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Spam The Internet Your Rights Online

Artists Against 419 Takes On Scammers 244

Posted by timothy from the more-power-to-you-esteemed-friend dept.
419scammers writes "Hello, The following site is an anti scammers 419 site (plus associated scams) which has started to receive a great deal of publicity in a number of countries national publications. Their fifth international flash mob has now started. Have a look at the monthly flash mob link. Enjoy." An anonymous reader adds "More than 50 identified websites of the Nigeria-Connection are being targeted and the first ones has been already disabled. It was a very bad idea to copy the website of an innocent lawfirm..."
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Artists Against 419 Takes On Scammers More

Artists Against 419 Takes On Scammers

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @07:40PM (#9036651)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Joke's on who? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 02, 2004 @07:58PM (#9036759)
      "Q: Why are there so many broken images on your site? A: That's not a bug! It's a feature! If you can see any picture it means that a website of a 419 criminal is still not down. But they have to pay a price for it! Actualy our aim is to present only broken images at our web site." So to answer your question, by slashdotting the site, we are helping take down the 419 sites.

    • Re:Joke's on who? (Score:5, Informative)

      by nacturation ( 646836 ) <nacturation AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:10PM (#9036819) Journal
      It's a great idea. While the artists against 419 scammers have to serve up the HTML, they've hijacked the images, eg:

      <img src="http://www.some-419-scam-site.ng/logo.jpg"&gt ;

      So maybe a 1 KB of HTML vs. usually 10 to 20 KB of images, and that's for each image. You could easily add a 1 pixel frame which loads up dozens of images from the scam sites.

      • Re:Joke's on who? (Score:3, Informative)

        by jamonterrell ( 517500 )
        The issue to this is that if you look at the headers that most browsers send to the site they request files from there's a referrer tag. A site owner can actually with minimal effort block requests unless they are referred from their own site... This seems like a lost cause to me.

        • Re:Joke's on who? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by giberti ( 110903 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @09:10PM (#9037082) Homepage
          While I would agree with you most of these sites are running on $8.95/month hosting and so don't have that kind of customization.

        • Re:Joke's on who? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by nacturation ( 646836 )
          In addition to the points raised by others, the easiest way to avoid the referrer issue is to have their HTML page load up in a 1 pixel frame. That way, it's their referrer header for the images and, because the frame is only 1 pixel wide/tall, the user can't see the content anyway.
      • They do have an incredibly crap user interface and standards incompiant website though.

        Pity their crap website design forces us to trawl through their ego to getto the juice.

        Nice idea, pity you let your loud mounths and yahooing get in the way of users getting what they're after, instead of getting down to business.

    • Re:Joke's on who? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 02, 2004 @10:32PM (#9037511)
      To annoy scammers - If you are the lucky recipient of a scam email, use the email address you're supposed to reply to to 'register' on a few porn sites - the mail scammers themselves will soon be flooded by spam email...

  • Heh, Nigeria scam.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by LordK3nn3th ( 715352 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @07:40PM (#9036652)
    I had fun with one of these guys here [scamorama.com].

  • The main reason it was a bad idea (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sonic McTails ( 700139 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @07:43PM (#9036676)
    It was a very bad idea to copy the website of an innocent lawfirm..." *watchs the lawsuits and lawyer from the innocent lawfirm attack*

  • Oxymoron (Score:5, Funny)

    by idgrad ( 137342 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @07:49PM (#9036705)
    "Innocent Law Firm"

    - Shouldn't it be "An innocent until proven guilty law firm?"

  • Verification? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 02, 2004 @07:49PM (#9036708)
    How do we know we're actually participating in a DDoS against a 419 site and not a legitimate business?

    This kind of mob mentality is a little unsettling. I guess it doesn't matter as far as slashdot is concerned though. They'd take down a bus full of nuns if they were a website.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:05PM (#9036789)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Looking at the page source, the images are in fact from the sites they claim are 419ers. Now, figuring out if those sites really are 419ers is the tough part.

    • See for yourself. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cryptor3 ( 572787 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:39PM (#9036961) Journal
      If you're suspicious, check the targets out for yourself. Here's the clues that I relied on:

      Mechanical/Formatting - The sites are decent, (i.e., not foreign spam bad) but they have enough errors and inconsistencies that I think they aren't up to the caliber of an international financial organization. If they really have any international dealings, they can afford a decent marketing firm or department to do their web site.

