Anti-Scam Samurai is a Lot of Pressure

Sometimes it feels like me against the enormous invisible endless sea of Internet scammers. I know this is not true, and that I am not alone. But sometimes it feels that way.

Internet scammers came into my life really at the very beginning of the Internet. I was on the band wagon from the very first day. In fact, I was the first woman SYSOP in California on a system that pre-dated the Internet, called rBBSnet. It was kind of a store-and-forward system for email. We thought it was lightning fast at the time. I laugh about it now. Good times. But not so fast times, by any means.

As someone who has had a technical life since 1983, it was natural that people would turn to me when the Internet days took off like so much fireworks, to figure out if the emails they were getting were for "real". It took a while for the scammers to really get with the idea that the Internet was going to be their new frontier, but once they did, it was like cockroaches entering a whole new dreamy yummy environment - and to one degree or another, they were never going to leave ever again. They are adaptable buggers.

I've been happy to help people figure out scam emails - in "guestbooks" in the early days, on AOL chat rooms (oh, how I date myself!), in forum message boards. Then one day not that long ago, I got 5 emails in one day from fellow artists who had all lost between $1000-$5000 each to scammers, writing to me too late, and it hit me all at one time - how many emails had I received over the years? 5,000? 10,000? more?

I realized it was time to do something on a larger scale.

The authorities weren't going to do anything. Scammers love to stay under the radar and in countries where it is hard to prosecute them. I knew that scammers were using the Internet to pretty much get a huge number of victims for literally no cost (quite an improvement over the old days of actually having to send some kind of mailer through the postal system or make an actual phone call). So I decided I would use the Internet as they do, by bringing their emails, their activities, and the nature of their scams out into the light - post them publicly, get others to post what they receive, have it all show up in search results. Then we just have to educate people to search online BEFORE sending any money to anyone, or giving up personal financial information or passwords. That's the plan. The Samurai Plan.

And so my life as an Anti-Scam Samurai began. I lead my little army and we post everything we can. I started by helping friends, clients, and artists - they are my "people", but a scam is a scam is a scam and scammers don't really care who they target, so my efforts have expanded beyond helping artists.

At first, I began a list of scammer names and emails addresses on my art website. Scammers fake all their names and use disposable email addresses but I still wanted to make this list so it would show up in search results if someone was searching on it, and confirm for that user that it was indeed a scam. I wanted more interactivity, so I started a blog, called Stop Art Scams. I post scams that people send me and everyone jumps in on the comments and shares their experience related to that scam. It all shows up in search results. It really has helped a lot of people not become scam victims. I felt good about that but not so great about continuing to receive emails from people who had actually lost money to scammers. So next I opened a page, also called Stop Art Scams, on Facebook. Even more scam information shows up in search results. Yea! Even though it says Stop Art Scams, we really do welcome all Internet scam posts to share.

And now I realized I really *do* need to expand beyond helping artists and reach even more people. I want to make the life of an Internet scammer as difficult as possible. So now I've written a series of books that will be sold on Amazon and at KTMObooks.com. (yea, I could give them away, but I don't want to be living in a van down by the river, if you know what I mean...)

The first book to be published, Volume 1, is called Top 10 Email Scams. It describes each scam, how they work, how to recognize them, and how to avoid them. It also provides information on what to do if you do become a victim, and how to deal with (and avoid) identity theft. There are more than 10 email scams to cover, so I created a second volume of more email scams important to understand and avoid. Volume 2 is called More Email Scams. The third volume covers the scams that are prevalent on the social media platforms, such as Craigslist, eBay, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Volume 3 is called Social Media Scams. and I'm currently working on Volume 4, while I work to release Volumes 1-3. The whole series is called Internet Scams Revealed. My goal is to educate, educate, educate, and see if all of these efforts will continue to have some impact on reducing the success rate of Internet scammers.

And that, my friends, brings me to this blog. A blog started in order to support the books and further provide another place where people can post their scam experiences (not just art related). I'm sure I'll write about other topics down the road, and this blog will be for all of my writings, but I am the Anti-Scam Samurai so this will always be a safe place for people to come share their scam experiences. You can post anonymously if you want (however all comments are moderated and not all may get through).

I have also launched another Facebook page, KTMObooks on Facebook. It will be for all of my writings, even if I write about other topics down the road, but will also always be a safe place for people to come and share their Internet scam experiences and emails. The point is to spread the word far and wide so when someone has that gut feeling that something is not right with a person they are dealing with online, they can search and hopefully something somewhere will come up and validate their concerns and help them to identify it as a scam before they lose anything, including their dignity.

Take out your swords. Let's continue to make Internet scammers scramble and work harder at their crimes. Let's shine a light on them. Welcome to the battle.

- Kathleen