Scambuster Jim Browning got access to a tech support scammer's computer and was able to find out his real name and monitor his communications with his boss and colleagues. He spooked them so much that it looks like they shut down operations, at least temporarily. I love Browning's laconic, bored-sounding voice as he talks to the increasingly panicked scammer. Read the rest

Ben is host of the BTC Sessions YouTube channel. He appears to be knowledgeable about Bitcoin, so he was the wrong guy to try to cheat, as this scammer learned. The scammer, going by the name of Susan Williams, told Ben via instant message that he could double his money in 24 hours if he sent her bitcoins to invest in a bitcoin mining operation. Ben pretended to be interested but told her that he would send her a bitcoin only if she first sent him $50 worth of bitcoin as a show of good faith. Susan" eventually agreed and as soon as she sent him the money, Ben told her he was not going to send her anything and was sending the $50 to a charity. Susan was so upset that she sent Ben a crying face emoji.

Image: BTC Sessions Read the rest

I love this. When you get a scam email, forward it to me@rescam.org and a bot will keep the scammer busy emailing back and forth with it, giving the scammer less time to rob gullible humans.

Introducing Re:scam – an artificially intelligent email bot made to reply to scam emails. Re:scam wastes scammers time with a never-ending series of questions and anecdotes so that scammers have less time to pursue real people.

If you think you’ve received a scam email, forward it to me@rescam.org and we’ll take it from there. We’ll even send you a summary of the conversations Re:scam has had with the scammer – sometimes they can be quite funny!

Re:scam is an initiative aimed at helping people from becoming fraud victims by occupying the time and resources of scammers through deploying a well-educated artificially intelligent chat bot. Instead of junking or deleting a scam email, you can now forward it to Re:scam who will continue the conversation indefinitely – or until the scammer stops replying.

Re:scam can take on multiple personas, imitating real human tendencies with humour and grammatical errors, and can engage with infinite scammers at once, meaning it can continue an email conversation for as long as possible. Re:scam will turn the table on scammers by wasting their time, and ultimately damage the profits for scammers.