People as "Honeypots": Tricking the Scammers at their own Game

Everyone has a few old timers in their families - or even young paranoid ones - who are not tech savvy. Save a few random forwarded joke emails, they won't read the news, don't buy anything online or know how to use tech tools that are free and easier to use than their spyware-laden, sluggish MS applications.   They maybe too embarrassed to ask someone how to use it or too scared to share their personal information, or worse yet, naively share their personal information.

My uncle, former co-owner of an old-school east coast marketing/polling firm, has been bored since retirement.  He hasn't picked up a hobby, and to the best of everyone's intentions to help direct him to a hobby or heck even a p/t job, he just stays bored.  So, he apparently has been teaching himself about the internet - the hard way.  He fell for one of those 419 scams.  This was recently too, only within the past year, so to believe everyone knows about these scams and not to follow them, obviously is not the case.

According to the FBI, internet fraud rose 33% last year - keeping in mind, these are only crimes that were actually reported to the IC3 division. Many crimes remain unreported, due to embarrassment or even a lack of knowing where and how to report such crimes. Although it may be plain to see for an avid (or average) Googler, people who do not know how to use the net's tools or where to look on a page itself to find relevant information, get lost in the vast forest of text and colors on most websites.  Surprisingly, countries who are our allies where these scams originate, such as Nigeria, make no effort to punish and seemingly condone such activities.

Enter 419 Eater.

419 Eater is not unlike the internet security tactic of creating decoys or "honeypots" to collect virus/trojan/hacker information.  Joining their grassroots coalition, the average Joe/Jane can trick these scammers at their own game.  Using free email addresses, "would-be-victims" can create aliases they can use to trap the scammer.  The point?  Wasting their time, as they tend to focus on one victim at a time, for weeks or months on end.  Arrest is, of course, optimal, but once the schemer's months of time, energy and money is wasted tracking a false lead, hopefully, they will leave the business of scamming willingly.  Karmic debt is paid and all is right with the world.  

Now, you have to be very careful when dealing with these people of course, but if you're retired from your 90's dot com boom success, bored and know the internet well, here's a fun hobby for you.  Beats knitting, doesn't it?