Do you have a special skill? And an internet connection? And a little free time?
You could consider driving scammers insane. That’s what this young man uses his computer security training to do! Basically, he wastes as much of their time as possible to keep them from calling and robbing their REAL victims. Sometimes he makes them so angry they’ll be truly incapable of scamming anyone else that day. Check it out (this superhero alert pretty much speaks for itself):
Even more powerful, is this guy, Jim Browning. Watch this video where he terrifies a scammer with a picture of the scammer’s wife and child:
As always, I always try to draw you to action. If you get targeted with a scam, and have time to try to slow them down, try to get as much information as possible from the scammer. Submit the phone numbers and information to the FBI, and cybersecurity crimes divisions, online here. and to scammer.info where anti-scamming people can try to take them down. Leave their fake companies bad reviews on Google, Microsoft, and the Better Business Bureau websites. You should also forward scam emails to me@rescam.org, because there is a computer AI there being developed on rescam.org to waste scammers’ time and analyze their actions to tie up their robocalls so they can’t hurt people.
There’s a really great account of how Jim Browning and his friends took down an entire multimillion dollar scam operation in India. Unfortunately, unless you live in the country where the scammer lives, your government agencies may not be able to do anything, so the strongest defense is just to never give out your information, and never interact with these people on your personal computer or phone. The strongest offense…seems to be to turn to the dark web computer superheroes willing to take these jerks down. Some of them will even trick the scammers into downloading viruses. What they’re doing isn’t always legal everywhere, but it helps so many people. You can support people like Jim Browning on Patreon. And if you want to learn how to “scambait” yourself, you can go to scammer.info for tips and tricks. If you do that, don’t use a phone number or computer that you care about! And if you’re handy with a VPN yourself, maybe it’s your turn to stop evil online!
Stay safe out there, heroes.
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