« Don't feed the troll | Main | Name that Baby »

August 7, 2006
Scamming the Scammers

Okay, you know those Nigerian email scams? Of course you do. Anybody with an email address knows what I'm talking about. If you don't, here's a summary.

Well here's a story from Wired News about people who are doing something about it.

Metimbers and crew turn the tables on scammers one by one, boomeranging the tricksters' own tactics to entice them into performing outlandish tasks in desperate pursuit of cash -- then trumpeting evidence of the con artists' naïveté for the online world's amusement.

A 43-year-old, self-employed computer engineer from Manchester, England, Metimbers has most recently spun counter-yarns that have compelled 419ers to make elaborate wood carvings, pose for comical photos and fly from London to Scotland. In one episode, which concluded in March after a five-month exchange, he succeeded in having a Nigerian fraudster tattoo "Baited by Shiver" on his body in order to claim a fictional $46,000 prize.

"Another time, the scammer thought he was going to get $18,000 out of me, but I actually got the guy to send me $80," said Metimbers, who started the 419 Eater community site almost three years ago after receiving a wave of spam in his inbox.

"I've got between five and 10 on the go at any one time," Metimbers said. "The worst thing that could possibly happen to these guys is they get their photo slapped on a website. I feel like a cybervigilante, doing my bit for the public."

Awesome. Here's the whole story.

Posted by Papa-Lu at August 7, 2006 8:37 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.stblogs.org/scgi-bin/mv/mt-tb.cgi/19577
Comments
Post a comment
I welcome and encourage everybody to let me know what they think. It's OK to disagree with me, just be nice. I reserve the right to delete comments which are uncharitable, even if I agree with the content. My standards are purely subjective, so don't even bother trying to figure them out.




Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)


Please enter the security code you see here