I notice there’s a lot of new readers on the feed, and also a lot of new visitors to the site. Welcome to Life In The Country – please feel free to comment and de-lurk and let me know where I can find your blog to check you out.

Those of you new to the blog probably won’t be aware of this but for the past month I have been a part of a campaign run by a small group of scambaiters to collect scammer bank account information which is then passed along to the police. You can read more about the campaign if you like – A Journey Along The Road To Stopping Online Scammers – so far we have collected thousands of bank accounts many of which have already been passed along to the authorities.

Once we send them the initial email the scammers are baited by the *computer for as long as the scammer will keep sending emails, which can be a lot of emails. We don’t have to worry about what they’re saying, and any bank account information is automatically put aside by the computer. Yep, it’s a smart computer!

Today one of the baiters responsible for passing the bank account information on to the police contacted me on Skype. He let me know he was baiting one of the scammers manually now, after seeing an email the scammer had been sending to us because it was quite well written and he thought the scammer might turn out to be a fun bait. The email went like this -

I sent this directly to you via The Curse Of The Wicked Soul. Cradling the powers of the Orunmila to Wizard Of Ingoni, I have unleashed an army of seventy-two spirits and demons. The Eiye Efe will gaze from above as the summons of the spirits appear before your eyes.

My cosmic powers have grown from the fears of deception and will reek havoc and spill the blood of the guilt. I have carved marks of evil into your conscience and your spiritual blindness will direct you to fall into the hands of proper authorities. The curse will begin when I attach this written segment of your soul “hope you are Christian, in the name of the almight God. help me thanks”.

For you have only made me wiser. Money is just paper in which I used to buy your soul. If you would like it returned unharmed, you must make ammends to the deception you have brought amongst yourself. If you do not, you will live for eternity in the firey pits of hell and in fear of Bytor, Light of Darkness,
Centurion Of Evil, Devil’s Prince.

The Police and the FBI will be on this case if the funds are not sent back to my friend who gave us loan by today. Did you think you’ll eat somebody’s money? and walk away with it.
“Wizard” Waskowiak Owner of Your Soul

One wonders – if he has “the powers of the Orunmila to Wizard Of Ingoni” and he has “unleashed an army of seventy-two spirits and demons” then precisely why does he need the Police and the FBI?

However, a visit to Scroogle later and the truth was revealed – this scammer stole this threat from somewhere else and just modified it to suit his purpose.

I checked to see if he had written any more emails to the computer and it turns out he did send one more -
Hello,
You have to listen carefully,i am not here to play with you if you don’t send the pay slip to show my bank as an evidence that you have made the transfer to the account then i promise you that my actions will start today if you do not harken to my voice, So be it.To aviod the wrath that will follow suit you have to go immediately to the bank to collect the pay slip, scan and send it to my email, so that all these botherings will stop

It seems he’s not quite as literary with his threats when he has to make them up on his own rather than steal them from elsewhere.

It’s funny because I haven’t noticed any botherings but now that my soul is owned and my conscience is smarting from the carving of marks of evil into it, perhaps I just didn’t notice the botherings?

I already had a fair idea I would be spending eternity in the firey pits of hell. It’s nice to have it confirmed for sure though – because there is no way I am sending him any money!

Sometimes as a baiter you will get these scammers frothing at the mouth and threatening all kinds of unusual things. It is champagne comedy. However it is even more fun when you get them on the telephone. I don’t know if this lad sent a phone number but if he did I’ve got some Skype credit burning a hole in my pocket. I might give him a call. If you wanted to listen to a couple of calls I’ve done in the past, here’s a couple of my favourites, one of which has no nasty language, one which has some mild swearing.

Snoskred’s baiting character Anukah calls an offshore bank. Click here to listen.

Snoskred’s baiting character Beyonce (Yes, the real one, well not quite the real one! Complete with US accent) has a discussion with a scammer about tax. Listen to his shock, surprise and dismay when Beyonce tells him she has a way to get out of paying the $240,000 tax he says she has to pay – consequently meaning he doesn’t get any money! The scammer tries to explain why she *should* pay the tax, but Beyonce is unthrilled. I love the despair at around 8:40 into the call, it is classic! There is an F word or two, so be aware of that, don’t listen if the F word offends you. Click here to listen.

*Note – these aren’t computer tools that regular humans can get access to – this is something only long time scambaiters can use. So if you want to use it, get into baiting – when the time is right you’ll be given access.

