Why cant this be stopped???!!!!

[Titania]

I just keep remembering the story of the old man and the starfish. He went along at low tide and tossed the beached starfish one by one back into the water where they could live. Someone saw him doing it and asked why he was bothering when he could only save a few. His response was that at least those few were saved.

When we educate a person to the point where they recognize and avoid a situation that could lead to being scammed, we have saved that person. And possibly more than that person - how many others will that person tell?

When a baiter takes up a scammer's time, that is time when one other person might have been scammed. So that one person has been saved.

Little by little, one by one, we are tossing starfish back into the water.

[luvstobait]

tatania

Well said -I love that analogy !

[brrilo]

Well put.

I think sites like this are the right idea, and can open many many eyes. If dating sites had the attitude of this place, it'd be a world of difference. From what I gathered, there's about a 3% decency rating on all the major sites mentioned here. I didn't mean to imply that baiters shouldn't bother -- I've done it with telemarketers, spammers, and naive scammers alike, to blow off some steam and derail just one scumbag..it's very satisfying to frustrate these people and keep them away from their targets. I'm all for that, especially during those long digruntled sleepless nights. I once had a girlfriend call me a sociopath for messing with these people... go figure. (I should have told her they should 'hook up'.)

I just was lookin' at the bigger picture, being: The more commonplace this knowledge is, the scammers will systematically dwindle down in success rates in the process. Kinda like adware and viruses... nowadays there are more than ever, and anyone can learn how to make that stuff easier than ever with Google and Youtube, yet I can't remember the last time I came across someone who was hurt by this stuff at home or the office being online 24/7 instead of just dial up. These days most people know what Nod32, Kaspersky, Spyware Blaster, Adaware, and a spamfilter are, or at least have that one friend who told them about it or set it up for them. Too bad there isn't a scam filter for member sites, since there are so many that don't even try and say the same things in the same way. Word count minimums and drastic cut n paste limits for site mail might be nice too.

It's kinda strange, as when the world wide web was new to the average person, there was this general assumed 'don't trust anyone on the internet, EVER' fear when people even thought about chat rooms or IMs back when I made some wonderful friends, yet now average people devulge all kinds of info that shouldn't be broadcast on places like myspace and facebook and inadvertently Google exposing themselves to anything out there. The general public kinda 180'd in that department, so the more info the better. Seeing a site like this is the perfect eye opener, seeing as even the supposed review sites don't even scratch the surface of these subjects.


hmm.. I wonder if it'd be possible to block members with IP addresses that don't correspond to at least the region they fill out in their profile, along with forbidding proxies.

[ricks45]

Brrilo -Read some of the Important Info section and you will see that Marisa Already has a list of Banned IP's and She checks the IP'S BEFORE She will let anyone join This site OR Her dating site!! She has alot of info on Her blog Too!

[Marisa]

as Rick said, yes. it is possible, and actually it is quite easy to do.

but the thing is, the dating sites wont do it. If they block West Africa and Russian scammers, they will lose all their hot chick profiles, in other words: harm their business. It has been discussed here many times.

we had a member her (a webmaster of a new dating site), who at the beginning was very enthusiastic about blocking scammers. Then, when she installed my IP ban file, she discovered that it blocked all her beautiful female profiles. And she went like: "ohhhh, no. this way, without these profiles I will not make any money, because guys will not register." And that was the end of her antiscam enthusiasm.

My site is probably the only "black sheep" of the industry.

[ricks45]

Marisa-- You might pick and say it is the black sheep, But this is the ONLY SITE that I call HOME!

And all of the friends that I have made here are "PRICELESS"

I LOVE YOU ALL AS FAMILY!!

[Marisa]

thank you so much Rick!!!!

I was actually talking about my dating site being a black sheep of the dating industry, but I do block IPs here on romancescam, just the same way I block them on the datingnmore.

[ricks45]

Marisa- I knew what you were talking about!

Us Cajuns just aren't always clear in our speech unless we TALK LOUD!!!

It's hard to talk with your hands and type at the same time!!

[brrilo]

Haha.. that's great to hear. Before I realized you ran your own site, I was thinking how refreshing it would be if people from here started one, and there ya go.

