Scam baiting (or scambaiting) is a form of internet vigilantism primarily used towards advance-fee fraud, IRS impersonation scams, technical support scams, [1] pension scams, [2] and consumer financial fraud. [1]
Scambaiters pose as potential victims to waste the time and resources of scammers, gather information useful to authorities, and publicly expose scammers. They may document scammers' tools and methods, warn potential victims, provide discussion forums, disrupt scammers' devices and systems using remote access trojans and computer viruses, or take down fraudulent webpages, while some scambaiters simply call scammers to annoy them and waste their time dealing with a scambaiter, therefore allowing scammers less time to scam potential victims. Some scambaiters are motivated by a sense of civic duty, some simply engage for their own amusement, or a combination of both. [3]
For scams conducted via written communication, baiters may answer scam emails using throwaway email accounts, pretending to be receptive to scammers' offers. [4]
Popular methods of accomplishing the first objective are to ask scammers to fill out lengthy questionnaires; [5] to bait scammers into taking long trips; to encourage the use of poorly made props or inappropriate English-language idioms that surreptitiously cast doubt upon their scams. [6]
Baiters may deceive scammers with claims as ludicrous as the ones they have used to defraud their victims, or they may entrap them with Trojan horses, such as remote administration tools, that enable baiters to gain sensitive information from or damage scammers' computers. Baiters may publicly humiliate scammers by live streaming their sessions [1] or persuading them to produce humiliating images colloquially known as "trophies". Some of the images that were uploaded to early scam baiting websites have been described as a form of schadenfreude [7] or reinforcing racist stereotypes. [8] [9] [10] [11] However, modern day scam baiting content is primarily centred around education on how the scams work and how to prevent falling victim to scams. [12]
In May 2004, a Something Awful forum poster asked for advice on how to deal with a bogus escrow scam from a buyer on eBay. Since the eBay auction was for an Apple PowerBook G4, the poster sent a three-ring binder crudely dressed as a PowerBook and declared it to customs at the value of a real product. The buyer, who lived overseas, paid several hundred dollars in import duties to claim the fake laptop. [4] [13] A member of the scambaiting website 419eater.com was able to convince a scammer to send him a wooden replica of a Commodore 64. [14]
In 2005, a member of 419eater.com posed as an aid worker at a refugee camp on the Chad/Sudan border in order to bait a trio of Nigerian 419 scammers. He convinced the scammers to travel to the camp to receive $145,000 in person, which would require them to travel through a war zone as well as a region experiencing an active genocide. Two of the men attempted the journey before disappearing, presumably having been jailed or killed by militants, and their boss (the uncle of one of the men sent) realized they had been baited only after selling his car to travel to Khartoum after the baiter convinced him that the men were being held in custody there. This sparked a debate on the website regarding the ethics of baiting scammers into dangerous situations. [15]
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. [16]
In January 2014, members of 419eater.com appeared in two segments of the Channel 4 show Secrets of the Scammers. In the first segment scambaiters persuaded a scammer to travel from London to a remote location in Cornwall by train and taxi to meet a victim (played by a baiter) and collect payment for a gold deal. In the second segment a female scammer met with two scambaiters posing as victims in Trafalgar Square to pass them a fake check. This scammer was subsequently questioned by the police.
In 2015 and 2016, James Veitch hosted three TED talks about scambaiting. [17] Veitch also presented the Mashable video series "Scamalot" on YouTube. [18]
In March 2020, an anonymous YouTuber and grey hat hacker under the alias "Jim Browning" infiltrated and gathered drone and CCTV footage of a fraudulent call centre scam operation in India with the help of fellow YouTube personality Karl Rock. Through the aid of the British documentary programme Panorama , a police raid was carried out when the documentary was brought to the attention of assistant police commissioner Karan Goel. [19]
YouTube and Twitch are popular platforms scambaiters use to educate and entertain their audience about various types of scams. [20]
An advance-fee scam is a form of fraud and is a common confidence trick. The scam typically involves promising the victim a significant share of a large sum of money, in return for a small up-front payment, which the fraudster claims will be used to obtain the large sum. If a victim makes the payment, the fraudster either invents a series of further fees for the victim to pay or simply disappears.
A scam, or a confidence trick, is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using a combination of the victim's credulity, naivety, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ... intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators at the expense of their victims ".
Internet fraud is a type of cybercrime fraud or deception which makes use of the Internet and could involve hiding of information or providing incorrect information for the purpose of tricking victims out of money, property, and inheritance. Internet fraud is not considered a single, distinctive crime but covers a range of illegal and illicit actions that are committed in cyberspace. It is differentiated from theft since, in this case, the victim voluntarily and knowingly provides the information, money or property to the perpetrator. It is also distinguished by the way it involves temporally and spatially separated offenders.
419eater.com is a scam baiting website which focuses on advance-fee fraud. The name 419 comes from "419 fraud", another name for advance fee fraud, and itself derived from the relevant section of the Nigerian criminal code. The website founder, Michael Berry, goes by the alias Shiver Metimbers. As of 2013, the 419 Eater forum had over 55,000 registered accounts. According to one member, "Every minute the scammer I'm communicating with is spending on me is a minute he is not scamming a real potential victim."
Email fraud is intentional deception for either personal gain or to damage another individual using email as the vehicle. Almost as soon as email became widely used, it began to be used as a means to defraud people, just as telephony and paper mail were used by previous generations.
