Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

rwwgreene.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 70 posts

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#21

Post by bambax »

strenholme wrote: post #9

I met a guy who fell for the romance version of that scam over and over again. He was living in an assisted living facility by himself and was very isolated there. He would, as we all do, get those messages via email/Instagram/other chat networks (I get the most of this kind of spam on Telegram, to the point I have disabled Telegram sending me notifications, but the occasional one slips through on WhatsApp; it seems…

Yes it's infuriating to see someone you care about fall for an obvious scam, yet... I don't know... If it's his money and it makes him happy, or a little less sad, a little less lonely... Why not...

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#22

Post by walthamstow »

bambax wrote: post #21
strenholme wrote: post #9

I met a guy who fell for the romance version of that scam over and over again. He was living in an assisted living facility by himself and was very isolated there. He would, as we all do, get those messages via email/Instagram/other chat networks (I get the most of this kind of spam on Telegram, to the point I have disabled Telegram sending me notifications, but the occasional one slips through on WhatsApp; it seems…

Yes it's infuriating to see someone you care about fall for an obvious scam, yet... I don't know... If it's his money and it makes him happy, or a little less sad, a little less lonely... Why not...

You'd give away all your money to feel a little bit less sad?

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#23

Post by Ekaros »

walthamstow wrote: post #22
bambax wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's infuriating to see someone you care about fall for an obvious scam, yet... I don't know... If it's his money and it makes him happy, or a little less sad, a little less lonely... Why not...

You'd give away all your money to feel a little bit less sad?

Eventually yes. Just comes to degree. But I do very often spend money to feel that little bit sad. Be it food or snacks or some mostly useless junk I think I need.

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#24

Post by clort »

I recognise these scammers. I run a website for a small community group which just has a bit of information about them which has a contact us page with minimal protection. It comes in waves the language is very similar offering SEO and suchlike. I don't allow any of that through to the community because they are mostly non-technical and somebody will no doubt reply.

This scam spam has been arriving since I set the website up (2019 IIRC), well before LLMs became available. Now that I consider it, haven't seen any lately I guess they have a new target.. I'd better brace myself for a new AI generated onslaught.

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#25

Post by tdrgabi »

matkoniecz wrote: post #4

> each one arriving within hours despite my repeated, polite “no thank you” responses why anyone would respond to spammers, if they recognize them as spammers? And want them to stop spamming?

Because he decided to write an investigation article and wanted to see what would happen.

I don't think he replies to all spam emails.

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#26

Post by walrus01 »

Replying to the first-ever email was really just making the problem worse for the author. Exacerbated by continuing to engage.

One of the great things about SMTP and email is that a spammer can really never be sure whether a person opened or read an email. Many SMTP will silently accept emails and not inform the sender or auto-generate a reject bounce that a recipient's address doesn't even exist. Unless the reader opens an email and loads some active html content, image, 1x1 px pixel, etc, the sender can never know.

When you start responding with hand crafted emails back to a spam farm all you've done is successfully mark your email address as "there is a live human reading this and they will reply" in some spammer's database.

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#27

Post by walrus01 »

strenholme wrote: post #9

I met a guy who fell for the romance version of that scam over and over again. He was living in an assisted living facility by himself and was very isolated there. He would, as we all do, get those messages via email/Instagram/other chat networks (I get the most of this kind of spam on Telegram, to the point I have disabled Telegram sending me notifications, but the occasional one slips through on WhatsApp; it seems…

reddit.com/r/scams/ has numerous and varied reports of these from the point of view of (usually) a concerned family member. It's a real plague on society. Older people who are inclined to be trusting, lonely, isolated or those with diminished mental faculties need to be extensively warned about this. Despite warnings many still engage.

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#28

Post by walrus01 »

kvakerok wrote: post #13
strenholme wrote: post #9

I met a guy who fell for the romance version of that scam over and over again. He was living in an assisted living facility by himself and was very isolated there. He would, as we all do, get those messages via email/Instagram/other chat networks (I get the most of this kind of spam on Telegram, to the point I have disabled Telegram sending me notifications, but the occasional one slips through on WhatsApp; it seems…

Most of the people live in the world they invented, where they are the protagonist, naturally young girls want to talk to the protagonist, even when he's 70. You'd have to dismantle their whole worldview to disabuse them of the protagonist idea, but by 70 it's often too far gone and requires facing a million mistakes they have conveniently swept under the rug with the fairytale they've told themselves.

I recently saw a screenshot from Facebook of a mattress ad presented inline in a page load that had two conventionally attractive normal looking (fully clothed, not immodest at all) women on a mattress. Below it was somebody's grandpa writing a message basically to the effect of "hello sexy ladies I am (name) please chat with me".

It possibly could have been a bot, but I don't think bots commonly use profile pictures of dishevelled looking 75 year old men. Maybe for commenting on political agitprop, they do...

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#29

Post by stavros »

strenholme wrote: post #9

I met a guy who fell for the romance version of that scam over and over again. He was living in an assisted living facility by himself and was very isolated there. He would, as we all do, get those messages via email/Instagram/other chat networks (I get the most of this kind of spam on Telegram, to the point I have disabled Telegram sending me notifications, but the occasional one slips through on WhatsApp; it seems…

Why not see this as him buying company? Then you'll understand that loneliness is so hard, that most people would pay a lot of money to ease it.

Ironically, instead of breaking contact, maybe the solution would have been to be there for him more.

Re: I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

#30

Post by bambax »

walthamstow wrote: post #22
bambax wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's infuriating to see someone you care about fall for an obvious scam, yet... I don't know... If it's his money and it makes him happy, or a little less sad, a little less lonely... Why not...

You'd give away all your money to feel a little bit less sad?

If you think about it, the only reason we ever spend money, is to feel a little bit less sad.
Post reply on HN