So I've recently found out about scam-baiting, and I've discovered a whole community around just wasting the times of scammers, such as 419Baiter and TheScamBaiter.
A lot of the people there are quite passionate about it. Some have set up fake websites, banks and stuff in order to fool the scammers.
Most also think that what they do makes a difference by wasting the scammer's time and effort and acting as a deterrent. My question is, does it?
Mostly it seems to take more time and effort for the scam-baiter. So given the number of scammers out there, it doesn't seem like it could ever scale to be an effective solution.
Furthermore, if it was successful as a deterrent, wouldn't it be in, say, the FBI or Google's best interest to start producing software that automatically baited scammers in order to waste their time?
Lastly, these schemes seem to have increased not decreased.
Can anyone actually offer any research which suggests that scam-baiting is an effective deterrent and that the scam-baiting has a measurable effect in lowering the incidence of internet fraud?
Source of notability: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/540138