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It seems the article must have been put somewhere else because I am getting hits from all over the world now. Can those of you visiting let me know where you saw it? ;)
Thanks to the New Zealanders for the lovely emails and messages of support, you guys rock!
So as you may have heard, a little article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald as well as The Age..
It’s the same article as far as I can tell. And yes, I am the Taryn responsible, though of course Taryn is not my real name and may I just point out, if you’re using your real name on the internet, that’s not a good idea. People can track you down. Seriously. Don’t do it. It’s dumb-itty dumb and very dangerous.
Someone linked to the article on a discussion forum I hang out at and for some reason a mod there thinks it’s not ok to scambait so therefore has denied discussion which encourages scambaiting or tells people how to do it. Which is akin to handing people a loaded gun and refusing to give them instructions on how *not* to shoot themselves, in my opinion. If you want to scambait, you need to be doing it safely, and if you want to do it but nobody is allowing you to find out how to do it safely, that’s putting people’s personal safety at risk. And so the reason for this post. Sorry if the mod concerned doesn’t like it, but this is my blog and you have no power here. ;)
Scammers are criminals. They have been known to kidnap, torture, and murder victims. If you give them any personal information that they could trace you with, you could be in danger. So you need to make everything up. Fake names, fake addresses, and in fact make them somewhere far from where you really live. When I first started out baiting, I was pretending to be in the USA.
Secondly, the internet uses things called IP addresses (our little anonymous friend from yesterday will enjoy this bit) and those can actually identify your computer. For example – click here – every time you send an email your IP address goes with it, and someone who knows what they are doing can look at the headers of the email, and see your IP address.
But wait, there’s more, because every time you visit a website, your computer tells that website all kinds of information – such as your browser type, what kind of operating system you use, even right down to your screen resolution. People like me use trackers which take a copy of all of that information each time you visit here. That’s no problem if you’re a nice person who just wants to read my blog, but if you want to leave a nasty comment, you’re screwed, because all that info is right there just waiting for me to send it to your ISP. ;) which of course, I already have. So look forward to what Karma is bringing you, my little anonymous mate. ;) So you don’t visit scammer websites without knowing how to *hide* all that information.
Scambaiters need to know a few technical things in order to be able to do what we do. We’re pretty smart, it’s really not a good idea to mess with us.
As a scambaiter, you do not want to give any tools to the lad that they could use to scam an actual real person. And the scammers do ask for things like id3ntification – p@ssports, driv3rs lic3nces. They want to make sure you are a real person, and they want to see you are cooperating.
So given that boredom has truly set in, I have spent some time in creating a few little masterpieces to send to them. I had a baiting mentee once who I believe was a true genius, and he was bcc’ing me on all the emails he sent to the scammers. One day I opened up the email and laughed so much it hurt. He’d sent them some id, all right. Only it looked like this..
Yes, that is the exact same file – size and all. Most scammers just accept this – they don’t even open the file. The odd scammer will make an issue of it and want to get you to send a bigger file, but that does not really happen too often. So I now have about 100 files that look similar to that, all ready and waiting for the scammers to ask.. :)
The lads often put in similar effort, and today seeing as I was looking for that file above, I thought over the next week I would share with you some of the more hilarious things they have sent me. Today, a couple of photos that lads have sent me which are supposed to be pictures of them. You may click on these for larger images and amusement. :)
– and some of the things I have sent back to them.. Starting with one of my favourite lads, Mr Alf Olds. Here is some Back To The Future style scaring I did to him.
I have sent you two emails this week with no reply. I know you have read them.
I have now put a curse on you, that if you do not reply to me and tell me what the situation is with the deal you will begin to get very ill. I am sending you this photo that shows you it has started already. When you fade out of this photo completely, you will die.
You have 48 hours to get back to me.
I am ready to travel to South Africa this week. If you are ready and have the balls to do the deal. I have a great amount of doubt in you now. Show me you can be trusted.
He did not reply, so I sent him an email that said this –
YOU ARE NEARLY DEAD! SEE YOUR WHOLE HEAD IS GONE.
He still didn’t reply, so as I recall, a fellow baiter and I called him and yelled at him a bit, or something.
My other readers can skip this post, I’ll post something useful and interesting shortly.
Rumours continue to abound that I am secretly plotting against other scambaiters to the point that I feel the need to clarify the following. Please take the time to actually read this post and absorb it, instead of interpreting it to mean something entirely different.
In the past few weeks, I have laughed at the following rumours –
– that I am secretly wanting to take over a site that belongs to a fellow scambaiter – a site which I rarely visit and if I do visit it is only to have a good laugh at the carrots stuck up the rear ends of people who participate there.
– that I am a part of some fictitious group which is plotting to hack and take over sites.
– that I have been goading other baiters into doing things which have caused issues for others.
– that I am a master of puppets, pulling people’s strings from a distance.
I know I am NOT plotting against anyone, and in fact I couldn’t give a shit about any of those people I used to call friends who turned out to be incredibly two faced. You know who you are, if you are reading this. You know what you did.
I have built a bridge, walked over it, and truly am working on MY OWN PROJECTS NOW which have absolutely NOTHING to do with any of you and are IN NO WAY plotting against you. To quote Jane Austen –
Perhaps you need more tinfoil hats? Perhaps you need to stop hanging out on skype chats or secret little boards discussing things and making them into conspiracies that do not exist? And perhaps you need to make sure your secret boards hide their referrers when you link to my blog, because stupidly one of you clicked through to here from your secret website. So it’s not so secret now.
And perhaps I am a master of puppets after all, if me doing nothing at all except for getting on with my life without reference to any person so wholly unconnected with me as these people are can cause such rumours to persist and abound.
