Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

I was reading an article in the newspaper today about scambaiting. It's a group of people who look for online scammers, and keep them busy, by letting them do ridiculous things and gaining their personal information. In that way they can't harm other people. It's kinda like cannibal trolling, but only for the greater good.

I was thinking if this is considered to be a meme, since there are multiple websites who expose these scammers and make them humiliate themselves. But I'm not sure if it's spreading enough.

Here's the wikipedia page

Let me know what you guys think.

it's a form on internet vigilantism. sounds good enough for me. any more info on this?

There are some truly incredible scambaiting stories where scammers were conned into doing many different things for months, from wandering into a warzone in search of a fictitious priest to following the ocean currents to get to a suitcase full of money.

A link to a few of those
http://listverse.com/2010/09/11/10-great-scam-baiting-operations/

Wasn't there like a meme like this, where he sends the scammer a fake computer?

here found it

It's another thing. In this case, it's more about scammers from Nigeria and other African areas where most of the scam mails come from. But it spreads around.

This has been along for a long time. I have a fuzzy memory of going through scambaiting sites in the late nineties.

Sites such as 419 Eater and 419 Baiter?

I used to browse these site years ago. Looks like there has been little activity is some time however. I wonder if scambaiting is not as popular as it once was

Perhaps ineffectual scammers have starved and only the smart ones are left? At any rate I am convinced that scambaiting deserves it own entry. At the very least we should make an entry for the term "419".