| An eBay scammer’s response to being goatse’d… thirteen times. Background After two years of dabbling as both buyer and seller, I have come to the conclusion that eBay is a cesspool of filth. Within thirty minutes of placing my first bid, for example, I was hit with no less than three spam messages from other sellers trying to entice me with a better deal. The spam is really just a minor annoyance. Far more malicious are the scammers that take your money and run (though my personal experience has been safe). What I don’t understand are the scammers who place a substantial bid on an item, with no intention of making the payment. They might request your bank account details under the guise of making a deposit, but that’s standard procedure. At least with Australian accounts, that account number is useless. I mean, unless you want to make… you know, a deposit. I once had a buyer, named ‘smithking10’, who requested “my details” three times (and on each occasion, I gave him the information necessary to send me money) before giving up. Sometimes I wonder what else he expected me to include; would he have preferred my passport number? Maybe the login for my online bank accounts. “You know what, your highness? Why don’t you just send me your account number, and I’ll deposit five hundred dollars into it. Because you’ve charmed me with your enchanting persistence. A plus plus plus++.”
The Dilemma Last week, my cell phone died. Having once worked in a phone shop, I know that for a consumer hoping for a refund, “died” can mean any number of things… “Oh, well it did drop in the toilet first.”
“So what if I slept on it?”
“But my old phone could survive being used as a hockey puck!”
When I say that my phone “died”, however, I mean that it was working perfectly when I went into the cinema and that since coming out, its most effective function has been serving as a paper weight on my desk. I can only assume that it was overcome, during Superbad, by Michael Cera’s lovable performance. Such were the circumstances under which I logged onto eBay, hoping to snare a bargain. I made a few small bids on a Sony Ericsson model that I’m particularly fond of, but learned shortly after being outbid that if I was to afford textbooks this semester, a lowering-of-standards was in order. So I came to bid on a T226, a model whose aesthetics have been likened (by its designers) to the “decomposing remains of a monkey’s excrement”. After submitting a sufficiently generous bid, I waited online for an hour to see if I won the auction. During that time, I received three email messages from random eBay members, all in a similar format. Hi, I’m the owner of this item (similar the one you’ve recently bided on): “Sony Ericsson T226 AT&T Wireless Cell Phone GOOD”. I am in a bussines trip for 3 weeks and i want to close the auction earlier because i don’t have time for it so please let me know your best price. I`ll provide you 5 days money back guarantee, no questions asked. That means within 5 working days you decide if you don’t want to keep the item. The deal will go strictly according to ebay’s rules and policy regarding to this buy it now offer- to start the official transaction, i need to know: Your best price: First name: Last name: Shipping address: City/State: Country: Zip: As soon as i have them i’ll start the official procedure, and ebay will notify you about this. You’ll also receive important guidelines + instructions from them (please go through them exactly). I’ll handle and pay for the shipping, so this will be free of charge for you. Waiting for your answer ASAP! Thank you
Free shipping, money-back guarantee, and all according to “official procedure”? Wow! At whom do I throw my money? I reported the first two of these emails because it is strictly against eBay rules to sell items in this manner (even when it’s not a scam). But by the time a third such email had arrived… I’d had enough. John Cheese to the Rescue I was reminded of an article by one of my favourite internet comedy writers, John Cheese. In his article, The 419 Scammer, he documents a series of increasingly hilarious emails exchanged between himself and a scammer, culminating in a climactic email in which he included an image called Goatse. For those who have not heard of Goatse, you can still be saved. The picture depicts a naked man’s backside, stretched beyond the point of abstraction. By this I mean: you literally could not comprehend what I’m talking about until you see it. Indeed, many people’s first reaction is to stare, horrified, for a full thirty seconds before they can believe what they are seeing. This guy could traffic enough crack over the border to kill the population a small town. I was inspired by John Cheese. Replying to the scammer immediately, I attached thirteen images of Goatse. As the scammer used a gmail account, I knew these images would display automatically on his screen (without having to download each one at a time). All thirteen, in one hit. Two Days Later This afternoon I received an instant message from the guy, and our conversation is pasted below (with some punctuation and capitalisation fixed for readability, but not spelling). Much to my amusement, I was condemned as evil by a man whose screen name was “good”. But there is nothing amusing about a thief so thoroughly convinced of his own righteousness. Good: Mother.