      Sitebuilders - Look for systematic naming, formatting, and telltale HTML tags. Again, I wouldn't trust a financial org that uses a sitebuilder.

      Plagiarized Wording - Try Googling some of the complex wording. A number of them show up word for word on other sites.

      Take for example, financialsecurities.org.uk [financials...ies.org.uk]. The wording "has a highly experienced team of professionals providing unbiased and highly qualified services exclusively to its clients in selected technology & health care industries which drive the high-tech revolution" appears only at this site. [viscardi.com] Notice also the >>high tech revolution<< punctuation that appears afterwards.

      Now it's possible that Viscardi is plagiarizing financialsecurities.org.uk, but Viscardi leaves a phone number, so you can call them and ask about it.

      Now sure, this isn't hard evidence, but the consistency of clues on so many sites tells me these people (the artists) have gone through some work to come up with such a reasonably self-consistent list.

      • Re:See for yourself. (Score:5, Informative)

        by SydShamino ( 547793 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @10:40PM (#9037540)
        Or, for the one I looked at...after going through their huge disclaimer page, they have a web form to fill out an application.

        What do they ask for buried in the middle of the form? Your current bank information. Together with the other info, they have everything they need to initiate a wire transfer.

        Pretty clear from that alone that they are scammers. No real financial institution would ask for that on an application.

    • Re:Verification? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by |absolut| ( 31939 )
      This kind of mob mentality is a little unsettling.

      ALL kinds of mob mentalities are more than a little unsettling, they are frightening.

    • Re:Verification? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by General Fidul ( 632475 )
      Usually those websites came up in connection with the various kinds of 419. Either they were from the initial spams or were presented later in a scambait: "My trunkboxes are stored in a security company in Amsterdam!" The search engine of your choise surely will find something.

      For example, would you trust a "decades old" UK bank with a non-existant street address, only mobile numbers, the registrant in Nigeria and no listing in the official directories?

      From what I know AA419 is checking every flashmob v

    • Re:Verification? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MagicDude ( 727944 )
      You're worried about the slight possibility that they might be accidentally targeting a legitimate business, eh? I can't imagine how much sleep you lose over /. intentionally blitzing dozens of legitimate and cool sites every week.

    • Re:Verification? (Score:5, Funny)

      by RedBear ( 207369 ) <redbear@@@redbearnet...com> on Monday May 03, 2004 @01:12AM (#9038177) Homepage
      I guess it doesn't matter as far as slashdot is concerned though. They'd take down a bus full of nuns if they were a website.

      What makes you think we wouldn't take down a bus full of nuns in meatspace as well?

      Especially if the nuns on that bus use... Micro$oft Windows! DUN-DUN-Duuuun!

      Cha-ching. Thanks, I'll be here all decade. Try the sarcasm and don't forget to tip your waiter!

    • Re:Verification? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Raphael ( 18701 ) * on Monday May 03, 2004 @04:51AM (#9038686) Homepage Journal

      They are scammers, not legitimate businesses. They steal text and images from other sites. As others have already mentioned, you can use Google to search for some parts of the text on their pages and you will usually find the real source of the content.

      It is also interesting to check where the images are coming from. For example, take a look at one of these fake sites: "Trust Meridien". The home page contains a link to the so-called professionals who are supposed to run this fake company: http://www.trustmeridien.com/directors.htm [trustmeridien.com].

      Take a look at the second picture. This woman is supposed to be called "Elizabeth Gideon". However, the name of the image file is: Kay_ivey1.gif [trustmeridien.com]. The name does not seem to match. Indeed, a little googling allowed me to find an identical copy of the image: Kay_ivey1.gif [kayivey.com]. That one is linked from the home page of http://www.kayivey.com/, who is the Alabama State Treasurer. The scammer did not even bother changing the name of the file!

      I am sure that someone could find the source of the other images included in that page. Anyway, if you still had any doubt that the site is not a legitimate business, I suggest that you get in touch with Kay Ivey and ask her if she is really part of "Trust Meridien". Or maybe she has a twin sister?

    • Check out Their online banking login [trans-atlanticgroup.net]. Control-U (view source) will get you a list of 'bank accounts' (it's a real obvious set of case statements). Pick any one to view an account statement. (you can use anything for the PIN number). Note that they're not paying interest on their multi-million dollar bank accounts, even though they claim 1.51 % for checking accounts.

