Scamming The Scammers

Scamming The Scammers was Originally Posted on February 6, 2013 by

Usually I just delete the scam emails, but today I got to thinking.

Sometimes I reply to an email with the text SCAM in big letters.

These scammer/spammers have nothing better to do than to spam the world and hope that someone replies.

Imagine if EVERYONE replied! :-)

I can reply from some of my email accounts that are not used for anything. You see, if I own the domain XYZZY.NET, I own an unlimited number of email addresses within that domain. The scammers send to various names like “mark@” and “tom@” and “sales@” and “admin@”, etc. I am thinking that if I am not using some of these common email accounts, I might just reply and play along for a while. Taking up these scammers time means they think they have a mark and will waste time with me thinking I’m not in on their scam.

Others have done this, getting the people to send a FedEx package with a check (an invalid check) and then never deposit it. The scammer wastes real money on FedEd shipments! The scammers hope that you will, and then send them money right back before the scam is detected. they call and email and text and really get excited when you drag your feet, because they hope the check will not show up phoney before you wire them money back.

It helps that I have unlimited emails and have throwaway telephone numbers.

I might just have to give them a run for their money :-)