419eater.com

419eater.com is a scam baiting website which focuses on advance fee fraud. The website founder, Michael Berry, goes by the alias Shiver Metimbers. The 419 Eater forum has over 20,000 registered accounts, although not all of these belong to active members.

Concept

The website chronicles various reverse scams, known as "baits," with e-mail exchanges between the baiters and the alleged scammers, and commentary by the participants. The site hosts photographs of individuals reported to be scammers in humorous poses, or holding signs such as "I recommend 419eater". These photographs, according to the members who post them, were in most cases obtained during the process of a bait: the baiter, posing as an actual victim, will request the photos from the scammer, who will comply in the belief that the "victim" is about to fall for the scam and send money. Some scambaiters take advantage of the scammers' poorer English skills and get them to hold signs with humiliating phrases such as "I shag sheep" or "arse bandit" without actually knowing what they're saying. Berry asserts that anyone posing for such pictures is doing it of his own free will.

In some cases, the scambaiter claims to have had the scammers send "them" money with a ploy similar to the original flim flam. This is known informally as cash baiting. According to Berry as documented in some of his successful cash baits, the proceeds of such reverse scams were given to a local charity. The moderators of the 419 Eater site, as well as an overwhelming majority of the members, have taken a stand against cash baiting or its discussion on the site's forums. [http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24575] Berry has added a disclaimer to baits where he tried to receive money, pointing out that not only is cash baiting illegal, but the scammers are criminals, sometimes violent criminals, and stealing money from them can be dangerous as the scammers may attempt to uncover and pursue the baiter.

The website also includes a message forum that offers tutorials and tools to help new scambaiters learn how to bait, [http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=12&sid=1775b23d51229f6005745b6892bdcdbf] as well a bulletin board where scambaiters can post messages to communicate with each other. The message forum appears to serve several purposes, allowing scambaiters to ask questions or solicit ideas for ongoing baits; share their baits in progress; collaborate with other baiters to organize individual baits towards a common objective; and have discussions about scambaiting in general. It also serves as a sort of gathering place for scambaiters to socialize online, where they can offer comments, encouragement and praise for the work of other scambaiters. New scambaiters can request to be assigned a "mentor" to assist them in learning how to bait. [http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16765]

The 419eater community also engages in the activity of identifying and removing fake banks and other websites created by the scammers from the Internet, as well as shutting down bank accounts used by scammers in the process of their illegal scamming activities. It does this in cooperation with Artists Against 419 which host a large, publicly accessible database of fake banks.

Berry was a featured guest on BBC Radio 2's "The Jeremy Vine Show" on 1 November 2006. Berry has also collected some of the scambaits shown on website, and some unpublished ones, to a book "Greetings in Jesus Name!: The Scambaiter Letters" (Harbour Books Ltd., ISBN 1905128088). In early 2008, Berry retired from active involvement in 419eater.com to concentrate on work and other projects, [ [http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1047556 forum.419eater.com :: View topic - *** THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH, JIM LAD! *** ] ] handing control over to one of the site's long-running system administrators. The 419eater.com community still remains highly active.

Beginning September 6, 2007 [ [http://www.spamnation.info/blog/archives/2007/09/419eater_ddosd.html 419Eater DDoS'd? ] ] , the 419eater.com website—among other "scam warning" websites—was subjected to a massive botnet DDoS attack which rendered the site unreachable. However, by September 18, 2007, the site and forums were both back online.

Activity on 419eater.com - particularly the Letters Archive section where scambaiting accounts are posted for public enjoyment - slowed significantly throughout 2007, and almost no new content was posted in the first half of 2008.

References

ee also

*Scam baiting
*Advance fee fraud

External links

* [http://419eater.com 419eater.com]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20070520103652/http://www.419eater.com/ Official Site is down - archive.org mirror (20/05/2007)]
* [http://forum.419eater.com/forum/index.php The 419eater forum] with over 21,700 members
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3887493.stm "Turning the tables on Nigeria's e-mail conmen"] , 13 July 2004, "BBC News"
* [http://www.harbourbooks.co.uk/titles_detail_1.asp?ID=13 Greetings in Jesus Name!: The Scambaiter Letters]
* [http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/nigerian-blue-makes-scammers-act-up/2007/02/20/1171733742452.html "Pining for the frauds: scammers act up"] , February 20, 2007, "The Sydney Morning Herald"
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/technology/02spam.html?ex=1188878400&en=e060765c2b6a5b54&ei=5070 A Web Cadre Turns the Tables on African Scam Artists] , "New York Times"