Scam Baiting: Is it wrong?

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JesuXPIPassio

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You all know those e-mails where someone is supposedly contracting you, saying they need your help and are willing to reward you with millions of dollars if you assist them? Usually it’s someone saying they have large sums of money but are unable to touch it, and if you help, you’ll get a big chunk of it.

There’s a movement of people who try to act as if they’re complying with those scams. They reply back, acting as if they’re interested, only to try to waste the scammer’s time.

Is it morally wrong to do reply just to mess with them? I thought a bit about the two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right argument, but there are some factors to consider:
  • Some people have wasted their entire life savings, at tens of thousands of dollars and even more.
  • The scammers lured people into other countries, kidnapped them and held them for ransom; it sometimes ends in death.
  • Wasting their time would have the benefit of irritating them, hopefully discouraging them from doing this.
  • It could also potentially take their time away from scamming other people: they’d spend time dealing with my nonsense rather than swindling money out of a senior citizen who needs the money for medication.
Is scamming the scammers wrong?
 
JesuXPIPassio said:
You all know those e-mails where someone is supposedly contracting you, saying they need your help and are willing to reward you with millions of dollars if you assist them? Usually it’s someone saying they have large sums of money but are unable to touch it, and if you help, you’ll get a big chunk of it.

There’s a movement of people who try to act as if they’re complying with those scams. They reply back, acting as if they’re interested, only to try to waste the scammer’s time.

Is it morally wrong to do reply just to mess with them? I thought a bit about the two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right argument, but there are some factors to consider:
  • Some people have wasted their entire life savings, at tens of thousands of dollars and even more.
  • The scammers lured people into other countries, kidnapped them and held them for ransom; it sometimes ends in death.
  • Wasting their time would have the benefit of irritating them, hopefully discouraging them from doing this.
  • It could also potentially take their time away from scamming other people: they’d spend time dealing with my nonsense rather than swindling money out of a senior citizen who needs the money for medication.
Is scamming the scammers wrong?
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Let me also add a few things.

Firstly, I’m not getting any benefit out of this at all, except a good laugh.

Secondly, I wouldn’t be hurting anyone, per se. I’d just be wasting time and being obnoxious, which I do on a daily basis anyway, so I might as well put it to good use.

Thirdly, I wouldn’t be harrassing anyone or anything like that. I’ll answer when they message, but just not in an abusive way. I just plan to be obnoxious.

Fourthly, I wouldn’t go out asking them to message me. They would be the ones to send it to me unsolicited. You know how ubiquitous those messages are.

Lastly, of course, I’d do it in a safe way; the scammers wouldn’t be able to track me down. I did some reading, and apparently they sometimes ask for people’s indentifications. I’m making up a fake, very stupid one. I want them to feel like they’re being treated like they’re stupid, because that’s what they do to other people.
 
By baiting them, you are slowing them down from attacking other victims, using up their resources, and discouraging them from their attacks. I do not think it is wrong at all, but praiseworthy.
 
JesuXPIPassio said:
You all know those e-mails where someone is supposedly contracting you, saying they need your help and are willing to reward you with millions of dollars if you assist them? Usually it’s someone saying they have large sums of money but are unable to touch it, and if you help, you’ll get a big chunk of it.

There’s a movement of people who try to act as if they’re complying with those scams. They reply back, acting as if they’re interested, only to try to waste the scammer’s time.

Is it morally wrong to do reply just to mess with them? I thought a bit about the two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right argument, but there are some factors to consider:
  • Some people have wasted their entire life savings, at tens of thousands of dollars and even more.
  • The scammers lured people into other countries, kidnapped them and held them for ransom; it sometimes ends in death.
  • Wasting their time would have the benefit of irritating them, hopefully discouraging them from doing this.
  • It could also potentially take their time away from scamming other people: they’d spend time dealing with my nonsense rather than swindling money out of a senior citizen who needs the money for medication.
Is scamming the scammers wrong?
Click to expand...
I don’t know the answer but it could be argued that two wrongs don’t make a right.
 
Bible_Reader said:
By baiting them, you are slowing them down from attacking other victims, using up their resources, and discouraging them from their attacks. I do not think it is wrong at all, but praiseworthy.
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Exactly. How could it be wrong to perhaps help someone else from being scammed? There’s no legal avenue to stop these clowns, and as long as your main goal is to frustrate their attempts as taking advantage of someone, it’s a worthwhile endeavor. Police use deception all the time to catch criminals.

