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Anyone interested in the details of how these scams are pulled off might want to check out "scam baiting" youtube channels like Kitboga [1]. They use a virtual

• lozaning 7y ago
  Do you know what Kitboga and the like do to get themselves targeted by scammers? If I ever get calls like this I'll keep them on the line as long as I can as a kind of game. I get called like maybe once a quarter though.
  • ct0 7y ago
    He generally plays the part of an old person 100% of the time. Also he has a huge following and fans submit numbers to him, so he generally calls them back
  • ashonalla 7y ago
    Next time you get a call, waste their time a little pretending to be slow and then do something to make them angry such as explain that you've been wasting their time and don't approve of their business methods. They'll put you on some uber-mark list as retaliation, and you'll get a couple of dozen calls over the next few days.
    • kryptk 7y ago
      I was on my way out the door one morning, taking my dog to the vet to have a lump removed. I was in a bad place. The phone rang. I knew I shouldn't pick it up, but I was in a bad place. It was "microsoft", and they needed immediate payment to avoid legal action. I am a little ashamed of what happened next but I dumped every curse word I could think upon that indian guy. It had nothing to do with him really, but I really let him have it. Honestly, I feel bad looking back at it. He may have been wrong, but I was wronger. He is trying to survive like everyone else.. who the hell am I to sit in the comfy first world and judge?
      • Scoundreller 7y ago
        It's probably happened often enough that they're desensitized to it.
      • raverbashing 7y ago
        No, you're not wrong to defend yourself and to come back at someone who's being hostile to you You're not trying to scam people, he is.
      • thekyle 7y ago
        Nothing to be ashamed of. The person on the other end of the phone was a criminal attempting to defraud you. You could have done much worse than just cursing them out.
      • AmericanChopper 7y ago
        > He is trying to survive like everyone else.. who the hell am I to sit in the comfy first world and judge? This line of reasoning ultimately leads to the conclusion that morals only apply in situations where it’s comfortable and convenient to apply them. Perhaps any particular scammer has been the victim of their own set of injustices (or just as likely, perhaps not), but that in no way excuses their victimisation of others. They’re adults too. Not some poor lowly Indians who had no choice but to defraud the vulnerable.
      • dan-0 7y ago
        > He is trying to survive like everyone else.. who the hell am I to sit in the comfy first world and judge? He doesn't know you from a senile person living in poverty. They'll steal your money regardless of who you are. There's no moral justification for that. They are evil.
  • rauhl 7y ago
    > Do you know what Kitboga and the like do to get themselves targeted by scammers? From my experience: have a phone number. The real reason that I decommissioned my old landline was that it had become unusable: calls at all hours of the day and night, none of which were wanted and most of which were illegitimate.
  • Scoundreller 7y ago
    > Do you know what Kitboga and the like do to get themselves targeted by scammers? Many of the scams are just sequential or random dialing. So having a bunch of VoIP numbers is enough to multiply your calls. Others have call back numbers so you just need a trustworthy group of friends/fans to feed them to you.
  • dan-0 7y ago
    This. I used to have long commutes. I really enjoyed getting scam calls during the commutes and seeing how long I could keep them on. It was completely a game. I look at it that the longer I can occupy them the less time they have to take advantage of someone else. These people are the lowest of the low, they prey on the senile and ignorant, stealing from them regardless of their economic status. There should be no pity. If I can end the conversation making the scammer regret their life decisions, or at least waste their time, it's a win.
  • Kirby64 7y ago
    Kitboga usually is the one calling the scammers. He has a form on his website where you can submit scammer phone numbers. Although I'm sure he does get targeted, he also uses a ton of virtual phone numbers, so he's only getting calls unless he wants them...
• ct0 7y ago
  tollfreedeals.com - 1-480-305-4028 Global Voicecom Inc - 1 (516) 342-5894 Global Telecommunication Services Inc - (516)-327-4681 K S Telecom Inc. - (916) 652-4735
  • thr483900 7y ago
    Ha! I actually know the guy who runs Tollfreedeals.com! He's in deep sh$$$t
    • ct0 7y ago
      better call him and tell him just to be sure!
