Harry Potter and the Scam Baiter, 2012
Hardback, 6x9 inches (15x23cm), 330 pages
A novel within a novel, Harry Potter and the Scam Baiter presents one of the most notorious scam baits in the brief history of web culture; the cross-continental encounter between Barrister Musa Issah, Mrs. Joyce Ozioma, and Arthur Dent.
From the Epilogue:
"Scam baiting is a form of Internet vigilantism in which the vigilante poses as a potential victim to a scammer in order to waste their time and resources, gather information that will be of use to authorities, and publicly expose the scammer. It is, in essence, a form of social engineering that may have an altruistic motive or may be motivated by malice. Primarily used to thwart advance-fee fraud scams, scam baiting can be conducted out of a sense of civic duty, as a form of amusement, or both.
As a past time, scam baiting has flourished with the global spread of email and the internet to Africa, South America and the Far East.
In the brief history of the genre, one of the most notorious scam baits took place in January and February 2006 between scam baiter Arthur Dent BSc, HHGTTG, PhD (who shares the same name as the main protagonist of the Hitch-hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy) and two scammers claiming to be Barrister Musa Issah and Mrs. Joyce Ozioma, both from Nigeria."
"Scam baiting is a form of Internet vigilantism in which the vigilante poses as a potential victim to a scammer in order to waste their time and resources, gather information that will be of use to authorities, and publicly expose the scammer. It is, in essence, a form of social engineering that may have an altruistic motive or may be motivated by malice. Primarily used to thwart advance-fee fraud scams, scam baiting can be conducted out of a sense of civic duty, as a form of amusement, or both.
As a past time, scam baiting has flourished with the global spread of email and the internet to Africa, South America and the Far East.
In the brief history of the genre, one of the most notorious scam baits took place in January and February 2006 between scam baiter Arthur Dent BSc, HHGTTG, PhD (who shares the same name as the main protagonist of the Hitch-hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy) and two scammers claiming to be Barrister Musa Issah and Mrs. Joyce Ozioma, both from Nigeria."