      (Yeah, and the fact that they have the account numbers in the source of their web page should tell you something too, never minding the l

  • Finally... (Score:5, Funny)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Sunday May 02, 2004 @07:49PM (#9036709)
    This is going to be a major Slashdotting with a useful purpose!

    • Re:Finally... (Score:3, Funny)

      by metlin ( 258108 ) *
      Hey! You forgot SCO :)

      • Bad Publicity (Score:4, Interesting)

        by yintercept ( 517362 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:30PM (#9036920) Homepage Journal
        Unfortunately, scammers and spammers often have a lot more available bandwidth than typical artists or honest business sites. Even worse, you toss up your anti-419 page that throws unwanted traffic at a page, and you increase the scammer sites rating. The various sustained DOS attacks on SCO gave SCO an Alexa Rating [alexa.com] in the low thousands. A smart scammer might use the DOS attack to set cookies for merchant programs, and end up making money for the person you are trying to attack. We seem to forget that both good and bad publicity drive valuable traffic to sites.

    • Re:Finally... (Score:5, Funny)

      by whovian ( 107062 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:12PM (#9036830)
      thus suggesting that this website could take assume the tagline
      Slashdot: The flash mob web site nerds prefer.

  • For some good 419 baiting try.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chilliwilli ( 114962 ) <tom.rathbone@NosPAm.gmail.com> on Sunday May 02, 2004 @07:50PM (#9036715)
    for good 419 sport try Ebola Monkey Man [ebolamonkeyman.com] (n.b. site is in no way racist despite the name)

  • The Funny Thing... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <ieshan@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Sunday May 02, 2004 @07:52PM (#9036722) Homepage Journal
    The Funny thing about all these anti-419 ideas - especially the laws - is that it's probably easier to take out the stupid people here than it is to take out the stupid scammers in Nigeria.

    The new Microsoft Email Initiative has promised to do just that- Every time people use their mail client, clippy will pop up with questions like:

    Will you:
    a) Give money away to people you don't know.
    b) Double click nude.pics.exe.vbs.exe.jpg.exe
    c) Mail this pyramid scheme to 30 other people
    d) None of the above
  • Artists Against 419... flash mobs... what are you on about?

    • Re:I'm sorry I haven't a clue. (Score:5, Informative)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:19PM (#9036868)
      Artists Against 419
      A "419 Scam" is the attempt to defraud people of their money by claiming that they need to send money and/or account details in order to recieve a large ammount of funds. If any victim actually cooperates, they're told that they need to send more. Spam is commonly used because of the relatively low cost of sending massive e-mails, and the fact that the scammers net thousands of dollars from each fool that bites. The name comes from the chapter of Nigerian number in law that says this is illegal there, yet a majority of these scams come from there.

      flash mobs
      This is a concept that comes from people who send text messages to a mailing list of bunch of friends that says something cool is going on, so anybody free should come join them. In cities, this can cause 100s of people to show up on the "if you contact 10 friends, and they contact 10 friends..." principle. Singer Avril Lavigne is currently doing a tour of unadvertised events at shopping malls, which have attracted up to 6000 people that more or less depends on the first people to see the sign announcing the event telling their friends, and having those friends tell others. This group is encuraging a simple Slashdotting against 419ers, which is basically the same principle. More people showing up than expected causes problems...

      • Re:I'm sorry I haven't a clue. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by shadowbearer ( 554144 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @09:08PM (#9037076) Homepage Journal

        Should perhaps mention that wrt to flash mobs, Larry Niven AFAIK was conceptual inventor. Although his mobs were more ordinary communications, and relied on teleporation transportation, the concept really isn't that different from what's happening now.

        I haven't seen any quotes from Mr. Niven about it (yet) but I do know that several people who know him are quite amused...

        Cheers!
        SB

  • Everyone loves messing with these scammers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nev4 ( 721804 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @07:53PM (#9036728)
    419 Eater [419eater.com] has been around for a while and is pretty well known for messing with these scammers. Take a look at some of the pictures scammers have sent them and listen to the audio recordings. Some of these scammers really need to brush up on their pop-culture.

