomware on their own PC
while you walk them through the process... almost definitely illegal, but
funny as heck.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Awhile back there was a guy that got them to open whatever that month's
variant of cryptoware was. IIRC it's on youtube.

------
rburhum
So I got a call from "the IRS" _yesterday_ asking me to pay my taxes since
according to them I had underpaid. It was clearly a call center in India, but
I went along with it. When it came down to paying, they claimed I could do it
in cash by walking to Walmart or Target and buying 5 gift cards for $1k each.
I busted out laughing and they just hung up.

The thing is, this was the second call I had gotten from _the same_ phone
number. First time they called was 4 months ago, so I added them to my address
book as "Mr Scam". I told my friend about this, and we decided to call them
back again today on speaker... they answered! So I asked them for their bank
account so I could transfer them $100k. They said no, go to target and buy a
gift card. I quickly asked "ok, so I can only buy $100 gift cards... how many
do I need?" The guy struggled and could not answer, so I walked him through
the math and taught him a trick to remove zeros - it was hilarious! Then the
guy caught on, got upset, and told me to "to stop calling, they are just
trying to work there". It was funny and disturbing at the same time.

In case you want to prank the scammers, feel free to call them to +1 (208)
501-0873. The phone seems to only work during US business hours - call a few
times and you will get these bastards :)

~~~
Stratoscope
That is hilarious!

I got a similar call yesterday. Unfortunately I missed the call, but they left
a voicemail. My transcription:

> _We have just received a notification regarding your tax filings. From the
> headquarters which will get expired in next 24 working hours. And once it
> get expired after that you will be taken under custody by the local cops. As
> there are 4 serious allegations pressed on your name at this moment. We
> would request you to get back to us. So that we can discuss about this case.
> Before taking any legal action against you. The number to reach us is
> 505-300-1053. I repeat 505-300-1053. Thank you._

~~~
rburhum
yep, same script!

------
danso
Obligatory mention of the "Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They are From
Nigeria?" paper, which posits that scammers purposefully claim Nigerian
nationality because their own time is so limited, and with costs of bulk email
being so low, it's an efficient way to turn off everyone except the few who
yet haven't heard of the Nigerian prince scam.

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-
do-...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian-
scammers-say-they-are-from-nigeria/)

I'm also reminded of a story I read, I remember it being in a newspaper or
long-form magazine, of someone who tried baiting a Nigerian scammer and it
somehow leading to a dangerous physical confrontation, but am unable to find
it via Google right now.

~~~
chillacy
This guy tricked a scammer into getting a tattoo:
[http://www.419eater.com/html/okorie.htm](http://www.419eater.com/html/okorie.htm)

~~~
neotek
Unfortunately, what he actually probably did was to trick a scammer into
threatening some poor local to get a tattoo.

~~~
hdra
I'm pretty skeptical of the story itself. Despite the many spelling and
spacing errors, the "scammer" seems to have a really good command of English.
The use of some rather "advance" phrases and word choices, the emails read
like a native english speaker pretending to be someone who is bad at it.

~~~
monort
English is the official language of Nigeria.

------
patcheudor
I got a Rachel from Cardholder Services call once during an in-office meeting
so I put the call on speaker for everyone to enjoy, then immediately went to
Graham King: [https://www.darkcoding.net/credit-card-
numbers/](https://www.darkcoding.net/credit-card-numbers/) to get some credit-
card numbers that would pass their basic Mod 10 check and go to their CC
merchant service, thus costing them money. By the sixth failed card and 20
minutes later the 'agent' figured out I was messing with him and threatened to
rape my wife and kill me while screaming obscenities. It went very NSFW in a
matter of seconds.

~~~
ktta
The comments on that page are pretty weird

~~~
patcheudor
Yeah, it's a highlight of my day every time.

------
rhcom2
> One of the main techniques, explains Wayne - a scam baiter who often works
> with Jill - is by leaking scammers' details and their conversation scripts
> online.

> The aim is for these to filter through to search-engine results, so
> potential victims will be alerted if they type in the scammer's name.

This helped me so much with apartment hunting. I caught multiple fake listings
by just googling parts of the language.

~~~
defen
What is the end game of a fake listing? Bait and switch? What does the scammer
get out of it?

~~~
jen729w
A friend's girlfriend was successfully done out of ~$2,000 by sending the
scammers a deposit for an apartment she thought she was leasing.

