Scambaiting

[Directing]

used to be active on 419eater, great community, if you have 30 minutes listen to this: this american life

Three guys who go by the names Professor So and So, Jojobean and YeaWhatever spend part of each day running elaborate cons on Internet scammers. They consider themselves enforcers of justice, even after they send a man 1400 miles from home, to the least safe place they can bait him: The border of Darfur.

Edit: Don't forget this gem

 

[Fagnacious D]

These days 419 scammers are so...passe. Indian tech support scammers are all the rage these days!
There is a channel on youtube dedicated to calling the call centers 24/7 and just fucking with them as much as humanly possible. Sometimes they save the recordings of these calls.
One such call involves some one pretending to be a DJ at a wedding all the while some Australian woman yells about a dingo pit in the background:

 

[Darwin Watterson]

I can't find the video at the moment, but I remember one where a guy tricked an Indian scammer into bricking his own computer. The scammer then started panicking and even appeared to cry a little bit. The scambaiter got him to admit that he wasn't from Microsoft like he claimed, but "we're supposed to tell people that we're Microsoft."

The best part? The scammer happened to be using his boss's computer at the time, and it was connected to a server. So once his computer stopped working, all the computers stopped working.

The video was on a channel called Zephyr Audio, which is still up but all the videos have either been taken down or put on private (not sure which). I have no clue why.

 

[Strelok]

These days 419 scammers are so...passe. Indian tech support scammers are all the rage these days!
There is a channel on youtube dedicated to calling the call centers 24/7 and just fucking with them as much as humanly possible. Sometimes they save the recordings of these calls.
One such call involves some one pretending to be a DJ at a wedding all the while some Australian woman yells about a dingo pit in the background:

Eh the Indian ones aren't as funny because at the end of the day it's just wasting some guys time on the Phone and making him REEE. It's nothing compared to tricking a guy to fly 3 continents away or pay COD for 3,000 pounds of cinderblocks they think are iphones, or to film a commercial for anus laptops.

Speaking of, the main forum landing page for this community highlights all the photos they've gotten from lads. http://thescambaiter.com/forum/

419's trophy room is great too http://www.419eater.com/html/trophy_room.htm As is their fail photoshop hall of shame http://www.419eater.com/html/hall_of_shame.htm

 

[A Robin]

I can't find the video at the moment, but I remember one where a guy tricked an Indian scammer into bricking his own computer. The scammer then started panicking and even appeared to cry a little bit. The scambaiter got him to admit that he wasn't from Microsoft like he claimed, but "we're supposed to tell people that we're Microsoft."

The best part? The scammer happened to be using his boss's computer at the time, and it was connected to a server. So once his computer stopped working, all the computers stopped working.

The video was on a channel called Zephyr Audio, which is still up but all the videos have either been taken down or put on private (not sure which). I have no clue why.

If the video was this one, you're in luck! The Wayback Machine actually has the video itself saved. From the description, it seems like some people reacted negatively to it.

 

[Darwin Watterson]

If the video was this one, you're in luck! The Wayback Machine actually has the video itself saved. From the description, it seems like some people reacted negatively to it.

Yep, that's the one!

My guess is that the negative reactions come from the guy going "I'm just trying to feed my family." But then you remember that he's a reprehensible piece of shit who probably preys on the elderly. He didn't bother to get a real job to "feed his family," so fuck him and his family.