If you have fun with it as a side benefit…so much the better. It’s a good thing to enjoy one’s pursuits.
 
since you ask I think it is stupid and irresponsible. you are dealing with professional criminals, often part of organized crime, as an amateur. do you actually think you are going to stop them? you are opening yourself up to further attack by making your contact and info available to every sucker list out there. they have sweatshops of people or automatic programs sending these messages–do you think your reply will slow them down? this is a job best left to the professionals. activate your spam blocker, and report criminal or illegal messages to law enforcement.

what if the issue were porn? would you still advise someone to engage in e conversatin with the purveyors?
 
I am familiar with one such Anti-Scammers operation, and they post their correspondences with the scammers on a website. They use such pseudo-names as “Mr. Kris J. Kringle, Esq.” and lead these scammers on a wild goose chase of back and forth correspondence, resulting in very, very hilarious results! The Kris Kringle one had me in such a fit of laughter that I almost passed out from lack of oxygen!

And why not? They are out to scam you, so sure, have some fun at their expense. Though very entertaining, the anti-scammers scam can also be seen almost as a certain form of ministry, in which the innocent, naive, or vulnerable are saved while you keep the vultures occupied. There is nothing wrong with that at all.
 
puzzleannie said:
report criminal or illegal messages to law enforcement.

what if the issue were porn? would you still advise someone to engage in e conversatin with the purveyors?
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Which law enforcement? It’s usually international.

Porn is a different story altogether, isn’t it? Do you know of any porn scams? One is not engaging in their “wares” to slow down their scammnig efforts.

I can see a problem with trying to stop, say, online solicitation of minors by engaging in efforts to find and trap them…but again, totally different than scambaiting.
 
puzzleannie said:
since you ask I think it is stupid and irresponsible. you are dealing with professional criminals, often part of organized crime, as an amateur. do you actually think you are going to stop them? you are opening yourself up to further attack by making your contact and info available to every sucker list out there. they have sweatshops of people or automatic programs sending these messages–do you think your reply will slow them down? this is a job best left to the professionals. activate your spam blocker, and report criminal or illegal messages to law enforcement.

what if the issue were porn? would you still advise someone to engage in e conversatin with the purveyors?
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Look, I’m not an idiot. I’m not opening myself up to them because I’m using fake e-mail addresses and fake names. I believe I made it clear in a previous post that I’d do it in a safe way.
 
What’s that guy’s name on MSNBC that does this kind of stuff? To catch a thief or predator and those kind of things.
 
wjp984 said:
What’s that guy’s name on MSNBC that does this kind of stuff? To catch a thief or predator and those kind of things.
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Yeah, Chris Hansen. That’s how I got the idea – that programme was on again yesterday. I went online and evidently, there are a lot of people who do that. There’s one hillarious one where a guy replies, writes really long and silly e-mails disguised as serious business, just to get on those people’s nerves. I laughed myself silly.

They have videos of that MSNBC thing on YouTube.

You know what really makes me mad? Well, my mom owns a care home for the elderly and ill, and one of the patients who stayed there was swindled by this stuff. He didn’t know it was a scam, and sent money through Western Union to those people. The money was supposed to pay for the taxes of the thing.

My mom knows taxes, and she was suspicious of it. She told me about it, and I printed out some articles for that patient talking about how people get swindled from this. The sad thing is that he still insisted that he wasn’t being taken.

The patient, by the way, is a veteran diabetic amputee. Sick what those people do to trusting seniors.
 
JesuXPIPassio said:
You all know those e-mails where someone is supposedly contracting you, saying they need your help and are willing to reward you with millions of dollars if you assist them? Usually it’s someone saying they have large sums of money but are unable to touch it, and if you help, you’ll get a big chunk of it.

There’s a movement of people who try to act as if they’re complying with those scams. They reply back, acting as if they’re interested, only to try to waste the scammer’s time.

