Slashdot Mirror

... There is always The Lad Vampire

How about some white hats putting together a free (beer or speech) version like this? I really like the idea, and dutifully posted many a spam link (when I could get to the site) whenever I got one. Something like this, but for spammers?

Well. if you want sites with content, thousands of them are fake fake banks and security companies used by 419 fraudsters. All full of really cheesy corporate graphics (usually lifted off legitimate sites)

There's a website: Artists against 419, that does the same thing. Interesting tactic, and really, spam eats our bandwidth, so is this turnabout fair play?

CVb

Lad Vampire is still going strong. It's similar to the Lycos thing but only targets 419 scammers.

http://www.aa419.org/

The site is filled up with linked images from a 419 scam site, so they use up their bandwidth just like the Lycos screensaver does for spammers.

Isn't this the same as the "Artists against 419" site is doing?

Are we trying to slashdot pages of guys violating the GPL or what? The site's like taken offline right now man.

Wait... That sounds like a good idea... no more than a version of http://www.aa419.org/, Artists against 419 scammers...

There are more efficient ways to implement this - a script that keeps doing "wget options > /dev/null" could suck down as much bandwidth without wasting CPU and memory on having your browser render it, but this one's really a no-brainer to use. One of my computers gets a bit clunky running this (the 2.4GHz running XP has more trouble than the 1.1GHz running Win2K.)

There are more efficient ways to implement this - a script that keeps doing "wget options > /dev/null" could suck down as much bandwidth without wasting CPU and memory on having your browser render it, but this one's really a no-brainer to use. One of my computers gets a bit clunky running this (the 2.4GHz running XP has more trouble than the 1.1GHz running Win2K.)

Artists against 419 is also interesting. They are working against the phising sceems of 419 scammers.
If you've got bandwith to spare, be sure to check out The Lad Vampire

Please modify the news post and add one of those links. They could use the help of a lot of slashdotters, I think.

Artists against 419 is also interesting. They are working against the phising sceems of 419 scammers.
If you've got bandwith to spare, be sure to check out The Lad Vampire

Please modify the news post and add one of those links. They could use the help of a lot of slashdotters, I think.

On a related note:
The lad vampire needs your help

Here are some banks to use for your transaction: http://www.aa419.org/ladvampire.html

There is a site that is designed to run up the usage of web sites used by scammers to close some deals. The idea is to get as many 509 errors as possible. http://www.aa419.org/ladvampire.html Leave it running all day!

Thanks! It looks like the main page is http://www.aa419.org/ and it looks like the page you were talking about has been changed to http://www.aa419.org/monthly419flashmob.shtml

Thanks! It looks like the main page is http://www.aa419.org/ and it looks like the page you were talking about has been changed to http://www.aa419.org/monthly419flashmob.shtml

Boy do I feel like a dork!

The correct page is at: http://aa419.org/SummerFlashMob.php

Load it up and leave it running in your browser to waste 419 scammer's bandwidth.

If you're waiting for /. to recover from a 503 error, why not head over to the aa419.org website and participate in a flash mob that is designed to suck up all the bandwidth belonging to 419 scammers.

Their current target is a fake bank. A page to automatically reload the fake bank page over and over again is at:

http://aa419.org/LotteryNightmare.htm

Hell, I use it all the time. Of course, I read it using Unix mush, and a wetware-based html render engine. =) If they can infect that with a virus, I'm already in trouble by definition. I must say, it does make most of the phish and spam stand out.

My main objection to the test: ALL the URLs all failed my initial "phishing" test-- does the HTML text visible match the underlying source hyperlink? For the test, they were all linked to "#" with an a OnClick popup. The "mouse over" trick to show you what it's nominally linking to doesn't work in Safari.

Oddly, I was still able to get 10/10 due to sublteties in style difference between the legits and the fakes (which I wish I could concisely quantify). Given the department I work for emphasizes the importance of both communication and ethics, I find it interesting that there seems a link here between poor verbal skills and criminal intent. I wonder if it's because the more eloquent have better ways to scam a living, or perhaps because so many of the scammers are non-native English speakers of limited fluency....

aa419 also organises monthly flash mobs on the first of the month, to see how many of these fraudulent sites they can take down in a day...

419 flashmob

If you don't want to directly engage the scammers, but still want to hurt their cause, check out this site. All the images there are taken from the fake banking sites that the scammers set up. The pages refresh every 2 minutes to keep the bandwidth usage going. If you REALLY want to hurt them, and have bandwidth to spare, try going to this page. It will load 12 images, all from the aforementioned fake banking sites as fast as your connection will allow.

If you don't want to directly engage the scammers, but still want to hurt their cause, check out this site. All the images there are taken from the fake banking sites that the scammers set up. The pages refresh every 2 minutes to keep the bandwidth usage going. If you REALLY want to hurt them, and have bandwidth to spare, try going to this page. It will load 12 images, all from the aforementioned fake banking sites as fast as your connection will allow.