When Scammers Get A Payback
July 8, 2023
Have you ever received a call, e-mail, pop-up message, or any form of digital message about at least one of the following topics:
Your device is infected with one or more viruses;
suspicious files are found in your system;
your anti-virus subscription has expired and was auto-renewed;
a purchase amount was charged to your bank or credit card account; and
and other similar messages that scare you to act quickly by calling their hotline or contacting them thru their email address?
If you have encountered one or more of these messages and ignored them, then good. If you still have not and will see these messages in the future, for your safety's sake, please IGNORE THEM!
Why? These messages are baits sent out by scammers!
FBI reported that in 2021, nearly $7 Billion were lost to various cybercrime, including ransomware, and various types of scams, including tech-support and refund scams.
Source: https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-2022/fbi-internet-crime-report.html
Hello again, dear friends. Scamming is not a new crime. People have devised countless ways to scam others. For sure you have heard of the Ponzi scheme or the Pyramiding scam.
Anyway, two scamming schemes have caught my attention lately. Namely:
tech-support scam; and
refund scam.
In tech-support scams, the fraudsters pose as technical support representatives of known companies like Microsoft, Dell, and other companies. In refund scams, the fraudster presents themselves as representative of popular companies like Amazon, Norton, even PayPal, and would make up stories that you either made a purchase online and ask the would-be victim and if they want a refund.
The fraudsters usually contact their victims thru unsolicited phone calls, pop-up messages, scare emails, and other means.
I won't go through the details of the scamming process for now. What I want to share with you right now is these scammers have met their match and some of them got their payback.
Thankfully there are people or groups of people who are doing something to catch, expose, and even have some fraudsters arrested. One of those is the YouTuber Pierogi of Scammer Payback.
What they do is they do is, pose as possible victims, to waste the time and resources of the scammers, and wreak havoc on the scammers' operation in one way or another. This is called scam baiting.
Scam baiting
Scam baiting is a form of internet vigilantism primarily used towards advance-fee fraud, IRS impersonation scams, technical support scams, pension scams, and consumer financial fraud. Scam baiters pose potential victims to waste the time and resources of scammers, gather information useful to authorities, and publicly expose scammers. They may document scammers' tools and methods, warn potential victims, provide discussion forums, disrupt scammers' devices and systems using remote access trojans and computer viruses, or take down fraudulent webpages. Some scam baiters are motivated by a sense of civic duty, some simply engage for their amusement or a combination of both. Wikipedia
Disclaimer.
In the videos that I will share here, the scammers are operating in India. I don't intend to offend or discredit or mean any disrespect to our Indian friends on this platform. There are lots of respectable and decent people from India. Unfortunately, a lot of online frauds are coming from a certain district of that country.
In the past two weeks or so, I have been watching Scammer Payback videos. Well... it's more like binge-watching the Scammer Payback videos. LOL! I don't know when the channel started but I saw a video posted three years ago.
Anyway, the Scammer Payback team has done a tremendous job exposing the operations of the scammers that eventually lead to some arrests, and some have to close shops.
Here is the latest video at the time of writing.
Hacking the Scammers
What they do is, they allow the scammers to get into their computer thru a remote desktop application like Team Viewer or AnyDesk. (These are legitimate apps widely used by tech-support people to remotely troubleshoot a computer). Then using a "special" application, they secretly reverse the connection. So while the scammers do their thing on his computer, Pierogi secretly download and delete their files. Often, they call potential victims when they find information from the scammer's files.
I enjoy watching the videos as Pierogi and his team do their stuff.
White Hat Hacker
We often associate the term hacking and hacker with something negative. However, there is what we call a "White Hat Hacker". A white hat hacker is a person who uses his/her skills to identify security vulnerabilities in a computer system.
I sometimes see Scammer Payback working with a white hat hacker and another YouTuber known as NanoBaiter.
Here is one of NanoBaiter's videos explaining how scammers do their dirty work.
In Closing
Online scamming is prevalent these days. Thankfully, there are people like Pierogi, NanoBaiter, and others who use their skills to disrupt the scammer's operations. However, what they are doing will never be enough. As long as the scammers can find potential victims, they will continue in their despicable line of work.
We can do our part to stop these scammers in their tracks.
First and foremost let's spread awareness. Scammers usually target the elderly those who are not too tech-savvy.
You can share this information with your loved ones who might be targeted by these scammers. Show them the videos from the YouTubers I mentioned above. Who knows, this information and videos might save them from losing thousands of dollars to these scammers.
Second, avoid putting too much personal information on the Internet. This is where problems related to KYC come in. Your personal information is never 100% safe online.
Also, let's show our support to scam baiters like Scammer Payback and NanoBaiter who tirelessly try to expose and stop these scammers on their tracks. Check out their videos, share them to your friends and love ones to spread awareness about these scamming schemes.
I will share more information and safety tips in the future.
Stay safe out there and thanks for reading.
Post No. 2023-35
Date Posted: July 9, 2023, Philippine Standard Time
All images are mine unless otherwise indicated.
Lead image: Screenshot of Scammer Payback with modification
Sometimes I have seen notifications like this. I ignore them, because I know what is on my device and what is not.
But, thanks for the tips. This information is very useful.