It’s been a over a year since I was removed from one site, and almost as long a time since I stepped down from holding any responsibility on other sites. I am not angry, I am not holding any grudges, I’ll be honest and say that when I do occasionally think of you, I think the majority of you are assholes who will find Karma kicking your ass at some point in the future, but that is where it ends.
There’s maybe one or two of you who are decent people but when gathered in a group and something happens, you act like chickens with their heads cut off, and panic, and do stupid things. Remember the advice from the Royal Family?
That’s what you need to do in future.
So instead of saying stuff about me or other people, why don’t you BAIT SOME FUCKING SCAMMERS? This is the second time I have suggested you do that. Why not do something useful? Why not try to be decent people instead of such fuckwits all the time?
And to the decent scambaiters out there, and there are many of you, who don’t participate in these gossip festivals, who don’t wish harm to any fellow scambaiters, who only want to hurt the lads, good on you guys. There are so many baiters who seem to have forgotten it is about hurting the lads and not each other, and baiting the lads and not each other.
Nobody around me is in the Christmas Spirit, at all. Those guys work in retail. By the time Christmas gets here they are exhausted, and they have to work a 13 hour day when they go back to work for the sales.
My Mother is the worst. No christmas tree. No lights. No presents. It’ll just be like any ordinary day, except we will be eating prawns and lobster.
Speaking of which, it is very strange that I actually get fed less seafood at their house now living near the coast than I did when they lived in Tamworth, a 3 hour drive from the sea.
Yesterday we went to the Meat Raffle, and my Mother won twice with the same *number* – out of over 9,000 numbers. How freaky is that? We got us a nice chicken pack and a ham, so roast chicken for dinner today. YAY! Then my ticket won a pack so we got a roast beef and a beef steaks and sausages pack. I cooked the other half sausages, eggs and bacon for dinner.
It’s been raining here for the last 2 days. This is a good thing. When you live in the country you never say anything bad about rain. In fact you enjoy it, you go out and get wet. Yesterday there were people playing golf in a major downpour while we were at the sports club. That’s called nuts, in my opinion. Lucky there was no thunder around.
I was just checking through my emails and a scammer lad sent me this –
I JUST RECIEVE YOUR MAIL RIGHT AWAY YOU KNOW GO TO HAIL WITH SO CALL FBI NEVER YOUM MAIL ME AGAIN
Well I don’t know about going to Hail.. :) But I like hail too, almost as much as rain, as long as the car is in the garage..
Put down that drink, don’t be eating anything when you scroll down. Just trust me on this one. It’s perfectly work safe, but may induce hysterical laughter..
We have a lad that a bunch of people on scambaits are baiting, he claims to be a police detective in Nigeria and he can get our money back that we’ve been scammed out of. So we’ve asked him to track down some of our favourite scammers for us.
Of course the lad I asked about was the lad I first baited because as I mentioned here there is just something about the lad you bait first. And knowing this detective guy is just a scammer trying to get money out of me, I thought I might try and get a little something out of him first. So he told me my scammer was in jail, and I asked him to go over there and take a photo of him, and once he’s done that I’ll pay him for his expenses, and also to find me a lawyer and stuff.
He told me ok, he would do that, and on the 13th he said he had a photo but he could not seem to attach it. I’d say he’s been working pretty hard with photoshop since then, in order to create the following..
:)
And I was all ready to go to bed, it was just one last check of the email, and the minute I saw this I laughed out loud for about ten minutes.. :)
This is why I scambait. You never know what hilarious thing is going to come to you as a surprise next..
lad that you scambait.. ;) Any scambaiter will tell you. You bait them once, and you just don’t want to let them go. You find yourself googling for names they used, telephone numbers you used to call, their format, all kinds of things.. ;)
My first scammer was a gorgeous young lad by the name of
Francis, or Christopher, or something.. I don’t think he was actually quite sure what his name was himself.
The bait started out with me setting a time limit – I wanted to be done with this lad by the start of February because I was going on holidays. However, the bait took on a life of its own, with (fake) stars of great magnitude joining in on the fun (Guy Sebastian, Andrew G, Usher) and it went for far longer than I planned.
And lucky me, I finally found him again, at long last! I’ve sent off an email, and I hope he will come back to me as a surprise, and maybe I can get another long bait out of him. I think he’s ready for it. I know I am!
Had a terrible sleep, due to nightmares of trucks rolling down cliffs. I believe I managed 4 hours in total. Then a long day of driving, in terrible weather, rain, low visibility.. and NO decent music because our little mp3 in the cigarette lighter thing would not work in the truck.. I’m so spoilt having that thing, and so used to it that 8 hours listening to the radio makes me want to dead people.
Not many photos were taken, not many stops were made, weather too bad. I now go to bed and sleep at least 12 hours. Be good ya’all, I’ll be back with the few pictures I did manage when I get up.. ;)
If you’re looking for something to read, have a look here – I posted it yesterday. And something is wrong with blogger, I could not make the link link. :( If that makes sense. GRRR
I seem to have me a few new visitors today. You know, rather than believe what you’ve been told about me, there’s enough of me here on this blog now for you to make up your own mind. If you want to, that is. There’s archives, scroll down in the sidebar, you’ll find them.
You can start right at the beginning and work your way forwards. See if I’m who they are telling you I am, or if I am something entirely different. But if you’re going to read check your paranoia and your ego – leave it at the door. It’s not very likely that I’m talking about you.
I’ll be back a little later on today with a new post for ya’all and this is hopefully the last time that shizznit will intrude here. I just wanted to say the above.. ;) Thanks for the emails of support, everyone, I really appreciate it. :)
Have a look at this incredible new blog I found on the blogs of note today – Antarctica. Wow, it’s beautiful..