      • thr483900 7y ago
        He recently moved into a $3M house. I guess it will soon belong to the US government.
        • AdrianEGraphene 7y ago
          Your buddy will be fine as long as he did not pierce the corporate veil. His company may go bankrupt, but he won't be personally liable.
    • dredmorbius 7y ago
      http://www.managementconsultingpro.com/executive-team http://www.managementconsultingpro.com/executive-team ???
      • dredmorbius 7y ago
        And: confirming, based on the DoJ press release.
    • Scoundreller 7y ago
      Looks like the 5th company is another owned by the owners of tollfreedeals: sipretail.com https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-files-actions-stop-telecom-carriers-who-facilitated-hundreds-millions https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-files-acti...
• nexuist 7y ago
  >The victim must have severely diminished critical thinking ability for the scam to work. This is why lists of "elderly owned" phone numbers go for so much on the black/gray market. The cost of running these scams is so low that they spam everyone with their bait, but I suspect the real cash cows are elderly people who have large savings / Social Security checks. Part of the problem is that it is super difficult to teach a parent or grandparent what inspect element even is without delving deep into Web infrastructure and how browsers work...very complicated, technical explanations. Simplification works to a point, but if you just tell them "don't trust what you see on the screen" they'll ignore actually important warnings, blast through alert boxes faster than they can read them, and when your next lesson includes "look for the green padlock next to each address" they'll just get even more confused since, you know, you just told them not to trust anything.
  • ryandrake 7y ago
    You don’t need to teach them about inspect element. You just need to teach them today’s basic rule of thumb: if someone contacts you over the phone or Internet asking you to do something, no matter what it is or how serious the person sounds... just don’t do it.
    • toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Your suggestion, while well intentioned, does not fully appreciate the scope of the problem as it relates to elderly social engineering and the inherent weaknesses (fear, loneliness, mental deterioration) that are leveraged by attackers.
      • vic-traill 7y ago
        This. Loneliness is powerful; I suspect that if you're lonely enough, even a scam call conversation has appeal. There are even suggestions that loneliness has physical implications [0]. My father suffers from vascular dementia. He's pretty agreeable these days (a lot more so than he used to be). Fortunately an underlying suspicion of strangers calling to talk about money on the telephone has triumphed thus far, but I do expect that this balance will change over time. [0] https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/social-isolation-loneliness-older-people-pose-health-risks https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/social-isolation-loneliness-old...
• tantalor 7y ago
  > The victim must have severely diminished critical thinking ability for the scam to work. That's oversimplifying, and insulting, and unsupported. It's more accurate to say more likely scam victims are more likely risk tolerant. As this study puts it, they see "the potential for high benefits as outweighing the risks." https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180727-why-so-many-people-fall-for-scams https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180727-why-so-many-pe... They overestimate the benefits or underestimate the risks of scam offers.
  • strbean 7y ago
    Many scams, including the example parent gave, trade on fear rather than a fake reward. How does "more risk tolerant" play when the victims are cooperating because they think they will be prosecuted by the IRS or sued if they don't pay up?
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • tantalor 7y ago
      If you comply, then you risk losing the money (what if it was a scam?) versus the benefit of avoiding jail. If you refuse, then you risk jail (what if it was real?) versus the benefit of keeping the money. If you get a scam IRS call, then refusing is correct. But the risk-tolerant person considers the alternative: the potential for benefits of compliance over the risk of compliance; they might think "Could be a scam... but I'd rather not go to jail!" If you get a real IRS letter, then complying is correct. But the risk-tolerant person considers refusing and benefit of keeping their money; they might think "Could be a scam... I'm not paying!"
      • marcoperaza 7y ago
        You acknowledge it yourself. There’s “risk” to both complying and ignoring the call. Anyway, risk tolerance isn’t the right lens to look at this. It’s about knowing whether that’s the way the government would actually issue demands and take payments. That requires some savvy and insight about the world. Some people have it and some people don’t. And relatedly, it’s about being skeptical vs. trusting in general.
