Web Scams and Vengeance

by Matt Kelley · 2009-10-23 16:47:00 UTC
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A Nigerian official visiting the U.S. this week announced that the country is actually starting to fight online scam artists. This effort is good news for everyone with an email account, and it's especially good for the thousands of people who somehow fall for these scams every year.

You've surely seen these advance-fee scams -- they're so deeply associated with Nigeria that they're also called Nigerian scams. They're often in ALL CAPS. The emailer will claim to have inherited a fortune, or found a fortune, or know how to get a fortune. You just have to send a deposit to help them secure the money. It goes on from there. And people really do fall for them -- smart people. Experts say the scams gross hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

I hate to always be a downer, especially when we should be celebrating Nigeria's attack on annoying, immoral spammers out to steal out money, but this news got me thinking about whether our brains are wired for revenge, because it reminded me about people around the world who have made a hobby of baiting these scammers into a taste of their own medicine. And it reminded me of the lengths to which these scammer-baiters will go.

A fascinating (and shocking) episode of This American Life last year brought this issue home for me, and you really have to listen to get the full story. Here's the quick quick version: an American baiter receives a Nigerian-style scam email. They flip the scam on the scammer, sending him 1,400 miles from home to war-torn Chad on a wild goose chase for a payday. They invite him to put his own life in danger, they watch him suffer, and they do it while laughing. Listen to the episode here, and read the baiters' discussions of the reverse-scam here.

My question is this: how much of one's own medicine is just? Yes, the scammer should be punished for his misdeeds. Yes, he's morally depraved (one of the baiters tests him by saying he only has the money for either a life-saving operation for his own daughter or to send the scammer. The scammer said to send it and then worry about the operation later).

Are we wired for vengeance or are these baiters just a few vigilantes gone off the deep end?

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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