Vlads and more Vlads...

[Big Al]

After you do baiting for a while you'll probably run into what we call Vlads.
This is a term we use to designate scammers from the former Soviet Union.
If you bait one, then you will probably start getting more of them.
Eventually you might wind up with 20 or more a week scam E-mails from them.
Sorting them all out and posting them can be a hassle so I thought I might make a post on how I process them all.
This is in no way the only way to do it but I've found the process helpful.

1. I start by processing all of the E-mails that do not have an attached image.
2. I search the "Reply To" E-mail address or if there is an E-mail address within the actual E-mail body, I search that one instead inside the baiting account.
This will alert me if there is more than one E-mail from that scammer address and possibly one that has an attached image.
3. If I do not find any E-mails that contain attached images, my next step is to search the scammer E-mail address on our site.
4. If I get no hits, then I post the E-mail in our current "Random scam messages received from FSU scammers ???" topic.
5. Once I have processed all of the E-mails that do not have attached images it's time to process the ones that do.
6. I open the E-mails from bottom to top usually. I again search the "Reply To" address to be sure there isn't multiple E-mails and images to search with. Then I search our site to see if I get any hits for the E-mail address.
7. I look at the attached image(s) and try to determine if I've seen them before. If I do, then I try to find the topic usually by copying the image(s) to a folder so I can compare the image(s) to the ones I find.
8. My next step is usually to use Tineye and Yandex reverse image searches to see if I get any hits back to our site or hits to the stolen images real owners name.
9. If I do get back any results from either search I will post the new E-mail(s) in the topic found by the searches.
10. If I get no hits then the next thing I do is go to the "Scammer Photos" section of our gallery.
11. I search page by page backwards to the depth of about 10 pages.
12. If I find nothing then I create a new Gallery and add the image(s) in question.
13. Since I did not find any topics using the E-mail address in question, I create a new topic in our Romance forum.
14. I add the E-mail and header and see if I get a hit for the IP address. If I do I add it too.
15. Then I add the stolen image(s) and a link to the correct gallery in the "Scammer Photos" section.
16. After posting the E-mail etc, I crosslink the topic to the gallery. We have found this helpful for finding topics in the future when we get hits from the reverse image search engines.
17. Once I've finished, I archive the E-mail(s) and move to the next.