Good: Fucker.Good: You are satan.
Good: What the fuck have you send me you piece of shit?
Good: That horible picture.
Good: Fuck your music rock.
Good: Go in hell.
Mauso: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Mauso: Oh man.
Mauso: You suck, dude.
Good: Fuck your rock.
Mauso: Dude, what ‘rock’ are you talking about?
Good: And your mother and your father and your sister and all of you.
Mauso: I’m a classical man.
Good: You are a shit.
Good: That’s what you are.
Mauso: I like that I’m being condemned by a spammer and scammer.
Mauso: Quite the touch of irony.
Good: Yeah you are a loser.
Mauso: See, I’m not fazed one bit. Because you are a cunt.
Good: I’m a smarter opponent.
Mauso: You are a scammer.
Good: Because I know how to scame people.Good: You now to merlin menson’s ass.
Mauso: No. Wrong. You know how to scam the dumbest 0.0001% of internet users.
Mauso: Everyone else – that is to say, 99.9999% – is smarter than you are.
Good: Good. That what you think.
Mauso: Yeah, cuntface. It pretty much is.
Good: And if you will continue I will let you know what I can do for real.
Good: In two days I will get your bank account and I will clear all your money from your account.
Good: I promise that.
Mauso: No.
Good: You will see what a real hacker can do.
Mauso: You won’t.
Good: Yes I do and I promise that.
Mauso: Not, for one hundredth of a second, do you scare me.
Good: You will see what a real hacker is.
Good: Because I’m not a scammer I’m a hacker.
Good: and a real hacker will broke the NASA password.
Good: So I promise that in 2 days you will lose all your penny
Good: from your account a bank.
Mauso: Awww, you broke the NASA password, that’s cute.
Mauso: You’re a cutie.
Good: Hahaha.
Good: No.
Good: But I can.
Mauso: No, sure, I believe you!
Mauso: *Wink*
Good: I will not broke NASA password because I will be catch.
Good: By the police.
Mauso: Hey, have you seen this website? http://www.lemonparty.org/ [To readers: this is a shock site. Do not click.]
Mauso: If you are truly a hacker, you could break into that website.
Mauso: Go on, try. Pause. Good: I will stole your money from your bank account, you shit.
Good: You will see that HAHAHA.
Mauso: You are, without the thinnest sliver of a doubt, the dumbest person on the internet I have ever met.
Good: OK then.
Good: We wil see who is the smarter and who is the dumbest.
Good: Do your trust in good
Good: God
Mauso: I don’t even know what the fuck you are saying now. Is that a question?
Good: No is your mothert
Good: Mother
Mauso: What the hell, are you 14 years old?
Good: cooksucker
Mauso: Sweet merciful christ, I’ve met smarter dog turds than you.
Good: No I’m your mother in cook.
Mauso: If I were to build the perfect idiot robot, who spouted nothing but incomprehensible feces, its name would be “good”.
Mauso: Your penis is tiny.
Mauso: Did i mention that?Minutes Later. Mauso: Hacked into my bank account yet?
Mauso: You’re pretty slow.
Mauso: To be totally honest.
Mauso: I thought you would have drained my account by now.
Mauso: *Gets popcorn*Later. Mauso: I had sex with your mother
Conclusion – for those who require closure… Mauso did win the eBay auction. His dead phone went on to live a fulfilling life as a hockey puck, and his bank accounts lived happily ever after. To this day, Mauso continues to study engineering and hopes one day “to create a lifelike robot, so astoundingly stupid that I can take out my numerous frustrations by murdering it”. His psychologist refused to comment. |