  • Natural selection (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Graftweed ( 742763 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:01PM (#9036773)
    Well as much as I hate 419 scammers I still can't bring myself to think of them as scum quite on the same level as mass spammers.

    Think of them as the internet's version of the lion, culling the weak and gullible thereby keeping the species healthy.
    • Well as much as I hate 419 scammers I still can't bring myself to think of them as scum quite on the same level as mass spammers.

      Wait a second... aren't most of the 419ers finding their marks by sending spam? The response rate is a trace, but the payout is enough to make the crime profitable.
    • A: Aren't these scammers usually also mass spammers?

      B: So you're saying robbing from the clueless and senile is better than actually selling a product?

      • Re:Disturbing (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Graftweed ( 742763 )
        A: Yes, they're also mass spammers, but there's a distinction I make. The typical mass spammer is someone who is paid money for having his systems churn out spam 24/7, often trying to sell legitimate (if somewhat dubious) products.

        A 419 scam is actually a crime of persuasion, so while they might start out as just spammers they usually escalate to targeting specific individuals, and this is no gray area as in spam, it's a crime, period.

        B: I was actually trying to make a joke. But really, clueless and senil

    • Re:Natural selection (Score:5, Insightful)

      by YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT ( 651184 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @09:01PM (#9037041) Homepage Journal

      Of course, there can be substansive collateral damage, vis that lady who embezzled her company to finance her advance fee fraud, and another gentleman who collected money from his circle of friends and acquaintances on the pretext that it was to finance a large shipment of clothing items for his business.

      These second tier victims aren't necessarily weak and gullible - nor are they all on the internet. They were often approached by someone they knew and trusted. These cases, if none other, are a reason for us to be vigilant, and do what we can to put the frighteners on people that would purvey such scams.

      ( Although personally I think the time would be better spent educating people instead of trying to slashdot some website which the proprietors will just take down and put up somewhere else... )

  • Slightly OT (Score:3, Funny)

    by Meneudo ( 661337 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:03PM (#9036785)
    Heh... now I have another site besides /. to constantly hit the refresh button on!

    Not only that, but it hurts spammers!

  • Why use a web page? (Score:3)

    by azav ( 469988 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:07PM (#9036803) Homepage Journal
    Let's write a program to download page content continuously.

    I'll be glad to do this.

  • 419? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Darthmalt ( 775250 )
    I don't understand exactly what are the 419 scammers? I was unimpressed with the site it looks very poorly done. Not what I would expect from geeks wanting to strike back at scammers.

    • Re:419? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Nerull ( 586485 )
      The "419" scams take thousands of $ from people who fall for them, and there have also been reported murders involved when the unfortunate scamee (Is that a word?) goes to another country to meet the scammer, and is then mugged.

      Wikipedia Article [wikipedia.org]
  • I have recently been getting the variation in which a relative(same last name) has died in some far off place and the scammer will help me launder the estate in exchange for personal information.

    It seems that they are taking a page from Publishers Clearing House and using a trivial amount of peronalization to get people to open the email. I wonder if the victims will actually check to see if such a relative exists, or allow greed to take over. It is like those ad that say 'the government owes you thou

  • They Have a Game on the Site (Score:4, Informative)

    by oobob ( 715122 ) * on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:17PM (#9036857)
    Here [mugus.com] is a game where you chase logos from the sites with your mouse, and if your cursor goes over them, they reload on the edges of the page.

    Thing is, you can speed them up, and they automatically go towards your cursor. Even in the background (try it with a trillian window). And it's more addictive than you'd think.

  • Make 419ers spam each other... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DocSnyder ( 10755 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:17PM (#9036859)
    419 scams are the only kind of spam whose email addresses are valid and belong to the spammer - that's how the mugus want to be contacted by their victims. Of course this would get more and more difficult if these addresses get flooded with spam.

    Many 419 mugus suffer from their small and weak penises, don't have any major education and need lots of stock opportunities to put their money into. It's only gentle to help them by having their email addresses [docsnyder.de] fed into as many spammers' databases as possible.

