Increasing Popularity with Nigerian Scambaiting

Dylan — Wed, 13 May 2009 01:02:22 +0000

We have all seen the e-mails from “The Prince of Nigeria” or “his secretary”, trying to con us out of our hard-earned money. These “419 scammers” (typical advance-fee fraudsters), often located somewhere in Africa, have been around since before the internet and continue to thrive by sending out fraudulent correspondence through all channels of the Internet in hopes to wrangle in a sucker dumb enough to cough up some bills. Although you may think the world would be aware of such scams by now, many people are fooled each day and millions are lost each year to these scammers.

What interests me, however, are the people who deliberately set out to “bait” the scammers. Their purpose is simple: to waste a scammer’s time so that there is one less scammer in the world. “Scambaiters,” as they are often called, will get a scammer’s hopes up so much that the scammers do some pretty hilarious things with the presumption of a largely unearned (and ill-gotten) profit in return.

It works like this: A scammer sends out an email to your inbox. You see their ridiculous claim and turn the tables on them by making up an equally or slightly less ridiculous response that involves instead promising them some sort of payout provided they do something for you. If you are good enough at it, you can get a scammer to do some pretty funny things, provided the irony the whole situation. I have read stories about scammers getting symbols tattooed on themselves, scammers traveling over 3000 miles, getting arrested at airports, and other nuisances as they seek their precious fortune, which never even existed in the first place.

All in all, I think scambaiting is a fun and effective way to not only bring awareness to these types of injustices, but it’s also something to do when you’re bored which is always nice. Whether or not it is legal to lead people on in this way is another story, but you also have to consider the nature of your first contact with said scammers in the first place before giving it too much thought.

Dylan Butler » San Diego Freelance Web Development and Consultation » scammers

Increasing Popularity with Nigerian Scambaiting