Scam baiting

Main article: Internet vigilantism

Scam baiting is a form of Internet vigilantism, where the vigilante poses as a potential victim to the scammer in order to waste their time and resources, gather information that will be of use to authorities, and publicly expose the scammer. It is, in essence, a form of social engineering that may have an altruistic motive or may be motivated by malice. It is primarily used to thwart the Advance-fee fraud scam and can be done out of a sense of civic duty, as a form of amusement, or both.

A bait is very simply initiated, by answering a scam email, from a throwaway email account, e.g. one that is only used for baiting. The baiter then pretends to be receptive to the financial hook that the scammer is using.

The objectives of baiting are, in no particular order:

1. Keep the bait going as long as possible, thus costing the scammer time and energy.
2. Gather as much information as possible, so that the scammer can be personally identified and publicly exposed.
3. Ensuring the scams, and any names used, are easily found by search-engine spiders, as a preventive strategy.

The most important element of scam-baiting, however, is simply to waste as much of the scammer's time as possible. The idea is that when a scammer is preoccupied with a baiter who has no intention of falling victim to the scam, it prevents the scammer in question from conning genuine victims out of their money.

Amusements that the baiter may gain from the interaction include fooling the scammer into falling for claims just as ludicrous as the ones that the scammer is using to defraud his victims. Baiters will often use joke names which, while obviously ludicrous to a native or fluent English speaker, will go unnoticed by the scammer. Similarly baiters may introduce characters, and even plot-lines, from movies or television shows for comedic effect.

In February 2011, the Belgian television show Basta portrayed, with hidden cameras, how a scammer was fooled during a meeting with baiters, raising the stakes by involving a one-armed man, two dwarves and a pony. Eventually, a police raid was faked, during which the baiters were arrested and the scammer went free, abandoning the money, and without any suspicion.^[1]

References

1. ^ Pest eens een internetfraudeur Basta on YouTube (in Dutch)

See also

Internet portal

• 419eater.com
• Sting operation
• Internet vigilantism

External links

• Scam baiting at the Yahoo! Directory

• Advanced fee fraud humor at the Open Directory Project