Jim Browning, a popular Scam-Bait YouTuber, has been taking his methods one step further, by using tools such as **** to Infect Scammers PC’s to find information. Legally speaking, this is not.
I'm curious to hear the communities thoughts.
Is this a necessary evil? Or is he taking it too far.
why does it matter. That’s the way it is, there is one side then there is another, tough shit. How far will you go, to take on a foreign criminal who wont face justice in their country of origin. There is sides and this is one side vs another side. Why should one side be punished when the other side wont be. If there is no justice in one country, than another country can take advantage of the same issue they are using, no victims present in country. Why should another person get rich because they wont face justice in their country of origin off of victims of 5 eyes countries. India commits crimes against the UK, NA countries and aus. They will face justice through the same methods they use to steal money from these countries. This is about country against country and money against money. There is no justice but the justice you take back from criminals who took your liberty. As long as india comitts crimes towards NA, There is no issue in reciprocating the problem. Take it up with the government and your MP’s or nato if you got beef… lul. What would you care, if a criminal from india stole all your money, and then you stole it back from them, who goes to jail, noone does.
i would be interested to know if the local “police” are investigating the scammers complaints ?
Of course they report all these incidents to there local authorities !
“Is this a necessary evil? Or is he taking it too far.”
If you have any sort of remorse for those """people""" you're probably a scammer yourself. Clearly they deserve to have any and all malware infect their computers so their ability to scam people is thwarted.
Anything short from rotting in an overpopulated Delhi prison with 200 other cellmates is mild.
@panjeet#147052 Ok… Rude much?
It was just a question, some people (Like Kitboga) Don't agree with Jim Brownings methods, as they are illegal. You have no right to accuse me of being "a scammer"
Not to mention, India has it's own problems, getting a well paying job when a majority of the country is in poverty is not easy. Should they be taking money from innocent strangers? *NO!* Of *course* not! But it's not a fair to call them """""people"""""
@76561199068511888#146997 Thank you. Well stated.
@PikaPikaGamer#147262
It was just a question, some people (Like Kitboga) Don’t agree with Jim Brownings methods, as they are illegal.
So here's the thing:
**Legally speaking**, yes, accessing a scammer's computer without his consent is illegal. It's debatable if reversing a scammer's Teamviewer connection e.g. is illegal since the scammer by himself has to click on agree/OK so there is consent of some kind. Pure RAT is definitely illegal. It's debateable if they try to hack you and you hack back, maybe that's some sort of self defense but I'm not entirely sure. I don't think it exists as law.
Now the next question is, **is it enforceable?** First of all they need to find out that they got ratted which many scammers don't. If the scammers in India go to their Indian police, they have to file a FIR where they have to state all the details. Police will investigate and will look on their PCs, then it would come out that the scammers are criminals itself. So that's why they won't do that. OK some police officers in India are collaborating with scammers, let's say the Indian cop doesn't care about the scammers being scammers and files a complaint against US/UK nationals for hacking. Now they have to do immense paperwork to contact the US/UK side and ask them for help. Many countries are not or barely cooperating with India due to corruption issues or due to the lack of transparency and legitimacy of the complaints. So it's very unlikely to impossible that a crime like this would be prosecuted by Indian police. Only problem would be if Jim Browning/any scambaiter like this would go to his own police and there they might see that the law has been broken. That depends on each country's law how they see it. The "victim" aka the scammer is not located in the same country so not sure if there's any legal case possible against the scambaiter when there is no victim. Generally speaking: no victim = no case.
**Ethically speaking:** The scammers (if they are confirmed scammers) are stealing so much money and we know how inefficient law enforcement of all the involved countries is due to it being international and various other issues. I would gladly cooperate with police or private organizations like Microsoft more often if it would lead to better results. Generally, we should leave it to the professionals to chase criminals. But we see what the outcome is: you can count the number of closed call centers in India in a year on two hands. So that's why I find it ethically acceptable to investigate, collect information and shut down scammers by yourself. It only has positive effects: reducing the amount of call centers and scammers, maybe refunding/helping the scammed victims and Jim Browning generates tons of awareness due to his collab with BBC and his videos. Even for the scammers it has positive effects: atleast some of them will think about changing their jobs when they get busted and they will do a legit job. Happened with my Indian friends and people from America Geeks. Also, all that intel we collect helps us to understand the scam business in more detail which gives us more insight and more attack vectors to combat scams. Through that we can supply Microsoft etc with intel which they can use for building legal cases against big scammers and we can design platforms like BobRTC which are based on insights into the VoIP industry that are just possible if you know details of how it all works. RATing is a tool to collect information which helps with that.
