Fraud Fighter "Bobbear" To Close Up Shop

Krebsonsecurity.com has a writeup on the decision of UK anti-fraud activist site bobbear.co.uk to retire from the fray. The 66-year-old fraud fighter said he was getting too old for the work, which takes him about 15 hours a day. "We had so many messages of thanks, and congratulations on the site, but it is so stressful and takes so much out of you, and there is always the worry of litigation hanging over your head." "The owner and curator of bobbear.co.uk, a site that specializes in exposing Internet fraud scams and phantom online companies, announced Saturday that he will be shuttering the site at the end of April. Bobbear and its companion site bobbear.com are creations of [the pseudonomous] Bob Harrison, a 66-year-old UK resident who for the last four years has tirelessly chronicled and exposed a myriad of fraud and scam Web sites. The sites, which are well-indexed by Google and other search engines and receive about 2,000 hits per day, often are among the first results returned in a search for the names of fly-by-night corporations advertised in spam and aimed at swindling the unsuspecting or duping the unwitting." Any ideas on who might want to take over the domains and carry on the work would be appreciated by the Internet community at large.

Consumers Union

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Any ideas on who might want to take over the domains and carry on the work would be appreciated by the Internet community at large.

Sounds like something that the Consumers Union [consumersunion.org] might want to take a look at.
They publish Consumer Reports and recently acquired The Consumerist website. [consumerist.com]

Re:How about the Government?

[phantomfive]

I've noticed a lot of people don't seem to care about scammers because when they hear about it, it's presented in a way that makes the person being scammed look stupid. And a lot of times the person would have been able to avoid it if they hadn't been so greedy (especially common in 419 scams). So it's easy for people to think, "Oh, I will never fall for that trick."

And when a problem doesn't affect a person, they are less likely to want the government to do something about it.

Re:If We Had Tort Reform...

[Philip_the_physicist]

Maybe a reasonable small step towards such a system would be to provide a public defender for anyone who wants one if they are sued, whom you only have to pay if you lose. The problem with loser pays without some fairness rules is that a big business could hire a large team of expensive barristers, safe in the knowledge that if they win, they won;t have to pay them, and any poor defendant won't risk a trial even if the actual damages sought are tiny, because they would get hammered by the lawyers fees. To make it fair, the legal costs should be limited to, say, the same as the damages sought, or perhaps some sub-linear function of the damages, with some minimum value to make small claims still worthwhile.