I’m going to ask everyone reading this to do something for me today at the bottom of this post. One of the first posts I read in my Google Reader today was from Christine’s blog. thirtysomething had a nasty scam experience.

Honestly, it makes me feel so useless. Here I sit, a friend of Christine’s, a scambaiter, someone who has tried here on my blog to educate people about scams, and just one degree of separation later here is a friend of Christine’s *almost* being scammed. I say almost because she did not lose any money that I know of – but worse still she quit a real job to take a fake one.

Educating people about scams online is one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life, because every time I think the word is getting out proof comes back to me as a surprise that it is not.

I have the knowledge to stop people from being scammed but it still isn’t enough. I can’t make the word go far enough. I can’t seem to get other people to write about the scams and link back to information I have here on the site about them.

The elderly, the stay at home Mom’s, the disabled, the depressed, the lonely, the vulnerable – these are the people who get scammed the most.

Experiences like the one thirtysomething had are why I still bait scammers. This is why I volunteer at victim support websites. This is why Sephy and I have spent the last 5 days furiously working to get a new scam warning website online.

I hear about terrible things happening to scam victims every single day. It could have been a lot worse. Just recently I spoke with an elderly lady who lost her entire life savings when a fraudulent check bounced. Scam victims are often arrested for check fraud. That is why I try to get the word out there on the internet so that people are not scammed.

What You Can Do Now -

Let the readers of your blog know about the Scam-O-Matic – a web form which can look at an email and tell you if the email looks like a known scam. Is this email a scam? Ask the Scam-O-Matic

While You’re At It -

Let the readers of your blog know about the new blog we have just launched. Scam Warning is a blog which automatically posts scam emails online. Many scam victims are prevented from being scammed because they search for the email address, telephone number, name or other information which appears in emails they receive from the scammers. You can also help by linking to Scam Warning in your sidebar.

Report Your Scammer Emails Online

I heartily encourage anyone receiving scam emails to report them via the Scam-O-Matic. The scam-o-matic can be found here – The scam-o-matic – all scammer email addresses and emails put into the scam-o-matic are added to a blacklist which can save other people from being scammed. All scammer emails are baited by scambaiters. All the emails you submit will end up appearing on the new blog we have just created.

Reporting Scam Emails is the number one way you can hurt scammers.

You can also report scams to the blacklist in other ways, take a look here for options.

Other ways YOU can help!

• Mention today’s blog post on YOUR blog so all the readers of your blog can be educated on this important topic. Feel free to link to this post.
• Link to these articles I have written about scams -
• Internet Safety & Scams – What You Need To Know.
• Snoskred made 5 MILLION DOLLARS online this year!
• Snoskred on Fake Check Scams and Scambaiting
• Stumble this blog post and the above articles with Stumbleupon, if you are a member.
• Email a link to today’s blog post and the above articles to your friends and family.
• Ask me via email to guest post on your blog on the topic of scams to help educate your readers.
• If you know anyone who has any questions about these scams I am only an email away. However there are some great websites on the internet that try to help as well -
• Fraudwatchers
• Scam Victims United
• Fraud Aid
• Now you know about this scam – there are so many others out there. Always ask if you’re not sure. The Fraudwatchers forum “Is this a Scam” is a good place to post a question you might have.

Steal This Post

Steal This
If you want a text copy of this blog post all ready to go in html format that you can simply copy and paste into your blog you can find it by clicking right here Steal This Post. I don’t normally encourage “content theft” but this is for a good cause. Please Steal This Post. Encourage your readers who may not know me from a bar of soap to do the same. Don’t make me beg. Help stop internet scams today.

Further Reading And Viewing -

About the 419 Scam
The Fraudwatchers Forums – Scam Related Articles
Scam Victims United
Gullibility can make you a millionaire – Herald Sun
The Big Sting (video) – 60 Minutes Australia – story transcript of the video (this video is truly incredible, well worth watching as the team go arresting scammers in Nigeria – something that rarely happens due to police corruption)
Another Big Sting style video – 60 Minutes Australia – story transcript of the video
Common Scams on Ebay – a guide
United Kingdom – Metropolitan Police Fraud Alert.

We bloggers want to put an email address out there on our blogs for people to contact us with. The spammers have “data mining” software, which grabs those email addresses off the internet and loads them into their spam email programs. So how can you protect yourself from this deluge of unwanted email?

Never Unsubscribe – Never Reply

I got an email this morning from a friend of mine, who mentioned receiving a spam email from Romania. This one was actually personally addressed to their email address, which often tricks people into thinking they had actually subscribed to receive these emails.