As per Kitboga: I was in his Discord and his community doesn't even support scambaiting itself (like doing prank calls) as it's "unsafe". I got banned for helping someone by telling them to use FireRTC (at the time) and TextNow. His style of scambaiting is basically doing a few funny prank calls. I think to be qualified to talk about this issue you have to have a bit more insight into the scam industry and also the technical and legal side of things to understand how exactly a RAT would benefit you and the work you're doing. He doesn't even do OSINT investigation on scammers which is perfectly legal. I mean he's not forced to, everyone has his/her own style of scambaiting I guess. But you have to understand that he's a Twitch partner and earning money with it. He doesn't do anything that would risk his financial status. So don't expect him to do anything controversial or something that really would hurt the scammers. So that's why obviously for him he would never do RATing.
All that aside, scammer.info as platform itself can't be helping or supporting RATing. That's a descision each scambaiter has to do for himself. Not only from a legal aspect but also due to the fact that sadly many scambaiters are kids who can't behave and you'd see kids sending RATs to other scambaiters "for fun". If you give the people too much power, they'll abuse it. We've seen that with BobRTC and an open phonebook in the beginning where everyone without restrictions could add any numbers. We had to remove so many Burger Kings, McDonalds etc cuz there are simply stupid kids who ruin it for everyone. So it's good that the RAT topic is done only by few individuals whose ethics we can trust like Jim Browning.
@PikaPikaGamer#146994 Let me ask a question too.
What evidence do you have, that Jim is even using said tool to infect PC's?
As he is very carefull about sharing as to how he does things at all, I highly doubt that you would just out of the blue know that.
We had many who claimed to know certain things about Jim but in the end were just making stuff up.
So what is it, that you can present the community here to underline the facts of your statement?
[Just so you all know, I neither decline, nor confirm the fact and am also not disputing it, just asking for proof of fact. That's all.]
The ethical question is more of a “how is the information gained used”.
Sure optaining access to another ones PC is technically speaking illegal, but at the same time, scamming victims out of their hard earned money is equally illegal if not more so,
But compared to someone like Scammer Revolts who is out for the destruction (and evidence) to get back on scammers for their shit and by so also adding entertainment value to their blight.. Jim Browning on the other hand is out for evidence to present to local authorities (or the Media if they fail) to go the „legal“ way of handling the Scammers,
Because ultimately destroying a PC is only a temporary setback to larger operations, simply reboot the PC and start up again.. one copy of the numbers sheet lost is no loss, and only the report sheet lost is a bit of a pain,
Surely more of a pain for small or single operations. But ultimately not the „end“ of them by a long shot,
So Jim‘s path, if the authorities take it sirious and pick up the investigation to get legal evidence you might shut them up permanently,
So the ethical question on Jim Browning is not so much of an „evil or not“ but a „what other way is there to save the world from being scammed out of their funds when law enforcement fails lacking evidence or legal possibilities“
@NeeP#147334 Listen I never said I had a problem with Jim Browning’s methods. I was asking for an opinion.
I just don't think it's ethically right to call every single person who does this kind of thing """"people"""" as you don't know the shitty situations that a lot of people are forced into.
Now is right? Hell no, it horrible in fact. But putting the blanket statement that every single scammer has a plentiful amount of money and is doing this for fun is not accurate.
If you're wondering, *NO* Nobody, especially me, is defending them. But I'm just stating that I think that kind of description isn't fair.
Come to think of it, recording a phone call without the permission of all parties is illegal in many US jurisdictions. Something called eavesdropping law, or something to that effect. Does it bother scambaiters? I highly doubt it. Who will file the complaint, the scammer in India?
what law does it say in India that unauthorized access is illegal?
