Who scams the scammers? Meet the scambaiters
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Our twist on ghost banning was that they could all see and message each other. We gave them full functionality like paid accounts, just only usable to connect to other scammers. So they were in scammer hell trying to convince each other to send money due to various made up catastrophes.
But yes, we had a classification system to identify them and any close'ish calls were verified by humans before being dumped into the wasteland.
There were certain patterns that were easy to identify which would guarantee they were scammers (think IP in Nigeria while claiming to be a farmer in Topeka, Kansas), while other cases needed a bit more of the human touch before making a determination.
I led them on a merry chase for 6 weeks back in 2009. I managed to get them fighting amongst themselves, the whole group sending me angry emails, and eventually even got them to admit they were scammers under the pretense that I was a hacker for hire who could help them improve their operation.
It was probably the most hilarious thing I have ever done.
I still like to talk to scammers when they call, so I can figure out what the scam is all about and maybe waste some of their time. If it is a US company selling bogus car insurance or "vacation packages" (i.e. timeshare pitches), I'll keep them on long enough to to gather the necessary info for an FCC complaint.
A surprising number are companies operating on the edge of legality in the US, like the aforementioned timeshare and car insurance companies. I get a lot of folks trying to get me to provide my electric utility account number, which I presume means they are running a dodgy electricity credit reseller scam of some sort:
https://callmepower.com/suppliers/alternate-supplier-definit...
Then there's the "support the police" calls, which always trace back to a PAC which supports Republican candidates, but which has very little evidence that any of that money ever was spent in support of those candidates.
The other surprising thing: Most of these scammers know who you are, and where you live, and probably more about you which they aren't sharing. In recent years, they will hang up on me as soon as I provide a fake name. If I provide a real name, they often confirm my details with me.
This last thing - that scammers have all your info when they call - you can all guess how that happens.
Complaint form is here:
https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/requests/new?tic...
Can you say more about this? I've never had any luck getting information out of them.
The minimum you need is the company name they are calling from. The auto insurance places often will hang up when you ask that question, so you have to be clever how you present the question.
A website for the company is even better. A phone number, if one is not provided on CallerID is also helpful.
The form is here:
https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/requests/new?tic...
Sometimes I get calls from purported cable ISP's claiming there's a software update needed, and after "performing" the update, they ask for payment via gift card. These are relatively rare calls.
It's just incredible. The bot has managed to fish out essential details to get the scammers' bank account reported.
If cryptocurrency-fiat exchanges were banned, alongside better enforcement and monitoring of wire transfers, and more restrictions on giftcard sales - you can basically remove the ability to transfer the illicit funds internationally and remove the incentive for scamming to begin with.
The same goes for following up on domain name registration details, and phone number assignment, to make it impossible to hide behind pseudo-anonymity. I remember a while back there were a load of scam Nintendo Switch sale sites, literally just opening as many as they could to gather credit card details before being shut down. Stuff like that should be tracked down and prosecuted.
I'm pretty sure scamming predates cryptocurrencies.
Too many people are so triggerhappy to take away legitimate use of some things, because "crime/terror".
The ethics of taking this freedom out of the hands of legitimate users aside, wouldn't this would just immediately lead to a black market for cryptocurrencies the same way countries with currency controls have black markets for foreign currency?
The government can't even keep items as easily identified as drugs out of tightly-controlled environments like prisons, how does it expect to keep cryptocurrency out of the hands of the people? We don't need more restrictions and more bureaucracy, we need our governments to get their arse in gear and use the existing tools they have to tackle scammers and other criminals rather than their usual "remove more freedoms with a knee-jerk 'we're doing something' for the press, then do the square root of sod all to actually address the problem at hand".