  • Sounds like a job for wget (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Yonder Way ( 603108 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:18PM (#9036867)
    Use wget from a few well connected machines to spider the 419'ers fake sites in an endless loop. Shouldn't take long to wipe 'em out. :-)

    • Re:Sounds like a job for wget (Score:4, Informative)

      by MBAFK ( 769131 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @10:26PM (#9037489)
      Something like this probably - I made it up on the fly - haven't tested it (yes I know it's cack and that you could probably do it in 2 lines of perl :)
      #!/bin/sh

      wget --mirror -np http://artists-against-419.mugus.com/
      cat artists-against-419.mugus.com/*html* | tr ">" "\n" > all.txt
      rm -rf artists-against-419.mugus.com/
      cat all.txt | grep "http://" | egrep "\.jpg|\.gif|\.png" | sed -e "s/^.*http/http/g" | tr "'" " "| tr "\"" " " | cut -f 1 -d " " | grep -v "mugus.com/" | sort | uniq > urls

      while [ true ]; do
      for i in `cat urls`; do
      wget -O tmp $i
      rm tmp
      sleep 1
      done
      done
    • nah, wget is sequential. A couple of runs would be good to get the structure, but then it's a job for ab :-)
    • Actually, the official Flash Mob site has a couple of Linux scripts that use wget to hammer the targets.

  • Let's do the same thing with other spammers (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Create one huge webpage with lots of images linked to the spammers website (you know which ones, natural viagra, xanax, etc), and let's run THEM out of business as well!

    I'll gladly visit that page while I'm waiting for Spamcop to process the reported spam

  • Do some real damage (link) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:26PM (#9036902)
    The Lad Vampire attack [freewebs.com] downloads 5 large images from the 50-something target sites continuously. It doesn't require refreshing or turning off cache, and uses all available bandwidth. Opera tells me I've got 10,000 images so far for about 240MB in just under 20 mins.

  • Nice idea. "Community "ttacks" can work. (Score:5, Informative)

    by hkmwbz ( 531650 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:27PM (#9036907) Journal
    This is a very good idea, and seems to work to a certain extent.

    Organizing communities to attack hostiles is a good idea, and lately I've seen a lot of mails pretending to be from Citibank, apparently linking to citibank.com, but instead hiding the URL by using HTML, and sending the user to a different page instead.

    These new phishing scams [bbc.co.uk] have been covered by the media, and basically it opens a popup with the address field hidden, and it uses HTML/JS to recreate a fake one, giving the impression that one is actually at citibank.com.

    An example of a received spam [google.com], which claims to link to web.da-us.citibank.com, but really links to a page which opens a popup [strongerinfobase.us]. The address of the popup is:

    http://www.strongerinfobase.us/scripts/sys.php [strongerinfobase.us]

    This page gathers credit card info. Maybe if there was a site to gather these addresses, hundreds or thousands of people could cooperate and submit so much nonsense - either random crap or seemingly real, but fake, CC info. That way, the scammers would have to wade through thousands of fake entries.

    Maybe someone could even write a script to spam the scammers into oblivion :)

    • Re:Nice idea. "Community "ttacks" can work. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Darthmalt ( 775250 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:33PM (#9036935)
      Someone should write one of those screen saver programs that go in effect when your computer is idle. That would recieve instructions from a central site and constantly reload a spamers site until it was down then get insstructions for which site to attack next. If everyone installed this on all of their home computers just imagine the bandwidth you could drain.
      • Great idea :) A distributed client which uses available bandwidth (user configurable, obviously) to download images from scammer sites. One would need a central list of known sites, and one would have to trust that site. There is some potential for abuse, but it could work.

        I've always wished that I could take down a scammer with help from the Slashdot crowd when I've seen an obvious scam, such as the one in my previous post. Now, maybe Slashdot can post a story every now and then about this site to remind

      • For just yourself, you could try using your own set of links with the WebCollage [jwz.org] component of XScreenSaver [jwz.org].

      • Yeah, what a good idea. I'll just join my computer up to a botnet and let some probably unknown individual give me a list of targets to attack. Perhaps when they run out of 419's they could start bombing the sites of political campaigns they don't approve of, or auction websites or microsoft.com.

        If you're going to punch someone, don't let someone else guide your fist. You might end up biting off more than you can chew, if you'll excuse my mixed metaphor.

    • I disagree. I don't think these scammer web sites are getting that much fool traffic so that taking them down on a particular day matters much, and you end up wasting your own bandwidth.

      The only worthwhile thing to come out of all this are the brilliant scamming of the scammers themselves [419eater.com] which is tremendously entertaining.

