Computer and Web Articles

After hearing an NPR story about www.419eater.com, I visited the site and found myself absolutely tickled pink at what I found. The site’s stories are so hilarious I laughed out loud and wiped tears from my eyes as I read through them. Yet despite its entertainment value, 419eater.com isn’t a comedy site.

“419″ stands for the infamous Nigerian 419 scam where scammers send out mass e-mails with the sole purpose of tricking recipients into handing over large sums of money. These scams involve everything from real estate ventures to will beneficiary ploys, paper currency conversions to letters from foreign government officials — all while conveying a sense of urgency.

419eater.com turns the tables on the con artists sending out these scam e-mails by engaging in “scambaiting.” Scambaiting entails entering into a dialogue with scammers to waste their time and resources (and therefore keeping them away from real potential victims). I myself have engaged in the most basic of scambaiting before — sending silly responses to scammers just to see how they’d reply, but the fellows here at 419eater.com take the process to an entirely new, jaw-dropping level that’s just as entertaining to follow as it is effective at frustrating the scammers.