{"id":3045,"date":"2021-10-03T08:36:30","date_gmt":"2021-10-03T06:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/03\/who-scams-the-scammers-meet-the-scambaiters\/"},"modified":"2021-10-03T08:36:30","modified_gmt":"2021-10-03T06:36:30","slug":"who-scams-the-scammers-meet-the-scambaiters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/03\/who-scams-the-scammers-meet-the-scambaiters\/","title":{"rendered":"Who scams the scammers? Meet the scambaiters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Police struggle to catch online fraudsters, often operating from overseas, but now a new breed of amateurs are taking matters into their own hands<\/p>\n<p>Three to four days a week, for one or two hours at a time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/rosieokumura\" title=\"\">Rosie Okumura<\/a>, 35, telephones thieves and messes with their minds. For the past two years, the LA-based voice actor has run a sort of reverse call centre, deliberately ringing the people most of us hang up on \u2013 scammers who pose as tax agencies or tech-support companies or inform you that you\u2019ve recently been in a car accident you somehow don\u2019t recall. When Okumura gets a scammer on the line, she will pretend to be an old lady, or a six-year-old girl, or do an uncanny impression of Apple\u2019s virtual assistant Siri. Once, she successfully fooled a fake customer service representative into believing that she was Britney Spears. \u201cI waste their time,\u201d she explains, \u201cand now they\u2019re not stealing from someone\u2019s grandma.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Okumura is a \u201cscambaiter\u201d \u2013 a type of vigilante who disrupts, exposes or even scams the world\u2019s scammers. While scambaiting has a troubled 20-year online history, with early forum users employing extreme, often racist, humiliation tactics, a new breed of scambaiters are taking over TikTok and YouTube. Okumura has more than 1.5 million followers across both video platforms, where she likes to keep things \u201cfunny and light\u201d.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2021\/oct\/03\/who-scams-the-scammers-meet-the-amateur-scambaiters-taking-on-the-crooks\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><br \/>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/74b68a907076e10d499b2ba0a9b3c11ff6bd8c28\/0_205_2150_1289\/master\/2150.jpg?width=140&amp;quality=85&amp;auto=format&amp;fit=max&amp;s=8f71a423b8d6336f73c6a23d3741d333\" title=\"Who scams the scammers? Meet the scambaiters\" \/>Police struggle to catch online fraudsters, often operating from overseas, but now a new breed of amateurs are taking matters into their own hands<br \/>\nThree to four days a week, for one or two hours at a time, Rosie Okumura, 35, telephones thieves and messes with their minds. For the past two years, the LA-based voice actor has run a sort of reverse call centre, deliberately ringing the people most of us hang up on \u2013 scammers who pose as tax agencies or tech-support companies or inform you that you\u2019ve recently been in a car accident you somehow don\u2019t recall. When Okumura gets a scammer on the line, she will pretend to be an old lady, or a six-year-old girl, or do an uncanny impression of Apple\u2019s virtual assistant Siri. Once, she successfully fooled a fake customer service representative into believing that she was Britney Spears. \u201cI waste their time,\u201d she explains, \u201cand now they\u2019re not stealing from someone\u2019s grandma.\u201d<br \/>\nOkumura is a \u201cscambaiter\u201d \u2013 a type of vigilante who disrupts, exposes or even scams the world\u2019s scammers. While scambaiting has a troubled 20-year online history, with early forum users employing extreme, often racist, humiliation tactics, a new breed of scambaiters are taking over TikTok and YouTube. Okumura has more than 1.5 million followers across both video platforms, where she likes to keep things \u201cfunny and light\u201d. Continue reading&#8230;Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Police struggle to catch online fraudsters, often operating from overseas, but now a new breed of amateurs are taking matters into their own hands Three to four days a week, for one or two hours at a time, Rosie Okumura, 35, telephones thieves and messes with their minds. For the past two years, the LA-based &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/03\/who-scams-the-scammers-meet-the-scambaiters\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Who scams the scammers? Meet the scambaiters<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3045"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}