Maybe I'll check it out, as long as no one from my area blows it for my isp
....though right about now the thought of putting up another profile at this point seems like a major chore in vain. Still... very cool.

[Take2]

Regarding the liability or "responsibility" of WU services, it's just like with any other service providers, they are only there to provide the means for money transfer and liability is not on them any more than counterfeits or stolen goods are auctioned on eBay. Then you can start prosecuting all the internet service providers for providing the means for communication for those culprits, and so on. Actually, depending on the amount, WU made it very difficult for my transfer to occur and they grilled me like crazy and my perpetrator. Alas, I was part of a love scam so that little "bump" didn't do anything for my situation as that scumbag was very experienced and good at scamming me.
HOWEVER, they should very well be liable for not enforcing the method for picking up the money. I've seen several posts saying they do not enforce the money being picked up in the location that the sender specifies! Some locations do a poor job of even validating the receiver's identity! I think that is definitely crossing legal boundaries and have a more realistic impact on them changing their act as this lack of control allows the scammers to operate only from one place instead of far away at the location they claim to victims.

[wayne]

A scammer gives you a test question and answer so that he doesn't need any ID to collect the money. It's a legitimate service WU offers for those that have had their ID lost or stolen. This is the big issue. Scammers take legitimate services or products and twist them for their own use. If it can be used, then it can be misused.

[Take2]

I didn't realize that distinction. I actually didn't ever use any questions/answers and had done many WU transfers. So I'm not sure how my scammer picked up. Then again it was another country. I still suspect some WU's are loose with validating ID.

[Ralph Warner]

I still suspect some WU's are loose with validating ID.

In certain parts of the world there is no doubt that is the case

[bethb]

In my town which is a small one, we have few places that WU but the agents, when sending money out of the States ask each and every time if one knows the person you are sending money to and also alert you of scams. The other thing is that of the few places here that do WU most of them will no longer even let you send money to Africa or London. This is a good detour for our people and yes there are other ways around this, there will probably always be but it did save me from sending my scammer money on a few occasions.

[canadianbigtrucker]

A few months ago I posted a reply on FB about my Football Team-LFC, the next day I had a friend request, yeah you guessed it a Nigerian Male, his favorite Football team is LFC, before I knew it I had some of his friends request to be friends with me and some are female, very pretty they are too.

Any way we got chatting on FB, he just wanted to know things about me and to tell me about his country, my immediate reply was, Nigeria is the most bent country in the world, he said so is Russia, I knew straight away where this was leading, I had a feeling he knew about the Nigerian Love scams.

He then started to tell me a little about himself, he said he runs his own dating business in Nigeria, he also said he does not do very well and its only a side line job he does from home, he also informed me he works/supports a charity where he lives in Nigeria, after chatting about this for a while he asked if I can send some food, I informed him it would never ever get out of Canada if I sent by post, I just informed him I do donate to our local food-bank at the Supermarket I use and that get shipped all around the world to countries that need it.

He then got onto his main job and what he does for a living, he says he works for the EFCC, I thought Hmmmm straight away, I just said the EFCC is a scam itself, he then just said Google EFCC so I did, I was surprised by what Google had on the EFCC, I must of watched Video after Video about the EFCC and the work they do, there where a lot of Videos done by the NBC who worked with the EFCC, they caught the scammers in the act and when scammers had been busted they had no idea what they had done wrong.

There have been posts similar to this about the EFCC in the Forum, the friend I have on FB from Nigeria has said that the new PM Goodluck Jonathan is making it one of his priorities to stamp out the scams coming out from Nigeria, the Police service is getting cleaned up with the bent coppers been dismissed from there jobs, the people in Nigeria are no longer afraid of giving tip-offs to the EFCC and the Police.
The problem is as well so my friend says, they find the illegal internet cafes, close them down but another one soon reopens as all Internet cafes have now to be registered with the Nigerian Government.

I know during my chat I was saying yeah whatever, this is until I put EFCC into Google and seen for myself the work that the EFCC are doing today, if they succeed or not is a different matter all together.

The team at RS do a terrific job, like its been mentioned so many times if RS can prevent any one loosing there money the better it will be.

I myself still remain dubious as whether the EFCC will do well but only time will tell.

Keep up the good work everyone

CBT