As we already know the TSM Group/ is (NOT) this the real deal, although I have to say one of the better scams out there. What I would like to know is to whom and how to I report them and which ones are genuinely proactive and successful in the combat of email scammers from Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Australia and Great Britain?:mad:

In my opinion, you are completely wasting your time.
You will NEVER stop these types of scam while there are greedy, gullable people with an e-mail address.

The best defence is DELETE and NEVER respond to them.
Simple really after all YOU are the censor.

Because these scams often cross international borders there's not a lot that can be done, I'm with Curlyben, just delete the emails in the knowledge that NOTHING that good could be true!

I enjoy replying to 419 scammers from my unsed email address. I like to think I am tying up their time :p

I have 2 at the moment, one of them claims to have money in the bank of africa, and I should contact this guy in the bank of africa. And another completely unrelated to the first one claims to work at the bank of africa! I'll see if they can stick their facts together!

Deleting is always the best and only defence for this stuff. They wouldn't be doing it if nobody fell for it.

disagrees: There has got to be filiters/ hacking virsus some sort of havoc that I can banish upon them.
Congratulations on being able to find the Rate Answer button and changing it to disagree.

Now engage brain for more than a split second and THINK.

Filters CAN be bypass easily !
Hacking them is like shooting at ghost IMPOSSIBLE.

These people use throwaway address and spoofed IP's.
So WHO are you going to report?

The onlly thing you can do is try and play them at their own game, but this is VERY dangerous indeed.

So next time someone offers their opinion on a subject DON'T be so quick to disagree with it.

FYI I'm a professional IT geek, network security is one of my specialities.

I have often maintained that the asker is often not in the best position to judge the quality of an answer. If they were, they wouldn't need to ask in the first place.

As Ben indicated, he is a Network security person. So this is one of stronger areas. Yet you, who clearly know little about this, are telling him he gave wrong advice!

As he mentioned these people use spoofed IP, throwaway e-mail etc to avoid prosecution. In addition they operate from countries that don't have agencies to monitor their scams.

If you want to waste your time, report them at FTC.gov.

And next time, don't be so quick to disagree on something you don't know enough about.

I sometimes try replying, with one of those Nigerian scam ones where they need your help to recover money from a lost relative I replied saying I was having my team of lawyers (who have a contacts with lawyers in his area) look into it and also asking the help of the RCMP (Canadian equivalent of the FBI)

He replied with a short, hastily written thing saying he had found a way to resolve the problem and thanks but don't bother.

But there actually are places to report these. In Canada there is an Anti-fraud Agency who (claim) they will track the source of the email and report it to the local police in that country Welcome to PhoneBusters (http://www.phonebusters.com/english/reportit.html)

In the US there isn't a government agency that will look into this at the moment, but some non profit groups look into it Anti-Phishing Working Group (http://www.antiphishing.org/), but I think they are rather powerless to do anything.

I dutifully report stuff to [email protected] and spoof@paypal. I get back very nice emails. So how many of you have seen stories about any of these low lives getting busted? At least RR keeps a bunch of stuff from ever coming through.

Reply with a very, very large text, picture or whatever file and send it to them they will have to delete it and waste their time doing so. I do if I receive it more than once.

Funny thing, after they get this very large file in email I never hear from them again. I wonder why??

Because these are normally sent from fake email addresses asking you to call, write or fax a certain number etc. and your large picture file is going nowhere.

Curlyben

Whilst the BOFH gets irritated at the incompetence of users, he does use this to his advantage to further his devious means, mainly using the following tricks:

Deleting users' accounts
Deleting users' files
Lifting raised floor tiles so users (or engineers, or the Boss) fall down
Electrocuting users (from an over-voltage cattle prod, using nails as fuses, or by other means)
Locking the machine room and triggering the Halon release
Trapping them in the Elevator
Slamming their testicles in desk drawers
Pushing users off the comms riser
Blackmail
Putting users on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list
Destroying systems with etherkillers (power cables spliced onto a piece of coax cable), or talking users into destroying their own systems.
Locking them in the airtight tape safe
Putting laxatives in their food or coffee
Early BOFH editions focused mainly on the above tricks, although over time many other schemes and plots have been used, with many now aimed at management as well as the users. Early BOFH editions simply featured the BOFH, the systems manager and the lusers

So should I be expecting you to hack into my system or deleting me from this blogging site because I disagreed with you and wanted a better explaination then just delete them, something I have know for a very long time. I like to be better informed so if you are going to offer advice make sure it is thorough. By the way you spell my name ANTHEA not ATHENA (i know I am a godess just not that one)

Go back and read my ENTIRE post especially the first part.
Then read my follow up and come back to me with something more constructive.

To answer your point I don't delete people from this QUESTION and ANSWER site just because they disagreed with me.
That would be small minded and completely vindictive.

Also this ISN'T a blogging site. For you information Blogs are a type of online journal, which this site certainly isn't.

Well done on following my BOfH link, I'm sure it will give you some insight on how I deal with (l)users.

Anthea, your disagree comments only prove to us that you do not understand some basic concepts of the internet.

My basic way of shutting down the 419/lottery scammers is to forward their email to the [email protected] (abuse@%5Bdomain.name) of the ISP that they use to receive their mail. That way it voids the millions of scam emails they sent using that email address.

Go back and read my ENTIRE post especially the first part.
Then read my follow up and come back to me with something more constructive

Well I did go back and read it again for the 10th time and if you had bothered to read my response you would know that i was only irked by your first feedback to my question and that I actually complimented you on your second posting. Get your facts straight before you start pointing fingers.

ANTHEA disagrees: I find you and Curly rather rude! First of all he spelt my name wrong and secondly I disagree the first feedback was to just to delete the email, well I have been doing that for quite a while now. Information about their tactics is helpful.

As per defining this site as a blogging site, definitely inappropriate but for lack of better word I used it. Please educate me on the proper vernacular.

According to your own link Mr. BOfH and that of Wikepedia that is top of the list for havoc played upon lesser internet mortals. Maybe you should not have that link, it's rather misleading.

Everyone else thank you for the advice and the links, one day when I am bored and not picking on Curlyben I will remember them.