She was in Australia, I think. The apartment was in London. Of course she
wanted somewhere to live as soon as she landed, so she had to do it remotely.
Bad result.

~~~
cakedoggie
For anyone who doesn't know, never do that. Get a hotel/hostel/airbnb for the
first week, then actually go to places. Never take a place you have not
visited.

Also in London, go private rental helps avoid the ridiculous agency fees.

~~~
creepydata
Just touring somewhere isn't going to help, you have to make sure the person
who is showing you the apartment owns the apartment, look up real estate
records and ask their the landlord's ID. I say this because there is plenty of
cases where scammers will break into vacant buildings and "rent" them as long
as possible. Heard of a story where a guy was living overseas for a few months
and came home to a family living in his house which had been "rented out" by a
scammer who broke in and changed the locks.

~~~
KekDemaga
I believe in some states its not even a matter of saying "Hey this is my house
get out" you have to go though eviction processes to remove them as well. What
a mess.

~~~
creepydata
Yes, absolutely. Tenantancy is usually established after around 30 days of
continued occupancy and once they are tenants, even if they aren't paying
rent, you can't legally kick them out without going through the proper legal
channels.

There's even been cases of people posing as fake real estate agents to "rent"
apartments. If your dealing with a real estate agent then ask for their ID
like you would a landlord, and the license number, and look up their real
estate license online.

------
ransom1538
The og scam bait crew:
[http://www.419eater.com/html/trophy_room.htm](http://www.419eater.com/html/trophy_room.htm)

I don't think this crew is ethical.

~~~
Gustomaximus
Genuinely curious. Why dont you think it's ethical? Do you feel they should
stop?

I ask as I feel they are doing a public service. As far as I know they dont
approach anyone and let people approach them. They then waste their time and
make them jump through hoops in usually fairly harmless ways that reduce the
likelihood of the scammers doing genuine harm.

~~~
ransom1538
This crew got some of baiters to get tattoos [self mutilation] and are into
public shaming.

------
StavrosK
Also see a website I made: [https://spa.mnesty.com/](https://spa.mnesty.com/)

~~~
tenaciousDaniel
This is wonderful.

~~~
imron
It is, but some of them appear to be a lot of bots talking to bots e.g.
[https://spa.mnesty.com/conversations/dbmnabnq/](https://spa.mnesty.com/conversations/dbmnabnq/)

~~~
StavrosK
I think spammers have found out about it and keep spamming me back,
unfortunately.

------
PhasmaFelis
A coworker's wife was almost taken for several thousand dollars by a phone
scammer. She asked him at the last minute and he told her to call it off. He
was pretty upset that they'd tried to exploit his wife, though. He talked to
the police, but they weren't much help.

So he set his cell phone to autodial their number. For the next three days.
His number is unlisted, so they couldn't block him without blocking all
incoming calls, which was essential to whatever scam they were trying to run.
He just tied up their whole operation.

His phone sat there on his desk ringing quietly over and over all day. Every
now and then they'd pick up and scream at him.

------
random3
> I take great care in protecting my online persona, [...] I don't use any of
> my real-life information. All of my characters are based somewhere 100 miles
> away from where I live.

That's a pretty accurate indication of where she actually lives, provided that
information can be combined..

~~~
radiorental
The people who would have the time & resources to do that have far easier ways
to derive that information.

Also, The BBC found them. "CNN" could easily go setup an "Interview".

------
lloydde
How does this article not include James Veitch's "work"? I've had many laughs
at his TED talks and his Mashable YouTube series.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/james_veitch_this_is_what_happens_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/james_veitch_this_is_what_happens_when_you_reply_to_spam_email)

~~~
wojt_eu
One word; Hummus

------
TallGuyShort
If it's clearly a scam I tell them I need them to hold on for a minute. Then I
mute the phone and get back to work. They generally stay on the line for 5-10
minutes. Wastes very little of my time, wastes a bunch of theirs (hopefully
raises the cost of the scam a little and gives them less time to scam others).
Not sure if there's any security risk in leaving the line open on my end that
long, but it's my weapon of choice in fighting back a little.

~~~
ballenf
Maybe you could automate a few different takes on "oh sorry, just a few more
minutes" or "I'm getting my bank account info, it's in the other room" to
repeat on loop every 3 minutes or so.

Create a very long MP3 and hit play.