The bottom line is, spammers send these emails out in the hope that people will unsubscribe – or reply to the email asking them not to email again. Can you figure the logic in people who reply to scammers and spammers saying “Don’t email me again, ever.” – You never asked them to email you and asking them not to email you makes no sense at all. Like they’re going to do anything you ask them to do!!!

Once they have confirmed there is a real human being reading emails at that email address, they can sell it on to other spammers and make big money out of it. So set yourself a policy of never reply, never unsubscribe.

Is It Possible To Not Get Spam Emails?

Yes it is. You just have to keep your email address completely private. As in, you don’t give it to anyone, anywhere. Of course, that defeats the purpose of having an email address! You want people to be able to get in touch with you – you just don’t want spammers and scammers getting in touch.

What Can I Do?

There is a mail service known as Trust My Mail. I found out about this service a couple of years ago when scam victims were asking me – how can I make sure scammers can’t email me?

How Does It Work?

You get to choose a question which people have to answer before their email is put into your inbox. When someone sends you an email, they will receive the following message in return – click for a bigger image – When the person who sent you email clicks on the link within the email they were sent (or copies and pastes it into their browser, which is always the wiser thing to do on the internet) they will see this screen – Once they have answered it correctly the first time, that person is then always able to send you mail. You can put the answer to the question right below your email address on your website, and spammers and scammers will never find it – remember they do not visit your site to get your email address, they harvest it using data mining programs.

What If People Don’t Respond?

You can see pending messages, and if you recognise the address or know the person sending you mail, you can approve them yourself as well. I recommend you check your pending messages once every 24 hours.

Even better, you can now ask Trust My Mail (thanks to their new mail forwarding service) to forward messages on to another email address – and to send messages like you normally would, quite simply. This means you can keep your real email address 100% private on the internet, protecting you from spammers and scammers – and family members who forward every email you send to every man and his dog – and often to scammers and spammers as well!

It’s all free, by the way. And there’s no ads. No this is not a sponsored post, I just referred a lot of scam victims to Trust My Mail and always found people were happy with it – and it was easy for them to use, which is important..

I Don’t Like That Idea – Options?

There are a couple of other options which are relatively simple that may not stop the spammers and scammers completely, but at least makes it harder for them.

Make Your Email Address An Image -

You may have seen this kind of image around the place – note this email address I don’t use anymore so don’t ya’all email me at it! This is easily generated online thanks to this wonderful website – Email Icon Generator.

The only trouble with this is, your email address needs to be simple enough that people can work it out from the image. Try to use letters only because numbers will be confusing. You will find some people will get the address wrong or simply not bother, though. It is almost as bad as those Captcha word generator things for comments.

Put An Extra Word Into Your Email Address –

Then tell people underneath which word to remove. For example (this is not a real email address) emailmePOOP@mail.com <--- take out the Poop to reach me. The only trouble with this is people find it annoying and troublesome and might not email you at all. People used to use NOSPAM as the word to take out - don't use that word anymore, the scammers and spammers have worked that trick out. They're not complete nitwits, ya'all! ;)
Use One Email For The Net –

This is the solution I have chosen for myself. Make an email address which is for the web only and which receives email only – never use it for subscribing to things or personal emails or responding to anything. Be very aware that emails which arrive in there can potentially be spams and scams, and never unsubscribe to anything sent to that address – because you never USED that address to subscribe.

Make another email address for personal correspondance and keep that one to yourself and friends only. There’s no limit on how many email addresses you can have.

I use 5 different email addresses for this blog. One here for people to contact me with, one which receives all the comments people post on my blog, one which I use to email people back with, one which I use for things I have signed up for which are blog related, and one which I use when I reply to comments.

Stumble It –

I hope this might be useful information and helpful to everyone out there on the net, if you found it to be useful please stumble it.

Over To You!

What are you doing to protect yourself from spam and scammers? Do you receive a lot of scam or spam emails?

I’ve already made 5 million online this year, so I’m not looking for any jobs online. If you are looking for work online, you need to read my guest post over at I’ve Tried That so you can avoid the scams.

Snoskred on Fake Check Scams and Scambaiting

Don’t forget to pass the message on to your friends and family. You won’t forgive yourself if they get scammed and you had the knowledge to stop it from happening.

Let your friends and family know about the Scam-O-Matic – a web form which can look at an email and tell you if the email looks like a known scam. Is this email a scam? Ask the Scam-O-Matic.