David Modic wrote:
Pennywise wrote:
David Modic wrote:
Sir, you have seen through my clever ruse
I never fall for a person trying to scam, uh sorry, trying to sell me something
To be honest I am rather curious about your view on scambaiters and victim support sites.
I will gladly oblige a little later - I am, at the moment, in Pittsburgh, PA - attending Security and Human Behavior workshop at the Carnegie Mellon University. As soon as I get back to UK, I'll take some time and reply properly.
Hi, I am back in the Old Blighty and can write a little more about what I think about scambaiting and victim support sites.
I am slightly ambivalent about both. I enjoy scambaiting sites, I like reading the exploits described there but am aware at the same time that for instance 419 scams result in a couple of (victims') deaths each year (literature supporting my claims on the subject exists on the Internet, for those who are interested), so scambaiting is not completely safe. In essence scambaiting is
playing with fire. We know that some people choose to play with fire and are reasonably good at doing it (for example circus artists or arsonits
), but they are certainly not good at it because they would not be aware of the consequences. I guess, what I am trying to say is - I think scambaiting is a valuable service, one that brings joy to many victims, but scambaiters should be aware of the risks. Some undoubtedly are, but I am not sure whether all of them are.
As far as victim support sites go, I believe they provide a valuable service, while having several drawbacks at the same time - their retention is, I guess, pretty low (at least if we judge by my experiment response rate here
- out of 25000 members of this site, about 20 have responded to the experiment so far, which leads me to believe that many people come to such sites to find answers, register, find them, but not stay here for longer); they concentrate victims in one place, which is something scammers might be particularly pleased with. Since I joined this site I have apparently been put on many sucker lists - I have never before gotten so many fraudulent emails in such a short period of time. I can't prove causality and I am not really complaining anyway - all of those emails are going into my PhD in one way or another
. I can easily imagine, though, that other members wouldn't appreciate getting so many scams delivered to their mailbox. My spam filters are off - I look for scams, not block them, that is perhaps why I notice an increase. The support value of sites like these, however, should not be underestimated. I think it is priceless, although I find it bitter-sweet that on an institutional level there is not much effort put into helping the victims, so in a sense these sites fill a niche that should have been filled already.