| « Before and After | Pimp my Fahrrad » |
419 Baiters
Link: http://www.419eater.com/html/hall_of_shame.htm
I learned today on the Mecca of websites for nerds, Slashdot, that apparently there are groups of people who have so much free time that they go out of their way to bait Nigerian 419 scammers. You know, those spam emails we all get from time to time about that bank account in Nigeria with millions of dollars just waiting to be claimed by you! Apparently the goal of these baiters is to cause the Nigerian scammers to waste as much time and money as possible, with the ultimate prize being a "trophy photo" of the scammer holding up an embarrassing sign. While I certainly don't condone the actions of these 419 scammers, it seems almost just as lame for rich kids in America and the UK with Internet access to spend their time trying to screw over people living in one of the poorest places on Earth. Still, some of the trophy photos are pretty funny.
4 comments
"While I certainly don't condone the actions of these 419 scammers, it seems almost just as lame for rich kids in America and the UK with Internet access to spend their time trying to screw over people living in one of the poorest places on Earth."Holy cow man, how can you be so ignorant? These scammers have access to computers and the internet. And they're spammers, so they can afford a lot of bandwidth. So I think food and housing isn't a problem for these guys.
Without these anti-scammers wasting their time, they could be busy scamming your grandma out of her pension.
These scammer baiters seem to be more interested in having a laugh than trying to help scam victims. You also can't ignore the racist undertones of the whole thing. They'd probably do more good using their time to raise money to fight poverty in Africa. 
The 419 scammers don't need your sympathy. They're generally part of the organized crime cartels in Nigeria, a very dangerous and wealthy group of people who perpetrate these crimes with few consequences. Nigerians don't even like them-- they are the Tony Sopranos of the West Africa world. 
Baiting scammers is a way to fight crime. Scammers are very sophisticated. They use fake banks, identification cards and other forged materials to make the victim think they are legitimate. The forgeries sometimes are so real that help is needed from other members. Inocent victims are taken each year for millions of dollars.
Comment feed for this post