The New Internet Sport: Scambaiting

This article was published in the Jakarta Post, March 20, 2007.

Jaha Nababan, Contributor, Jakarta

Jaha Nababan and his family died in a sea accident. I never got a chance to write my own obituary.

I was Googling my own name on the Internet to see who was quoting the articles I wrote. To my surprise, I found a forum where someone complained about a 419 email scam he had received.

David Yegeni, the scammer, wrote that I had unclaimed payment for a housing development contract I carried out in South Africa because my whole family and I died at sea. The amount was a mouth-watering US$20 million. Yegeni, the scammer, offered to transfer the unclaimed payment to whoever was willing to pay him a small fee.

According to www.419eater.com, the 419 scheme refers to an advance-fee fraud, so known internationally after a section of the Nigerian penal code.

The schemes usually start with an individual or company receiving a letter or fax, or email in this case, from an alleged "official" representing a foreign government or agency. The correspondence offers to transfer millions of dollars in "over-invoiced contract" funds into the recipient's personal bank account. The sender will provide many fake documents to convince the recipients and encourage the recipient to travel overseas.

The goal is to get money from the recipient through advance fees for various taxes, attorney fees, transaction fees or bribes. Many have fallen victim to such fraud.

The scammers locate victims by using guest books on personal websites. Typing "guestbook" in a search engine will deliver millions of results. The scammers use an abundance of emails to target the victim. Responding to such email will only show the scammer that the email is active.

The people in at www.419eater.com, known as scambaiters, step into the scammers' game. Scambaiters try to scam the scammers and beat them at their own game -- with pranks.

Scambaiting is like a sport that involve scammers and scambaiters, who try to best the other by throwing convincing words and evidence. The scambaiter wins when they are able to get the scammer to do foolish things like send their own photographs or artwork. The scambaiter loses when the scammer finds out about the pranks.

In responding to scams, the scambaiters use funny names such as Shiver Metimber, Eric Shun, Acksi Dent and the like. With a little photo editing skills, scambaiters can provide documents such as airway bills, bank forms, booking forms and even newspaper clips to prove the pranks.

The scambaiters even have their own fake bank, Plunder and Flee Incorporated with a P.O. Box address, to convince the scammers.

There are many free services on the Internet that the scambaiters can use to trick the scammers, such as Internet fax services and Internet voice mail services. The scambaiters consider this a sport and the trophy is a picture of the scammer, not to mention useless international phone calls, fax and courier service charges made by the scammers as bonuses.

Many of the scammers hail from western and southern Africa. According to www.419eater.com, about 50-55 percent of Internet scams come from these areas.

Scambaiters also warn newbees of this new Internet sport, and that the scammers are very dangerous. Newbees are warned not to disclose any personal information nor be persuaded to travel to South Africa, a common destination in these scams. They also underline in a disclaimer that theirs is not a racist site.

The scammers work in syndication. They have the financial capacity to make expensive international calls and faxes, as well as send documents using courier services. In some cases they are willing to sent a few thousand dollars to convince the victim that the money they offer exists.

On my encounter with these scammers, I received emails using names from the Middle East, Asia and many more regions. Judging from the email header, many of these emails are routed back to the African region.

Some of the smarter scammers have figured out that African names will ignite instant suspicion. The names are probably fished out from Google or another search engine.

As mentioned in the introduction, the scammers also use the names they have fished to create a convincing story.

Should one want to enter this new Internet sport, please make sure that the scam email was sent from far away Mugu-land -- land of the scammer.

But www.419eater.com also mentions that many scam attempts are sent from England, Spain, Ireland, the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, Australia and many more.

If your name has been used as a sender in scam email, you can report this to your service provider by sending a copy of the scam email. Consequently, the service provider will likely terminate the account.

On the other hand, it is difficult to handle cases in which your name is used in a scam story, as in my case. The best thing you can do is ask the search engine where you got the hit to erase the entry.

As a preventive measure, running your name occasionally on a search engine can halt further damage to your credibility.

The writer is a Fulbright grantee and Kelly Elizabeth Stephens Scholar, who contributes articles on educational media and technology.