Years ago I got into a deep conversation with a gift card scammer over the phone. We talked for almost 30 minutes about the inner workings of the scam and the exchange rate of gift cards to local currency. Eventually I asked him why he doesn’t leave his country for more opportunity as he was clearly intelligent with strong English skills. He explained that a passport in his country cost thousands of US dollars. I told him that in the US a passport costs $100 every 10 years and he was shocked! It clearly upset him. At that point he said he had to go as his manager was coming. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that call.
I had similar interactions with spammer over the years.
I don't quiet follow the 'leaving your country for more opportunity'. It's just not an option for a vast majority of people, and scamming folks that are many fold more wealthy than them is sometimes a vaguely viable options. 30$ goes a long, long way.
My family moved around quiet a bit across countries. It's ... not easy or straightforward. It require a lot of economical and cultural capital.
This seems like an anti-scammer fantasy. I’d like to see some examples of the stories that are created out of scammers following these procedures. Just stats like how many made it through each stage will be funny.
It seems like it won’t be very effective in saving the poster time as they’ll get the same number of messages. But any time spent by scammers at least is less time on others. However, I suspect scammers have lots of free time because they cast a wide net with spam and then reply back to every single person who responds. So they will still interact with the same number of people, they will just waste more time and go home later. My understanding is that most scammers are in very poor nations so scammers working long days is pretty cheap.
It’s different from synchronous spam like telemarketing where occupying a scammer does literally reduce the amount of time someone else would get.
Reminds me of instances where I played with Craigslist scammers who sent fake PayPal emails and asked to ship to countries like Nigeria, Sudan, etc. I used to create a new usps label (and request refund later) and give it. When there's no activity i asked them to call the post office and speak to them. Used to be fun
This will work for a few days until the 419ers update their scripts to filter these out. To succeed you'd need a lot more domains and scripts, and ask for overly specific but plausible information that takes time for attacker to provide.
These guys aren't dumb; they run efficient operations.
That could be 3 different scammers with your number rather than 1 single scammer calling you that many times. It changes, slightly, the perception of efficiency. Essentially, these places all shop at AllYourDataAreBelongToSale.com
someone should set up a script or something for mailinabox for example. that way people who are doing selfhosting can just do this on their own domain so it looks more plausible?
question. if scammers do "realize" this technique and block you, would that mean a signal for them to not bother this guy? or what?
Clever. So the rest of us just need to send a single reply with that first email address to set a chain of events into motion since the scripts are already set. Hah
