Text 8083, 108 rader
Skriven 2005-11-04 08:25:08 av Rich Gauszka (1:379/45)
Ärende: Cyber sport: Spamming scammers
======================================
From: "Rich Gauszka" <gauszka@hotmail.com>

http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwendland4e_20051104.htm

MIKE WENDLAND: Cyber sport: Spamming scammers

November 4, 2005






BY MIKE WENDLAND
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST



There's a new way to fight those Nigerian scam e-mails that keep circulating
online.


It's called SpamBaiting.


The idea is to pull a reverse sting on the spam scammers, leading them on by
pretending to go along with the con through increasingly silly and insulting
e-mail replies.


While it's not officially endorsed by law enforcement, the pastime has become
so popular that more than 50 Web sites are now devoted to hassling the
scammers. The biggest and most imaginative is 419eater.com, which calls the
practice a cyber sport and has posted dozens of e-mail exchanges with scammers
from all over the world.


Surely, if you've been online for any length of time, you've heard from these
electronic con artists who pretend to have fortunes worth millions that they
want to invest or move out of the country. They offer you a lucrative cut,
supposedly to help them do it.


As the greedy victims get sucked into the scam, the con artists find ingenious
ways to get them to send their bank account info or pay up-front fees needed to
get the cash out of their country.


The con is called the Nigerian scam, or 419 fraud, after a section of the
Nigerian criminal code that makes the practice illegal. Although it originated
in Nigeria, it is being used by online criminals all over the world.


These spam scams get more creative all the time. The latest I've seen comes
from a guy who calls himself Hassan Mohammed, and he has a sob story with the
message title "Kindly Fulfill My Last Wish."


He claims he's from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates (though he uses a French
e-mail address). He has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and has only a
few weeks to live.


He says he was a greedy man who got very rich at the expense of others but now,
facing death, "I regret all this as I now know that there is more to life than
just wanting to prosperous."


So -- here comes the come-on -- he wants to give away his fortune. Alas, he
says he can't trust his family and friends as "they refused and kept the
resources to themselves."


So, poor, dying Hassan writes in a poorly spelled scam e-mail: "... the last of
my belonging which no one knows of, is the huge deposit of eigteen milion US
dolls that I have in a safe keeping Company abroad, which I will want you to
secure and dispatch to charity organizations. ... For your time and devotion, I
have set aside a tenth of this for you."


The 419eater.com site takes online scam letters like that and deluges the con
artist with elaborate feigned tales of interest. The exchanges read like
novels, and the bad guys are strung along until they eventually realize they've
just wasted a lot of time.


As a part of the SpamBaiting tactics, scammers are encouraged to have their
pictures taken while holding signs to supposedly prove themselves. Invariably,
the signs make fools of the holders and are promptly posted in a hall of shame
area on the site.


For a long list of other sites that are involved in SpamBaiting, check out
www.419eater.com/html/links.htm.


Again, you should know that SpamBaiting is not suggested by law enforcement or
the Net's most authoritative resource on 419 fraud. That site, the 419
Coalition (http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal), has a comprehensive guide to
the problem and suggests that people who receive such letters forward them to
the U.S. Secret Service at 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov.


But I have to admit, seeing these con artists reverse-stung and strung along is
not only perversely satisfying but makes for amusing reading.

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