How To Catch A Scammer/Spammer

Joe 90 writes "An interesting story got posted on the Irish Linux Users group. It involves the arrest of a scammer/spammer working in an internet cafe. It even includes the attempt to eat a usb pen drive, several cops and a 10 minute struggle to subdue the man. Story is available on the Linux.ie mailing list By the way Gardai = the cops in Ireland."

Comments

Dr Dean, what do you have to say about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

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Impotent Stuff: Please try to to avoid looking like a complete buffoon and ignoramous to the entire country you jackass. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.

Impotent Stuff: Please try to keep campaign on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.

Impotent Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.

Wikipedia reaches 241,000 articles!

[Anonymous Coward]

GNAA is one of them! Vandals of the wikipedia united! Help rid the earth of the scum that is GNAA!

Just so I'm clear, here...

[Jay L]

This is a story that starts with a sysadmin seeing a 419 scam, hearing that there was a black guy with a "suspicious" accent in his cafe, deciding that this must be our criminal, and deciding to read his e-mail to find out...

Right?

internet cafes == BIG BROTHER

[Anonymous Coward]

You're being sniffed and watched in internet cafes, whether you're a scammer, spammer or just wanting to do some email.
Don't expect privacy there.

Re:Strange understanding of ethnicity

[mattyp]

yes, he was being sarcastic, but yes he's also being mildly racist: he is making fun of an entire race of people, on the basis of one man's skin color. this particular man, had not made any reference to his own skin color in that cafe, he came in as a customer. but, he's not a customer in this cafe, he's a "blackie". scratch the skin of half of you enlightened hip young anti-globalists, anti-americans, and that's what we find: racists. ok, so the man was a petty criminal, which fact was determined on the basis of some dangerous vigilante invasions of privacy: what if he is a political dissident in his home country, using stego to hide important human rights messages in spam to evade detection? Do petty criminals suddenly become subject to racism? imagine yourself to be a person of african descent: what do you call yourself? "black", a word that 40 years ago was a slur? 40 years ago activists resurrected that word, to a word of moderate pride. but still, it's not a nice word, "blacklist" bad, "whitelist" good, blackhat, whitehat, black-heart, white-soul.... no, so, in the US, a land of immigrants, they wish to point out that in addition to irish americans, and italian americans, we have african americans. so what? is it his fault that american culture and movies are exported as a business and the word spreads? just like New South Wales and New England and New France are nowhere near the "old" ones, so what if the word African-American takes on the connotations of the "African diaspora"? It's called "linguistics", that's how words work and spread. Did you know that the word "slave" comes form the word "Slav"... does it make you snicker, ha ha, how can "they" complain about slavery? THEY AREN'T SLAVS! no, that would be idiocy.

Racist Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

At one point, 3 guys who would appear to be of similar ethnic background want to come into the room where Michelle was working. They are told we are closed due to a technical problem. They were friendly and understood the situation and departed quickly enough.

Talk about racist bullshit... should I infer that every black guy with an african accent is a crook? The overwhelming majority of spammers, pornographers, net abusers, crackers, etc, in the news seem to be white, not black. Outside of ID'ing the suspect spammer to the cafe staff, his race doesn't make any difference and the author's focus on it tells more about him than it does about spammers in general.

And don't tell me I'm being fucking politically correct. This is simply about being a reasonable human being.

Stupid Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, he was caught sending out bunches of emails. Annoying, yes, but how exactly is that illegal? What law was broken? Granted I'm not familiar with Irish law.

In Soviet Russia

[drknowdk]

In Soviet Russia USB pen's eat you

Re:Sounds like a Monty Python episode

[YetAnotherLogin]

Who are you? Spam-shady?

Please stand up. Please stand up...

Re:Would have to be one tough USB memory card

[Anonymous Coward]

"CANON"!

NOT "CANNON".

Why try to write like a pretentious twat when your vocabulary isn't up to it?