• gjs278 7y ago
  indians are filth. even the ones in america with money will scam you.
• irjustin 7y ago
  > Unfortunately the comments include a lot of casual racism against Indians, with little awareness of the structural conditions causing these scammers to exist. Thank you for this. It's easy to say "they" when referring to a particular race or group of people that happen to be dealt the cards in life such that they end up doing this. Sadly those who take on this work are many times themselves in an even worse situation and many put their blinders on when scamming others because there's nothing else or left for them.
  • RHSeeger 7y ago
    The same can be said for drug dealers, or mob enforcers, or any number of other jobs that prey on other people. While it may explain why they're doing what they're doing, it doesn't excuse it. To be clear, I'm talking about the people perpetrating these scams, not any racial group; Indians or otherwise.
  • kjs3 7y ago
    Or...it's a relatively easy job with little risk and a good opportunity for upside? If you are sufficiently lacking in morals? Frankly, I consider it just as much 'casual racism' to say "poor Indians, they have no choice but to commit crime because things are so bad where they are"; that's stereotyping too. I have to deal with way too many of these folks (it's not just from India...Nigeria, Eastern Europe, etc). Let's break this down a bit: we aren't talking about people for whom the only alternative is begging in the street or something. They're literate in English. They've had some education. They're mentally nimble enough to run the scam. They work in an office. And they are deliberately seeking to manipulate and defraud the weakest in society. These are folks with options, not either being a criminal or selling organs to feed themselves. So perhaps it makes me a bad person, or insufficiently compassionate. Or something. But I've been to Hyderabad and Lagos and a bunch of other places and seen people who really have no options. So I can't quite gin up forgiveness for someone who is targeting the feeble, the more feeble the better, for fraud, and would consider taking everything they had a success.
  • robk 7y ago
    Sorry but absolutely no pity for these scum
• 14 7y ago
  I work as a care giver was in washroom with a slightly demented client and the phone rang. She asked me to get it as she could not get up quickly. It was of course Microsoft Support. This lady has never owned a computer and I knew right away scam. I said “you piece of shit scum of the earth” and before I could finish he says “oh shit” and hung up on me. Luckily this lady has no access to credit cards or money but if she did she would be the perfect victim. Easy to fool and no way to tell you how it all happened. I normally act highly professional speaking on other people’s phones but in this instance I knew it was for sure a scam and really hoped by showing I knew exactly what they were they would not waste time calling back.
  • ashonalla 7y ago
    That only works for remote support type calls, you'll get opposite results if you try those tactics with free cruise or fake credit rate adjustment calls.
    • _asummers 7y ago
      Do you have any tricks about the credit rate adjustment calls? Those are my current ire, as well as the car warranty ones.
      • nullc 7y ago
        I finally got one of the credit rate adjustment calls to not immediately hang up on me, kept them on for about 15 minutes. They incorrectly claimed that I only gave them 15 digits for my credit card number-- I think to make sure I read them the same digits back. Next time I'll make sure to have a fake credit card number handy that passes the checksum.
• donmcronald 7y ago
  I always wonder if that channel is real or fake. I swear I've heard the same scammer more than once and I don't see why the scammers wouldn't check to see if they're running in a VM as soon as they get remote access.
  • kube-system 7y ago
    After watching a few of these, I think many of the scammers are not very tech savvy, but are simply following directions they have been given. Some of them are very easily fooled by Kitboga's tricks.
  • tastroder 7y ago
    He's hiding the most obvious signs that it's a virtual machine to some degree. The scammers that in 99% of the cases fail to change a number with the browser developer tools because he added an invisible div on top of his fake bank page are just too incompetent to check for a VM, though some do or at least try to. Kitboga specifically also livestreams on Twitch: https://twitch.tv/kitboga https://twitch.tv/kitboga for hours at a time, multiple days a week. I see don't really see a chance that's faked.
