Thread by @Boris

I created a fake company to play around with spammers, and it is just such a joy to use, and you can use it too.

A thread:

I receive an email from a scammer/spammer. Like this:

I reply with this standard text:

When they email [e-mail] they get an OoO reply, which looks like a real message:

Bill tells the scammer talk to Helena next, who forwards them to Theresa, then Martha and they end at John. John is missing some essential attachments so sends them back to Helena.

I created all these fake personas and wrote their replies.

The idea is that’s every minute these scammers/spammers spend wasting time on this endless look, they won’t spend on scamming more people.

Such a joy to see them take the time to email each next person. And you can try it too! Send an email to [e-mail] as a test.

Or, next time you receive spam reply with this:

“Please forward this email to [e-mail], and delete my email, as I’ll be changing jobs soon, and this email address will no longer be active.”

“Bill Whiskoney is a senior partner at Nordic Procurement Services, and he handles our budget and will help you further or introduce you to someone who can.”

if enough people would do this, it would quickly become uneconomic to spam and scam. It only works now because they can email millions of people and only the gullible reply.

If thousands of people would reply it would be too much work to go through all the replies.

I even created a fake website at noprocurement.com 😂

Every now and then I’ll check into the fake gmail accounts to see how far some scammers came into the loop, and I’m delighted to tell you they go all in... 😂

Next step could be a gmail plugin so that when you get spam/scam you can simply click one button and it:

1: auto-replies with the standard text
2: adds the sender email to a filter
3: next time the same sender emails it sends an OoO with “I no longer work here”

Another improvement would be more domains and more generic names/accounts so you can decide to which one you send scammers.

Oh, the emails get more frivolous and weird at every step. John, last one in the loop, is very unprofessional, but in a kind and sympathetic way. Send [e-mail] a mail to see what I mean. He’s last in line so doesn’t get a LOT of attention.

This will only work if LOTS of people use it so do retweet 👏👏👏

This concept is partly inspired by Lenny. Would be great if we could build a virtual email Lenny: vice.com/en/article/d3b…