@jaymee#147642 its not illegal in canada, one party can record without the other party knowing and use it as evidence as long as their apart of the conversation at somepoint in it… I save all my text messages and phone calls regarding scams, recordings, texts, threats, just incase anyone would like to claim im not a victim of organised crime from india. They would have some weird shit to look at which would raise some big interests. Some very strange and weird stuff for sure. None of it would make any sense. For instance, My nanny got robbed by microsoft support and fake rcmp officers, and had no money for 6 months and was too embarrassed to come forward, then the opp showed up and said she was scammed, in 2015, than in 2018, my bank account was drained because some one stole my identity, and had encrypted my work place with ransomware and demanded a ransom be paid. Than I get a call from the social security administration and was told that if i did not pay the bit coins it was a attempt to avoid the magistrate. Strange stuff. Not sure about the fake rcmp bank robbers, fake rcmp cra scammers, or that last fake rcmp rampage. I dono. All i i know is its a scam from india. and microsoft india department of internet security refunds of sophos, kaspersky or any internet antivirus company and has nothing to do with civil forfeitures of victims of crime in North America for sureee. All i know is i got a text about my refund from service canada and the internet security department for my refund about it. And i got all my money from the scammers who stole my identity. Very weird stuff.
Yes, it’s unethical. However, I agree with what these people are doing. As long as your only using it to scambait and not destroy the computer and do other things that are bad then I agree with it. Just because someone is a scammer doesn’t make it acceptable to do this stuff but as long as you are using it to prevent scamming and are doing it safely with good opsec then I don’t see much wrong with it.
@jaymee#147642
Even more so, posting numbers on this forum can be seen as inviting people to participate in Denial of Service attacks against the alleged scammers, action which can be argued to be illegal, whether they are scammers or not.
Your ethical outlook may also depend on how deep you want to go down the rabbit hole. Some people like to take it in their own hands and do as much damage as possible, others like to go closer to the legal line of action.
Personally I see scambaiting as a bit like Don Quixote's struggle against the windmills because of the following existing system:
You don't need to wear a lot of tinfoil hats to estimate that a lot of this scamming activity occurs with the tacit help of local political and government entities in India. Sure its illegal, but at the end of the day, the government and certain politicians get their cut.
Even outside of the bribes received, the local economy benefits from the influx of stolen foreign cash. Due to this effect, province and middle level officials don't have much of an incentive to coordinate efforts to close scamming operations. More so, these scams are nowhere near the focus of American/Western justice systems. Due to this lack of Western pressure, there is no incentive for national/top level officials to clamp down on this thievery.
In the grand scheme of things, a significant minority will even support this ongoing predation of innocent Western people as retribution for past colonialism. Whether you as a scambaiter think this is right or wrong is another discussion :) Because of the incentives listed above, scam centers will continue and probably expand as long as they remain a slightly unknown low risk operation.
To realistically clamp down on the scammers, we would need at least one of two things to happen:
1) Major political pressure from the West against India/other scamming nations.
2) Widespread publicity on these scams and their fundamental principles (Victim's Cash -> Gift Cards/Wire Transfer -> Scammers). Imagine if these scams had as much media coverage as Russia Gate had for 3 years. Even the last penguin at the South Pole would know that if the SSA asks you for Best Buy cards to secure your funds, then its scammers 100%.
Each of us can work towards both of these goals, but in the meantime, I really do enjoy lifting weights to the "car radio" music as I "drive" to secure my funds with the Dawg Enfo'cement Agency officer. It is also a guilty pleasure of mine to get one of these scammers to stay really late into the night only to blow his lid off at the end and go home just as poor as before, but certainly much more irritated and disappointed. My satisfaction is amplified if I don't even tell the scammer he's been lied to and gaslighted for 10 hours. Its much better if he asks that of himself, but never finds the answer. That lingering self doubt will erode his performance when real victims take his calls.
@Chop#147668 On an individual level, these scammers are largely immoral thieves that have no worries if they “force” Mike Litoris, (70yr old diabetic man) to drive around Alaska in order to drain all of his savings and checking accounts. Maybe your ethics say otherwise, but mine are ok with them receiving old fashioned justice, whether that is Sharia or just plain old whip lashes. These are not poor poor people that have to scam to buy a piece of bread and some water to survive. On the contrary, a vast majority are middle-class in India, and pursue this job because they refuse to learn any other skills.
@vadim#147678 I think you misunderstood me, I do believe it is although unethical that it’s fine to rat the scammers as long as your intent is non-malicious.
How does the police catch a criminal running in a speeding car? they break the speed law to catch them right?..same applies over here too.