How did y'all come to Scambaiting?

[bware419ers]

^^^Have fun learning how they work, then turning those same techniques back on the scammers.

[ICollectBoats]

For me, it started in late 2017 when my grandfather almost fell for one of those fake Apple support phone number scams (for some reason, Google thinks it's a good idea to have the ads before the real results, leading to scammers advertising their fake phone numbers). Fast-forward a few years and I found Jim Browning's YouTube channel and learned a bit more about the type of scam my grandfather almost fell for. After watching a few other scambaiters who specialize in call center scams, I found a channel called "Monetized Youtube Baiter."

Monetized Youtube Baiter posts a variety of videos (ranging from gardening to canned foodstuffs), but his most popular videos are ones where he baits email (and occasionally Instagram and WhatsApp) scammers. In fact, I actually learned about 419Eater from one of his videos (he posted on the old forum back in 2004 under the name "Mangetout." Links to the video and his post are at the bottom of this one). Granted, Monetized Youtube Baiter does use a few methods in his videos that are frowned-upon (such as burning lads or sending them fake IDs), but I found them entertaining enough to want to try scambaiting for myself (especially since it gives me the opportunity to stop the scammers from scamming real victims).

Link to Monetized Youtube Baiter's video where he mentions 419Eater: [Removed link to monetized YouTube channel - B8er]

Link to Monetized Youtube Baiter old post from 2004: https://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5169