Have you ever had a call or pop-up telling you that your computer has a Virus?

This was undoubtedly a scam and had you continued this conversation, you might have lost money, confidential information, or access to your computer.

Many of these scams ask you to connect to their computer so their engineer can “help” you, whilst they may syskey your computer, making it useless until you pay a ransom to regain access.

(Thank you, Microsoft, for removing syskey from Windows 10!!!)

Now it’s rare that I have the time, but sometimes if I receive a scam call, I play along and pretend to be a moron, letting them access a virtual machine where they download “bank details” containing trojans and malware etc.

I’ve recently come across a couple of sites:-

https://bobrtc.live, which provides you with a free anonymous VOIP system for calling scammers

https://www.scammer.info is a website where you can get the numbers to call etc

Now, this has the potential to be fun, but please remember never to let a scammer into your real computer.

Only use VMs, and the software and sites (above) should be accessed using one VM whilst inviting the scammers onto a second VM.

BUT HOLD ON ONE MOMENT

Here is the issue I have with proactively scam-baiting.

You make the scammers better! By showing scammers that you know their methods, they adapt and get better, causing their next victims to fall harder for their ever-increasingly professional tactics.

Also, they have a script, and as soon as you play along with them, the “this person is a mug” box gets ticked, and your number/email gets passed to more scammers, even though you reveal later that you knew.

Call them out as soon as you know/suspect, and your number/email will hopefully be removed from their list.

When you waste their time, you are also wasting your own time.

Also, if they’ve called you, they know who you are, which is not the same as when you call them, so be careful as you don’t know who they are working with.

I would encourage people not to engage scammers, but if you do, only do so if you are pre-prepared and know what you are doing.

It can be fun, but you are lowering yourself to their level!

If you find scam-baiting entertaining, watch good people in action. Jim Browning