This practice is called scam baiting, and there are communities you can join, like 419 eater. You can improve your techniques there.
But be careful with scambaiting.
1. Scammers can have networks, with connections that are more violent and capable than a given scammer. They might be capable of hitting you with a drive by, doxing, swatting, or hiring local muscle to visit you. The risk of this is kind of 'expensive' escalation low but not zero - especially if you're causing real problems for an operation
2. Many scam agents are victims coerced into scamming by their bosses. This makes it unethical to bait them unless you have the power and intent to liberate them - which almost no scam baiters do
3. Many scam agents have bots for dealing with repetitive objections or harassment attempts. It doesn't cost them anything to string "vigilantes" along with low effort bot responses, occasionally dropping the payload URL, hoping you will make a mistake
4. Some scambaiting activities are illegal and could make you liable for legal penalties - things like verbally harassing scammers, hacking scammers back to surveil their operations, threatening to have scammers beaten or murdered, etc.
Remember that the agents that you're talking to are softies, with a little power, but they're working under the supervision - and often the coercion - of hardened criminals in many cases. Scambaiting should not be done just for fun. It should be done with some form of desire to help liberate the victims enslaved by these operations.
I have personally chosen to stop most of my own scambaiting operations until I find a new form of scambaiting that can actually help victimized scammers.
The only kind of scam baiting that I do now is teaching python and open source contributions on GitHub, with the hope that teaching a valuable skill can help a scammer escape the cycle of crime and extortion. If a potential scammer is willing to learn Python with me and start making open source contributions, I don't really care what else they are doing. But of course this approach has a downside - I could be teaching valuable programming skills to a person who will just use them to automate their scamming operation.
In what jurisdiction would I be liable for verbally harassing a scammer?
I ask because worked for a cybersecurity firm and we would, on occasion, and mostly the “teh lulz” screw with phone scams. Our legal had nothing to say on that front.
But of course this approach has a downside - I could be teaching valuable programming skills to a person who will just use them to automate their scamming operation.
Exactly; I'm sure that in many cases the people who taught them English had similar hopes.
I appreciate your attitude about trying to better the people who are working the call centers, but they're often held illegally in a foreign country. The criminal gangs that run these call centers take their passports on arrival, learning Python isn't going to help them unfortunately.
Talking about how pep 518 makes python packaging a lot easier is actually one of my screening steps. If they can't pretend to be captivated by that, I drop them immediately. I don't care if you're trying to scam me, if you're also learning key peps!
And God help a scammer who ends up in my hands... Because I will definitely teach them python packaging and GitHub build automations for pypi publishing! I am honestly in awe of some of my students' abilities to deal with python BS.
And Poetry? Pip's own Pep 518 compliance ensures we don't need it! We're managing dependencies by hand, `pyproject.toml` style! Woohoo!
But be careful with scambaiting.
1. Scammers can have networks, with connections that are more violent and capable than a given scammer. They might be capable of hitting you with a drive by, doxing, swatting, or hiring local muscle to visit you. The risk of this is kind of 'expensive' escalation low but not zero - especially if you're causing real problems for an operation
2. Many scam agents are victims coerced into scamming by their bosses. This makes it unethical to bait them unless you have the power and intent to liberate them - which almost no scam baiters do
3. Many scam agents have bots for dealing with repetitive objections or harassment attempts. It doesn't cost them anything to string "vigilantes" along with low effort bot responses, occasionally dropping the payload URL, hoping you will make a mistake
4. Some scambaiting activities are illegal and could make you liable for legal penalties - things like verbally harassing scammers, hacking scammers back to surveil their operations, threatening to have scammers beaten or murdered, etc.
Remember that the agents that you're talking to are softies, with a little power, but they're working under the supervision - and often the coercion - of hardened criminals in many cases. Scambaiting should not be done just for fun. It should be done with some form of desire to help liberate the victims enslaved by these operations.
I have personally chosen to stop most of my own scambaiting operations until I find a new form of scambaiting that can actually help victimized scammers.
The only kind of scam baiting that I do now is teaching python and open source contributions on GitHub, with the hope that teaching a valuable skill can help a scammer escape the cycle of crime and extortion. If a potential scammer is willing to learn Python with me and start making open source contributions, I don't really care what else they are doing. But of course this approach has a downside - I could be teaching valuable programming skills to a person who will just use them to automate their scamming operation.