A romance scam is a confidence trick involving feigning romantic intentions towards a victim, gaining the victim's affection, and then using that goodwill to get the victim to send money to the scammer under false pretenses or to commit fraud against the victim. Fraudulent acts may involve access to the victim's money, bank accounts, credit cards, passports, Cash App, e-mail accounts, or national identification numbers; or forcing the victims to commit financial fraud on their behalf.
Voice phishing, or vishing, is the use of telephony to conduct phishing attacks.
Telemarketing fraud is fraudulent selling conducted over the telephone. The term is also used for telephone fraud not involving selling.
Sakawa is a Ghanaian term for illegal practices which combine modern Internet-based fraud with African traditionalist rituals. The term or word Sakawa is an Hausa word which means putting inside, how to make money. The rituals, which are mostly in the form of sacrifices, are intended to spiritually manipulate victims so that the scammer's fraud is successful. The term Sakawa referred to specific online scams but has since broadened to include all types of online frauds and scams mainly targeting foreigners. The scammers flaunt stylish clothes, luxury cars, and enormous wealth, in order to promote this act. In impoverished areas, it can be seen as a way of survival for some.
A technical support scam, or tech support scam, is a type of scam in which a scammer claims to offer a legitimate technical support service. Victims contact scammers in a variety of ways, often through fake pop-ups resembling error messages or via fake "help lines" advertised on websites owned by the scammers. Technical support scammers use social engineering and a variety of confidence tricks to persuade their victim of the presence of problems on their computer or mobile device, such as a malware infection, when there are no issues with the victim's device. The scammer will then persuade the victim to pay to fix the fictitious "problems" that they claim to have found. Payment is made to the scammer via gift cards, which are hard to trace and have few consumer protections in place. Technical support scams have occurred as early as 2008. A 2017 study of technical support scams found that of the IPs that could be geolocated, 85% could be traced to locations in India, 7% to locations in the United States and 3% to locations in Costa Rica. Research into tech support scams suggests that millennials and those in generation Z have the highest exposure to such scams; however, senior citizens are more likely to fall for these scams and lose money to them. Technical support scams were named by Norton as the top phishing threat to consumers in October 2021; Microsoft found that 60% of consumers who took part in a survey had been exposed to a technical support scam within the previous twelve months. Responses to technical support scams include lawsuits brought against companies responsible for running fraudulent call centres and scam baiting.
An IRS impersonation scam is a class of telecommunications fraud and scam which targets American taxpayers by masquerading as Internal Revenue Service (IRS) collection officers. The scammers operate by placing disturbing official-sounding calls to unsuspecting citizens, threatening them with arrest and frozen assets if thousands of dollars are not paid immediately, usually via gift cards or money orders. According to the IRS, over 1,029,601 Americans have received threatening calls, and $29,100,604 has been reported lost to these call scams as of March 2016. The problem has been assigned to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Studies highlight that most victims of these scams are aged 20-29 years old and women are more affected than men. One way to decrease the risks of an individual falling victim to IRS impersonation scams is through awareness programs.
The locksmith scam is a scam involving fake business listings for cheap locksmith services that, once called out, overcharge the customer. The scam targets people who call a locksmith out of desperation, usually because of being locked out of their car or premises. Locksmith scams have been reported in the U.S., the U.K., and New Zealand.
Ghana has one of the highest rates of cybercrime in the world, ranking 7th in a 2008 Internet Crime Survey. The most popular form of cybercrime in Ghana is cyberfraud and is typically achieved via credit card fraud. However, recent decreases in universal credit card usage has seen the expansion of other cybercrimes such as blackmail and hacking. This growth in crime has warranted a government response, with policies specifically addressing the cyberspace being developed. This has necessitated various studies including a cyber security maturity study which was inaugurated by the Ministry of Communications and conducted by the Global Cyber Security Capacity Center (GCSCC) of the University of Oxford in collaboration with the World Bank.
Kitboga is the Internet alias of an American Twitch streamer and YouTuber whose content primarily focuses on scam baiting against phone fraud. His channel has over one million followers on Twitch, and his YouTube channel has over three million subscribers.
Jim Browning is the Internet alias of a software engineer and YouTuber from Northern Ireland whose content focuses on scam baiting and investigating call centres engaging in fraudulent activities.
An SSA impersonation scam, or SSA scam, is a class of telecommunications scam targeting citizens of the United States by impersonating Social Security Administration employees. SSA scams are typically initiated through pre-recorded messages, or robocalls, that use social engineering to make victims panic and ensure they follow instructions given to them. In 2018, over 35,000 instances of SSA scam robocalls were reported to the Better Business Bureau with over $10 million lost by victims. Approximately 47% of Americans were subject to an SSA scam robocall during a three-month period between mid- to late 2020, and 21% of seniors were subject to at least three robocalls during the same time period.
An overpayment scam, also known as a refund scam, is a type of confidence trick designed to prey upon victims' good faith. In the most basic form, an overpayment scam consists of a scammer claiming, falsely, to have sent a victim an excess amount of money. The scammer then attempts to convince the victim to return the difference between the sent amount and the intended amount. This scam can take a number of forms, including check overpayment scams and online refund scams.
Scammer Payback, also known by his nickname "Pierogi", is an American YouTuber and streamer, who specializes in creating content about scam baiting against phone scams and Internet scams. He works against a variety of scams over the phone, such as technical support scams, refund scams, social security scams, and IRS impersonation scams.
Rosie Okumura is an American voice actor, content creator, and musician based in Los Angeles. She creates scambaiting videos that combine humor, voice acting, and educational content to expose and counteract fraudulent schemes.