Or use the bot linked below... of course this has been before :)

~~~
swimfar
There's a whole series of this where it's a recording of an old man who talks
really slow, can't hear well, needs things re-explained, rambles a bit, etc.
There are some amazingly long calls.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSoOrlh5i1k&list=RDXSoOrlh5i...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSoOrlh5i1k&list=RDXSoOrlh5i1k#t=2)

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's Lenny!

[https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/](https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/)

------
incomplete
also OG: p-p-p-powerbook

[https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/P-p-p-
powerbook](https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/P-p-p-powerbook)

------
kneel
Occasionally I get a nigerian scammer that makes it through the spam filter.
Last one I had I played really dumb for about two weeks.

Oh western union? Yeah I live on the east coast I'm pretty sure we don't have
that here.

I found the western union but I don't have any nigerian money to send, how do
I get nigerian money?

I was going to send the money today but I stopped at the mini McDonald's at
Walmart and ate some fries. I don't have the full 500, only 496 now, sorry
I'll see if I can find the rest.

Someone told me that there was a robot computer from Nigeria that asks for
money, how do I know you're not a robot?

I'm pretty sure a robot would say it isn't a robot. Can you send me pictures
to prove you're not a robot?

etc etc etc

------
lprubin
This guy created a voice bot that wastes scammers and telemarketer's time.

[http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/](http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/)
[http://www.businessinsider.com/man-creates-bot-to-deal-
with-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/man-creates-bot-to-deal-with-
annoying-telemarketers-2016-2)

~~~
yourapostasy
I can't wait for voice recognition, voice synthesis, and AI researchers to
pick this up and offer a more advanced version that is a free public service
just to use the scammers as a free, endless training corpus. Instead of pre-
recorded snippets, evolve a completely dynamic model.

~~~
nemo1618
Then the scanners start doing the same, and boom, you've got a GAN that
quickly learns to be incredibly good at pretending to be human.

~~~
yourapostasy
Can't possibly generate a worse foundation for a customer service bot than
some of the human-staffed customer service departments I run into today. That
was said tongue in cheek, but I do wonder.

------
kchoudhu
Oh man, this takes me back. Who can forget the Martins Cole and Anus laptop
saga of 2004-5?

[http://thescambaiter.com/forum/index.php?/topic/17878-anus-l...](http://thescambaiter.com/forum/index.php?/topic/17878-anus-
laptops-the-martins-cole-saga-complete/&)

------
falsedan
Why is this on the front page when
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14519343](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14519343)
has more upvotes?

~~~
ColinWright
I have no official position and no inside information. Here are my
observations.

There are a number of things that happen that people are not always aware of.
There is, for example, a "flame-war" detector, that works on the heuristic
that if there are more comments than points then it's probably a smaller
number of people having a back'n'forth, so it's likely to be
unproductive/unenlightening. It's a heuristic, but it works well enough to be
a good first approximation.

But these things are watched and reviewed by the mods. They can remove that
penalty if it seems to be a false positive. They can also apply a boost to
items they think are good material for HN, but which haven't got the attention
they deserve.

Looking at the traces[0][1] I suspect that this item has had a boost, and the
other has had the flame-war penalty.

[0] [http://hnrankings.info/14517461/](http://hnrankings.info/14517461/)

[1] [http://hnrankings.info/14519343/](http://hnrankings.info/14519343/)

------
DoubleCribble
For those who are curious about how far some vigilantes are willing to go in
pursuit of scammers, this is an oldie (2008) but still worth a listen:
[https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/363/...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/363/enforcers?act=1)

------
wavefunction
I went to Delhi to learn more about tourist touts. It was enlightening
watching the guys work. They worked hard, they were good at what they were
about and at the end I made their time worth their while, though not as much
as they might hope.

I don't know that I would recommend it as a hobby though, one might find
themselves in some serious danger.

------
duncan_bayne
It's also great for children. My five year old overheard me baiting a scammer
on the phone and expressed great interest. He'll be sitting in on the next
call, and participating once I'm convinced he understands what's going on.

I _think_ the outcome will be that he'll be much better equipped to deal with
social engineering as an older child and adult.

~~~
duncan_bayne
To those downvoting, I'd love direct feedback. I'm not precious about my
parenting style. Well, no more precious then I am about anything else I take
seriously.

~~~
creepydata
You honestly have to ask why you shouldn't include a five year old in scam
baiting?

~~~
duncan_bayne
I expect the "once he understands" bit to take at least a few years.