      419eater does a great job profiling the scammers. Now what we need is a web site with pictures of the morons who fall for these scams.

  • ... or as previously covered on slashdot (Score:5, Informative)

    by cr@ckwhore ( 165454 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:32PM (#9036932) Homepage
    Previous topic on the same subject ...

    http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/16/20 4210 [slashdot.org]

  • A moment of your time, please (Score:5, Funny)

    by Skevin ( 16048 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:34PM (#9036939) Journal
    Hello, my name is Solomon Chang, and I am a legal representative of a certain Cowboy Neil, who has a similar sig to yours on Slashdot. Recently, my client, a strong supporter of Artists Against 419 [mugus.com], passed away, and has left behind an account with a hell of a lot of Karma on Slashdot. However, Hemos and Commandante Taco have dictated that the account be furthermore untouched should such an unfortunate occurance transpire. However, if you should be willing, your sig matches my client so closely that we may be able to trick VA Systems into sending his Slashdot password so that we may both reap the benefits of 1337 hax0r status. However, my firm would require the access information of your Slashdot account (i.e. username and password), so if interested, please send your information and we will proceed from there. You will need to hurry, as the Commandante will attempt to acquire the Karma for himself if/when he discovers the account to be deactivated.

    In sincerest regards and utmost urgency,
    Skevin


  • definitions.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Carbon Unit 549 ( 325547 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:41PM (#9036972) Homepage

    Flash Mob [everything2.com]
    419 [everything2.com]

  • Heh (Score:3, Funny)

    by beckerie ( 775211 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:46PM (#9036991)
    I'd prefer this sort of scam-baiting. If only I had the capacity to do what this dude did...

    Taylor: Hello, how may I help you?

    Radar: I received an email from Worldwide Global Lotto stating that I had won $193,000. I want to collect my money.

    Taylor: First of all, this is a financial company. I am aware the Worldwide Global Lotto is a promotion presently going on for all Microsoft users around the world.

    Radar: But I don't use Microsoft. I use Apple.

    Taylor: You must have used Microsoft once in your life. Probably this is where your email address has been gathered.

    Radar: Great. And how do I get the money?

    Taylor: All you have to do is make available the fees and charges for the processing of your winning and legal documentation and naturalisation papers. That is an equivalent of $2400. As soon as you make this payment available in the name of our chief accountant, Mr Kelvin Duncan, within 24 hours your winnings will be transferred to you as a certified cashier's cheque or into your bank account.

    Radar: There is no lotto or prize, is there?

    Taylor: What? Obviously you have emerged as a winner if you have the correct email.

    Radar: How much money do you make from this scam?

    Taylor: Bye-bye now. [Click]

    Source: SMH [smh.com.au]
  • I'm sorry, but DDoS'ing 419 sites seems really stupid. You might take their site down temporarily but you're also wasting just as much of your own bandwidth and affecting other more important services.

    The 419'ers exploit stupid people. These efforts don't address either the stupidity of people or the illegal activities of the scammers. It seems more like a publicity stunt to call attention to the artists than a legitimate and effective effort to stop 419ers.

    While I don't condone the activities of the 4

    • Re:Who really is punished here? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hkmwbz ( 531650 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @09:37PM (#9037253) Journal
      "I'm sorry, but DDoS'ing 419 sites seems really stupid. You might take their site down temporarily but you're also wasting just as much of your own bandwidth and affecting other more important services."
      I am not wasting my bandwidth if I think it's a worthwile cause. And it's not like it will suck up all my bandwidth either. All it does is to download images from a web server. I do that all the time anyway.

      So we are wasting their bandwidth, but I can decide to stop downloading their images at any time. So it is not a problem at all.

      And what more important services does it affect?

      "The 419'ers exploit stupid people."
      And they spam all kinds of people, including smart ones who will never fall for their scams anyway. And spam is a major problem today.
      "While I don't condone the activities of the 419'ers, they don't bother me that much. Turn on the television and it'll take you about ten minutes before you see a commercial from an American company that's basically doing the same thing, misleading people into giving them money for something that is questionable."
      Yeah, except these American companies don't kill their victims, which has happened to 419 victims.
      "I figure anyone stupid enough to fall for these schemes will do so eventually, so we might as well let them learn from their mistakes sooner rather than later."
      So it's OK by you that they send spam? I don't like it, so I'll be happy to use some of my bandwidth to take their sites down. If they can't scam people because their sites keep being taken down, maybe they'll stop spamming me.
      " If you're selling something for $3000 and someone sends you a check for $6000 and wants you to wire the difference to another country, you're a fool who needs to be parted from your money."
      And the money they make from scamming people will be used for what? Funding wars, for example? Drugs? Getting people tortured and killed?

