Scamorama: Turning the Tables on Email Scammers

This book is so fun and funny for folks that are well versed in the scam, and a fortune-saver for those who aren't. I ended up laughing aloud (in public no less) but also felt chagrined as I recognized the scams Ive almost fallen for in the past. Read it for fun, but then pass it on to someone less scam savvy!

Eve Edelson's new compendium of the best exchanges between 419 scam artists (who bilked Americans out of more than $250,000 last year) and those who bait them is jaw-droppingly funny, and important on several levels. First, it's all about making life difficult for criminals. 419ers make their living preying off the elderly, the naive, the weak-minded, and those who just generally shouldn't be online. They are also dangerous, having killed before. The baiters, a fine and crreative possel of virtual vigilantes who waste the scammers' time, their money, their resources, and their patience are worthy of our admiration for that reason alone. But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, this book is a harbinger of a new kind of humor. Scambaiting is a humor genre that couldn't exist without the 'net, and there is already a huge and growing crop of artists (yep, I call them artists) who are exploiting this new medium and making us laugh as they do it. Ms. Edelson, the doyenne of scambaiting, has culled, nurtured, edited, and generally midwifed this vibrant new form of humor. This book is a collection of the best of the best of the new masters of the form. I'll be watching to see where the medium goes from here. So there you are. Three reasons to buy it. One, it's your civic duty. Two, it's your chance to get in on the ground floor of a completely new kind of humor. And three, you'll laugh your socks off.

Everyone who has an email account has received missives from Nigerian scammers. This book is about attempts to deal with this nuisance. It is by turns screamingly funny and deadly serious. Read this and learn.

What a crack up! At one level this book is pure comedy. Pour yourself a nice glass of red, put your feet up and enjoy! It is extraordinary to see the lengths that small time stupid criminals will go to try to extract money, and the convoluted comic situations that the counter scammers embroil them in. Yet at another level, this book is a sober reminder to all those that may have spent a few moments wondering if those letters really were real, a reminder that indeed there are some truly unscrupulous individuals in this world who would sell their grandmother if it made them money. Buy this book as a reality check for the way the world really works. It might stop you falling for a scam. It might help you through negotiating buying that second-hand car. And, at the very least, it will give you a great laugh!

... someone harvested the entertainment potential afforded by those "URGENT BUSINESS PROPOSITION" letters we all see in our email inboxes. The scammers are apparently involved in "advance fee fraud". Many people think the game is that they promise millions, then they ask you to give up bank info, then they go in and steal your account (boy would they be disappointed in mine!). But no.... without giving up all the details, the goal for the scammers is to ask the victim to forward various fees before he can collect the promised millions. But the fun part, and the true raison d'etre of Ms. Edelson's book, is to report on the ANTI-SCAMMERS who have played along, and made the scammers jump through hoops for such intended victims as "Princess Margaret", "Bart Simpson", etc etc etc. The scammers are serious criminals, but they end up falling victim to the same weaknesses they seek to bring out in their own victims... namely, the ever-popular greed and gullibility. Ms. Edelson clearly has a thing for this stuff... she loves it! The book is the outgrowth of her website, scamorama. Nigerian scammers and Eve Edelson...It's nice to see such a match made in heaven, like fried chicken and Col. Sanders. It's a great read because Ms. Edelson has a breezily funny-sarcastic style. She is the voice of authority on the subject, but a fun-loving and clever authority. She also gives a short course in how YOU can idle away fun-filled hours making a MUGU (scammer lingo for their victim: "fool") out of a criminal who wants to rob you. The info she provides, including the technical aspect, is fascinating, and the selection of back-and forths ("Comedy Breaks") between scammers and the anti-scammers they had the bad luck to reach are hysterically funny. It was a revelation to see the creativity and humor unleashed in the anti-scammers; these people seem to have been just sitting and waiting for the chance to out-scam a scammer. A great read that reveals a new world of internet criminality, and is laugh-out-loud funny as well!