Slashdot Mirror
Fraud Fighter "Bobbear" To Close Up Shop
Krebsonsecurity.com has a writeup on the decision of UK anti-fraud activist site bobbear.co.uk to retire from the fray. The 66-year-old fraud fighter said he was getting too old for the work, which takes him about 15 hours a day. "We had so many messages of thanks, and congratulations on the site, but it is so stressful and takes so much out of you, and there is always the worry of litigation hanging over your head." "The owner and curator of bobbear.co.uk, a site that specializes in exposing Internet fraud scams and phantom online companies, announced Saturday that he will be shuttering the site at the end of April. Bobbear and its companion site bobbear.com are creations of [the pseudonomous] Bob Harrison, a 66-year-old UK resident who for the last four years has tirelessly chronicled and exposed a myriad of fraud and scam Web sites. The sites, which are well-indexed by Google and other search engines and receive about 2,000 hits per day, often are among the first results returned in a search for the names of fly-by-night corporations advertised in spam and aimed at swindling the unsuspecting or duping the unwitting." Any ideas on who might want to take over the domains and carry on the work would be appreciated by the Internet community at large.
Any ideas on who might want to take over the domains and carry on the work would be appreciated by the Internet community at large.
Turn it into a moderated wiki. Allow interested parties to post, and a queue of submissions from forwarded emails to be reviewed. Like the slashdot of the spam underworld. :|
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Any ideas on who might want to take over the domains and carry on the work would be appreciated by the Internet community at large.
Sounds like something that the Consumers Union might want to take a look at.
They publish Consumer Reports and recently acquired The Consumerist website.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I'll buy the domain and build up a business on it. I have a great way to get potential new employees too. I'll simply find 5 people and tell them about this awesome opportunity to do good for the general world. They can each pay me $50 to be part of this opportunity, but don't worry they can quickly recoup their costs. All they need to do is go out and find 10 more employees each and get them all to sign up for $50. They can keep 5% of whatever joining fee that gets paid. Then those people can each find another 10 people.... Soon I shall use my newly recuirted army to fight fraud!
"Hello, I represent Mr. Kopyambi, who died recently and left $28 million unclaimed. If you wish to claim a portion of this amount as a handling fee, just set the domain name administrator to Pytor Molotov, Russian Business Network, St. Petersburg"
...could take it over: www.scamwarners.com, www.scamorama.com, www.419eater.com, or www.aa419.org. They've already proven their worth on the anti-scam front and have people that can keep it current.
Any ideas on who might want to take over the domains and carry on the work would be appreciated
If one man can be acknowledged by the cyber-community to make a difference, (and, in passing, hats off to him), imagine what Government could do with a well-financed team of, say, ten people?
Cyber-crime costs a hugh, and increasing, amount of money, (see comments here on /. about the true cost of spam). Unfortunately, Governments do not seem to take it seriously enough. Maybe because it rarely hits to headlines, and so is perceived as less of an issue, (i.e. vote winner). Shame.
But it is still a respectable amount of traffic.
Guns don't kill people, "with glowing hearts" kills people.
Since these sites keep turning up high in the search results, it would be to their benefit if there was someone to help cleanup the mess.
...that I never heard of.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
If we had lawsuit protection and a loser pays rule it would be a lot harder to threaten these sites with frivolous lawsuits. Especially if a judge ruled that you had to put up a bond to pay in the event you lost before you were allowed to file. You can argue the other way that this denies the poor justice, but the current system is crap to innocent defendants.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Does a bobbear shit in the woods?
I'm not sure. But if you're a scammer he will happily pee in your revenue stream...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
I'm pretty sure Google has an anti-fraud team behind the scenes.
1. Search for, e.g., "Healthcare Payments Inc", and the first few search results link to anti-fraud pages (Bobbear). There's no link to the scam's website.
2. Granted, it can do better with "Harper Logistic", but there's still no link to the scam's website.
3. "This site may harm your computer."
4. Red and grey page in Firefox, with a huge warning. (Thanks, Mozilla!)
5. Others that we don't see.
The efforts may mostly be done by other people (domain registries, browser developers, fighters like "Bob Harrison", etc.), but that doesn't mean Google doesn't do anything.