      Sorry, I can't accept that.

  • scam the scammers (Score:2, Informative)

    by Phsyco ( 188558 )
    This guy actually managed to get the scammer to send him money. He ended up donating it to charity, but none the less, that's pretty impressive. Worth a read if you've got nothing better to do.

    http://www.419eater.com/html/stev_ebe.htm

  • 419? (Score:2, Funny)

    by milsim ( 739431 )
    Why 419, where did this number come from?

    On a side note, are the '420' people more susceptible to '419' scams? :)

  • Art (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jefu ( 53450 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @09:20PM (#9037132) Homepage Journal
    Since these guys are (or claim the word) artists, wouldn't it have been much more fun to grab images from lots of icky web sites and by resizing and placing them appropriately build a big mosaic image of something.

    So if you had a 500 by 500 image built up of 10 by 10 images it would be 2500 images loaded on every page load.

    Talk about artistic slashdotting.

  • Today's flash mob - 3rd May 2004 (Score:3, Informative)

    by milsim ( 739431 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @09:33PM (#9037226)
    For modem users - Cube 419 [mugus.com]

    For cable users - Scammers Nightmare [mugus.com]

    And here's an alternative - Lad Vampire [freewebs.com]

    Come on, don't be shy, give them some good slashdotting - it's good fun for the whole family!

  • Right Click? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mattwolf7 ( 633112 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @09:46PM (#9037305)
    This site worries me because it has the right click mouse disabled. They have no good reason to disable the right mouse click.

    It makes me wonder if they are DOSing more than just 419ers.

  • is that really effective? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cute-boy ( 62961 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @10:25PM (#9037477) Journal

    Looking at the hit counter on their web page, showing ~330K hits, I'd be suprised it this is in the slightest bit effective...

    The quantity of traffic you generate simply isn't that great when you can get a $9.95 hosting deal that allows 500MBytes per month or more.

    Bandwidth is cheap. Loading the same image multiple times is a waste of space unless you don't cache in your browser (and elsewhere). If you have access to your web server config (even on shared servers sometimes) you can easily configure so others can't do this by requiring the referrer to be your own site.

    RG
  • Thats very mean to the Lads from Lagos - I like 419 scan letters as they usually have gone to as much effort as Readers Digest in getting me to part with my money. Its always fun trying to work out just how much fantasy money I could get.

    They are certainly a lot nicer than the usual crap that comes through and they only make up around 1% or so of spams.

    If you view the 419'ers efforts as a freedom of speech then I still think that the artists against 419 scams are indulging in a bit of censorship. True i

  • Feed pages with false data (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gorfie ( 700458 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @11:11PM (#9037658)
    I personally visit all of the scam sites and fill their forms with false data. I figure if a good chunk of people did the same thing, the scam would become pointless as it would cost too much to weed out the valid data from the invalid data.

  • Oh Neat (Score:4, Funny)

    by Cylix ( 55374 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @11:21PM (#9037698) Homepage Journal
    On their site they listed some other websites.

    I found a fantastic online banking presence. It looked very professional!

    What did strike me as odd though... was the annoying POP up ad that jumped out at me. I suppose they are just a bit of a progressive banking instititution and using that money to pass the savings on to the customer!

    Really, if you are going to scam people at least give it some good effort.
  • Everybody with any sense hates spammers and scammers, and any measures we take against them seem like spitting into the ocean.

    I have to think that even the most rational and law-abiding among us have at least fantasized briefly about launching attacks of various sorts against spammers and spam gangs. Innumerable fiendishly clever ideas for how to accomplish this have been launched right here on Slashdot--usually to be rebutted by wiser and/or more technically savvy heads.

    The lovely thing about 419-baiting is that they're low-hanging fruit. They're accessible. Unlike the spoofers and joe-jobbers, they leave themselves right out in the open. It's as if they've hung a digital KICK ME sign on their virtual butts.

    Revenge is sweet.

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