Artists Against 419
Artists Against 419 ( AA419 for short ) is an Internet community dedicated to identifying and closing down advance fraud websites. The number 419 in the name is explained by Nigerian criminal law. Section number 419 specifically deals with alleged fees and excessive promised profits fraud. In addition to the term “Nigerian Fraud”, the artists believe that “419 Fraud” is also a common term for this special form of fraud.
aims
In October 2003, the artists began to use bogus banks by hotlinking their picture pages to exhaust the low monthly bandwidth. Over time, the fake banks have evolved, and so have the artists . On 30 November 2003, either hosted artists the first international flash mob . There were further flash mobs afterwards, which were intended to make the hosters aware that the artists will not accept that hosters knowingly host criminal websites.
In addition, the artists began to create a database of fraudulent websites that their members had found so that potential fraud victims could find their site and thus be warned if they were looking for the pages the scammers were trying to redirect them to. The database now contains over 135,000 websites (as of February 2019) and is one of the largest databases of fraudulent websites worldwide.
A special search method is used to search for the fake websites. As soon as a website is identified as a fake, it is entered in the database and the hoster is contacted and asked to shut down the fraudulent website. In most cases, fake pages are deactivated within hours of their creation. Every page is checked with great care before it is entered into the database. The law enforcement agencies are increasingly using this data as a source of information.
The artists maintain contacts with web hosting companies who close the websites if there is sufficient evidence. If a company does not show any reactions in spite of the confirmed evidence, it will initiate a flash mob procedure.
Flash mob
In this case, the flash mob consists of a large number of people who visit and download the fraudulent website. The aim is to use up the bandwidth quota so that the website can no longer be reached. If several websites share the same quota, these other websites will also be less accessible. In some cases, especially when small web hosting companies are concerned, it can happen that all websites of the hoster are slowed down. But as soon as the host deactivates the criminal website, "normality" returns automatically, as the deactivated page replies with "Error 404 not available" (very small amount of data) and the much larger amount of data on the website is no longer transmitted.
The artists do not want to carry out unannounced flash mobs. The procedure should only be used as a last resort.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Advance Fee Fraud on the Artists Against 419 website (wiki.aa419.org) , accessed November 17, 2010