Is it morally wrong to do reply just to mess with them? I thought a bit about the two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right argument, but there are some factors to consider:
  • Some people have wasted their entire life savings, at tens of thousands of dollars and even more.
  • The scammers lured people into other countries, kidnapped them and held them for ransom; it sometimes ends in death.
  • Wasting their time would have the benefit of irritating them, hopefully discouraging them from doing this.
  • It could also potentially take their time away from scamming other people: they’d spend time dealing with my nonsense rather than swindling money out of a senior citizen who needs the money for medication.
Is scamming the scammers wrong?
Click to expand...
It won’t really do any good, but it is funny:
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JesuXPIPassio said:
Look, I’m not an idiot. I’m not opening myself up to them because I’m using fake e-mail addresses and fake names. I believe I made it clear in a previous post that I’d do it in a safe way.
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Even with taking these precautions, I’d still be worried they can track you through your computer’s IP address or something. I’m not a computer expert, though, so I tend to err on the side of paranoia in these matters. Personally, I wouldn’t want to take the chance, but if you feel comfortable doing it, go right ahead. 😛
 
I just got one of those e-mails scams today. Some person claiming they need help gaining access to a 7 million dollar beneficairy and that they need help since they are a single mom trying to raise 3 kids and all that you know what. I deleted it since it’s not worth my time. Plus as long as I don’t respond they have no idea whether it is a valid e-mail or not but if I do respond, I’m likely to get a lot more of them from others.
 
wjp984 said:
I just got one of those e-mails scams today. Some person claiming they need help gaining access to a 7 million dollar beneficairy and that they need help since they are a single mom trying to raise 3 kids and all that you know what. I deleted it since it’s not worth my time. Plus as long as I don’t respond they have no idea whether it is a valid e-mail or not but if I do respond, I’m likely to get a lot more of them from others.
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Actually, whether or not you respond, you’ll still get those e-mails. I did a bit of research on this. There is a whole army of these scammers, so if you ignore one, it won’t stop the other people who will.

It’s annoying, isn’t it? At first, I didn’t really mind the spam, since all I had to do was click on delete, but after a while there were just so many of them that I got irritated. That’s one of the reasons why it would be fun to scambait – it’ll give them some payback.

Anyway, if you want a tip, the way to make these e-mails stop is to refrain from putting your e-mail address anywhere. They primarily get these e-mail addresses through guestbooks on websites. If you do publish your e-mail address somewhere, put it in a format like “[name] -at- [domain] -dot- com/net/org/[whatever]”. Don’t use the “@” or the other standard things that make it obvious it’s an e-mail address.

They get your e-mail address through software that sifts through sites. Long story short, if you see the word “mugu,” that’s an indicator that they use that website for e-mail address harvesting.

I made up a couple e-mail addresses for this purpose alone, and I published them on websites’ guestbooks just a couple days ago. Already there are about ten or so solicitors.
 
JesuXPIPassio said:
Look, I’m not an idiot. I’m not opening myself up to them because I’m using fake e-mail addresses and fake names. I believe I made it clear in a previous post that I’d do it in a safe way.
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And presumably, not on your home computer, or any computer that can be traced back to you or to anyone of importance to you, right? (Like, say, your boss, or your mother, etc.)
 
It is pretty easy to do a traceback via the internet. So unless you are a very savvy hacker, know all the codes and that get sent back and forth, I think engaging is such activity is dangerous.

The rest of this post presumes that you indeed qualified to take on internet hackers, which is what many of these posters are.

If you are doing this just harass them, I would say it is a waste of time. If you are doing this in an effort to turn this information over to law enforcement authorities to get these people arrested and prosecuted, then I would encourage you to coordinate with the law enforcement authorities on this and not play cowboy. You could find yourself is deep do-do, financial and legal, if you do not.
 
JesuXPIPassio said:
You all know those e-mails where someone is supposedly contracting you, saying they need your help and are willing to reward you with millions of dollars if you assist them? Usually it’s someone saying they have large sums of money but are unable to touch it, and if you help, you’ll get a big chunk of it.

There’s a movement of people who try to act as if they’re complying with those scams. They reply back, acting as if they’re interested, only to try to waste the scammer’s time.

Is it morally wrong to do reply just to mess with them? I thought a bit about the two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right argument, but there are some factors to consider:
  • Some people have wasted their entire life savings, at tens of thousands of dollars and even more.
  • The scammers lured people into other countries, kidnapped them and held them for ransom; it sometimes ends in death.
  • Wasting their time would have the benefit of irritating them, hopefully discouraging them from doing this.
  • It could also potentially take their time away from scamming other people: they’d spend time dealing with my nonsense rather than swindling money out of a senior citizen who needs the money for medication.
Is scamming the scammers wrong?
Click to expand...
I don’t know if it’s immoral, but I think it would be a colossal waste of time.😛
 
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