Artists Against 419


Artists Against 419 is an Internet vigilante community dedicated to identifying and shutting down 419 scam websites. Its volunteers seek to stop, disrupt or hinder fraudsters' activities by cataloging and reporting fraudulent domains.

History

The Artists Against 419 site was set up in October 2003 and began tackling fraudulent websites in an artistic way: by hotlinking their images to drain their small bandwidth allowance over their monthly limit. Over time the fraudulent sites have evolved and so have the Artists. On November 30, 2003, the Artists Against 419 hosted its first international flash-mobsee below. There were many subsequent mobbings designed to make internet hosting service providers aware that the Artists Against 419 would not tolerate hosters knowingly hosting websites that AA419 had evidence to show were criminal.
At the same time, they started to list the allegedly fraudulent sites that members had found in a database. With these database entries, if a potential scam victim were to search a website they had been sent by a possible fraudster, the victim might see the database entry on an anti-fraud site and be inclined to cease contact with the scammer. This list now contains nearly 100,000 websites, and is one of the world's largest databases of fraudulent websites.
Sophisticated tools and techniques are used to search for fake sites and domains. When there is sufficient evidence to prove that a particular domain is fraudulent, it is entered into the database by a select experienced member after careful review. AA419's members then compose abuse reports to the domain registrar and/or hosting service provider with the evidence and ask for them to review/suspend the fraudulent site. Frequently, fake sites are closed within days or even hours of being set up. The UK Metropolitan Police force has previously worked with AA419. AA419 also escalates any websites found linked to South Africa to the South African Police Service and such websites will only be reported after giving those authorities the chance to investigate.
AA419 maintains constant relations with numerous internet registrars and hosting companies, who themselves have no wish to host criminal activity and cooperate willingly by suspending the fraudulent sites once the evidence is presented. However, certain companies fail to respond to AA419's abuse reports. In such circumstances they arranged virtual sit-ins.

Flash-mobbing

AA419 described its past actions as flash-mobbing but in actuality, this activity is called a virtual sit-in. Virtual sit-ins entail large numbers of individuals intently visiting a target site and downloading pages or requesting large numbers of information, with the intent that their requests will cause a rapid drain of bandwidth, and if there is a bandwidth quota it goes offline. For example, if 100 people continuously download a 10 kilobyte image simultaneously for 12 hours, this uses 40 gigabytes of allocated bandwidth. Assuming that the fraudulent site has 40 Gb of allocated bandwidth per month, it will automatically shut down after 12 hours, when the bandwidth threshold is exceeded. The fraudulent website will then remain off-line until the following month, when the bandwidth quota is re-set. Virtual sit-ins were achieved using freeware tools such as Muguito or the Lad Vampire. A computer flash-mob is a similar case where the sites' sudden popularity brings an unexpected large numbers of visitors which the server is unable to handle, except that there is no actual audience and the action is designed to be destructive.
In some cases, particularly when a small web-hosting company is involved, the volume of traffic can be so large that access is slowed to all sites on the server, this held the hoster at ransom until they suspended the scam site, then things returned to normal. It is important to note that no site was ever "mobbed" until at least two letters had been sent to the hosting company notifying them of the abuse:-
The Artists always preferred that hosting companies to take responsibility for the actions of their clients as well as the content of their web sites. A virtual sit-in is a tool of last resort, and was used only after other attempts to shut down the fraudsters' website had failed. Fortunately, the vast majority of web-hosting companies find the activities of internet fraudsters highly objectionable and swiftly intervene to stop them.

Controversy

What AA419 describes as flash-mobbing, is considered by others to be an illegal electronic offensive called a Distributed Denial-of-service attack. By their own admission they affect "all sites on the server", and they have attacked systems without checking if bandwidth limits are in place.
Legal scholars like Susan Brenner, a law professor and expert on cybercrime at the University of Dayton School of Law, while sympathetic to aa419's aims and supportive of their more peaceable efforts, find these aggressive techniques akin to DoS attacks, which are illegal. Many jurisdictions prohibit anyone from sending a command to another computer with the intent of causing harm, and DoSes definitely aim to do damage.

Change in direction

The following is from the AA419 web site, discussing the discontinuation of Lad Vampire and other software from their site:

Current activities

In recent years, Artists Against 419 have developed new legal techniques and have acquired numerous new members who find fraudulent websites. Artists Against 419 also has a long standing partnership with the prominent scambaiting community 419eater and allowed members of this organisation to upload, under moderation, websites to their database of fraudulent websites. In 2020 this support was withdrawn.
Many more scam websites are found these days. Also, AA419 is constantly developing and building relationships with domain registrars and hosting companies. Because of this, even though more and more fraudulent sites are being found now, a limited number of private sector companies have been supported by AA419's efforts. The days of "flash-mobbing" are long past, but by using responsive tactics Artists Against 419 has become more effective under its new method of operating.
The Artists have had considerable success in closing fraudulent websites. Of the more than 90,000 sites listed in their database, less than 600 are currently active, and many of these are very recent additions.
Since January 2016, the Artists Against 419 database also reflects separate scam category, autonomous system number and domain name registrar fields, enabling ISPs and registrars to easily determine which sites under their responsibility have been listed. An additional comments field was also added showing the contact details the scam website used.