Scambaiting is all about scamming the scammers.
The reasons why people get into doing this are quite varied but generally it is about trying to gain information that can be used to get a scammer prosecuted, getting them to pose for silly photographs, gaining revenge when the scambaiter themself has previously been scammed or wasting a scammer’s time.
Though definitely something I would not condone or recommend, it has even been known for scambaiters to extract money from the scammers!
Scambaiters employ many different techniques and ruses in order to create havoc for the scammers.
These include sending them hundreds of miles to collect ‘wrongly delivered mail’, requiring a small fee in order to release the advance fee the scammer wanted, sending extremely heavy packages of junk for which postage must be paid on collection and requesting huge questionnaires to be filled in.
By using anonymous phone number services some scambaiters even get the scammers to call them and then stay on the line for hours, running up huge international phone bills.
Whilst scambaiters are sensible enough to always use fake email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses, etc, it is still a potentially dangerous business.
It has been known for scam victims who have flown to places such as Nigeria to be murdered and one can only assume that scambaiters are not too popular with their nemeses!
If scambaiting is a subject that interests you then a good site to check out would be 419eater.com, one of the leading scambaiting communities on the internet.
Do you get involved in scambaiting?
What other scambaiting sites would you recommend?
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Sounds dangerous to me.
Potentially it could be, thats why I don’t recommend it.