• baddox 7y ago
  > The victim must have severely diminished critical thinking ability for the scam to work. I don't think that's true. It can happen to immigrants to a country who are entirely unaware of banking/legal/taxing practices, etc. who can be scammed into thinking a call is from a legitimate authority figure and who simply do not have enough cultural familiarity to know which things "don't seem right."
  • blt 7y ago
    good point, edited.
  • jjeaff 7y ago
    I've heard of young, native, PhD candidates falling for these schemes as well.
    • thisisnico 7y ago
      PhD doesn't equal to intelligence. Some of the Academics I've encountered I question how they've made it this far.
• hi41 7y ago
  >> against Indians, with little awareness of the structural conditions causing these scammers to exist. What are the structural conditions you are referring to.
  • simonh 7y ago
    Certain types of crimes and scams tend to gravitate into certain demographics. This community is full of drug dealers, that community is rife with protection rackets. This other community tends towards phone scams. There are particular circumstances that have lead certain scams to be rife in Nigeria, and another that have led this sort of scam to operate in India. It’s not necessarily that Indians generally are more corrupt or venal, it’s just that this is a particular way venality and corruption manifests over there. Other communities manifest their venality and corruption differently, due to different structural reasons. So the simple logic that goes this is bad, predominantly only people from this demographic are doing it, therefore this demographic must be worse than everybody else, is overly simplistic. There are bad people everywhere, they just do different things depending on their circumstances and opportunities.
  • varjag 7y ago
    outsourcing of call center jobs to india
• onetimemanytime 7y ago
  >>It's outlandish. It goes beyond computer-illiterate victims. The victim must have severely diminished critical thinking ability for the scam to work. That's the whole point. MS Research actually pointed out that the pitch--full of speeeling mistakes--was designed to attract the less educated /intelligent ones, since smart ones are a waste of time.
• ipython 7y ago
  About the racist comments: I have engaged these scammers myself and to a person (usually male) they will shout expletives at me once they realize I have wasted their time and I will not be their next victim. Interestingly enough they all use the same “insult” that they will have relations with my mother (insert relevant expletives). These people are fraudsters preying on older people and do not deserve pity.
  • blt 7y ago
    Yes, some (most?) of the scammers are bad people. That doesn't mean you can conclude that all Indians are bad people. Those are the comments I was talking about.
    • simula67 7y ago
      I am from India and I despise the actions of these people.
    • loco5niner 7y ago
      > Yes, some (most?) of the scammers are bad people. ALL
    • celticmusic 7y ago
      I don't know the specific comments you're talking about, but it should be pointed out that truthful observations such as most of these scammers being indian isn't racist. Nor are warnings that if someone with an indian accent calls you out of the blue, be on your guard. At the end of the day, not all humans are thieves, but I still attempt to prevent all humans from entering my house.
      • blt 7y ago
        OK... Your point is that there exist comments that could follow from the racist premise "all Indians are bad people", but are also justifiable by non-racist premises like "most scammers are Indian"? Thanks for explaining logic, I guess.
• GenericsMotors 7y ago
  Jim Browning is another great channel related to this, in that he does his best to infiltrate the callcenters he gets calls from and find the info needed to alert (or even refund!) the victims: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBNG0osIBAprVcZZ3ic84vw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBNG0osIBAprVcZZ3ic84vw While Kitboga's scambaits are definitely entertaining and a waste of the scammers' time, Jim seems to be doing the work that a police unit should be doing.
• Shivetya 7y ago
  another scam involves getting remote access and then setting the windows password so they have to call another number and pay ransom to get in their own pc, the screen saver text is usually to unlock your pc call xxx-xxx-xxxx
• auiya 7y ago
  I feel like a lot of these videos are fake.
• apostacy 7y ago
  About 10 years ago, I was able to get a scammer to run a malicious Java applet. I just insisted that if they really wanted my money, they were going to have to use this fake bank portal I made. Greed is a powerful motivator.