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Building the cheapest baiting PC possible.

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Building the cheapest baiting PC possible.

Unread postby Wayne » Sun Oct 27, 2024 1:21 pm

In my talk I say that you don't need a fancy setup to bait, so I decided to set myself a challenge and make the absolute cheapest baiting PC possible. Here's how I did it, what challenges I experienced and how I got around them. You'll find a common thread about how I acquired the parts.

What the system needs to do is connect to the internet, allow me to email scammers and use Skype to make and record calls to the scammers. I could have gone with a cheap laptop, but wanted to build an actual computer for this project that I can carry around to workshops.

It all started about a fortnight ago when I lucked upon a 22 inch monitor at a recycling shop while on my way back from a trip to Newport. It has VGA, HDMI and DP connectors, plus a USB connection to work as a hub. Other than a mark on the stand it's absolutely perfect and only cost me £15.

Total spend so far - £15

Next up came the computer, which I managed to find on an online auction. It's nothing fancy at all, but it doesn't need to be. It's a thin client with an operating system I'd never heard of before, but that can be wiped and replaced with an actual useful OS. With fees and delivery it came to £36, and when it arrived it turned out to be unused with a keyboard and a mouse included.

Total spend so far - £51

The hard drive was too small be be usable for anything but the smallest of operating systems. I had 2 choices. I could either swap the drive for a larger one or find a version of Linux small enough to run on it. I tried both options and ended up replacing the drive and also upgrading the RAM. As it happens, I had some spares here that I was able to use, but looking around it would only have cost me £15 to replace them. Let's add the cost of those to the bill as not everyone would be lucky enough to have spares hanging around.

Total spend so far - £66

The operating system was tricky, and I must have tried over a half dozen different ones. Some Linux distros refused to work at all, and some would work but gave me all kinds of problems trying to connect a headset to it. In the end I went with Tiny10, which is a stripped down version of Windows 10. Even this was problematic as it refused to accept the key I'd bought for it due to it not being an official Microsoft product. In the end I had to resort to using a different program to register it. The key never got used, but as I paid for it I'll add it to the list here.

Total spend so far - £69

As it stands at this point in the story I have a computer that can access my email account and run Skype. Next up is audio. For a single use baiting PC, a basic headset would be fine. You can grab these for practically nothing. I however needed something a bit more substantial as I intend using this in the workshops, so people would be needing to hear what the scammer was saying. A headset won't cut it. A trip to another recycling shop netted me a small guitar amp for just £15, and a buy at a car boot sale a few years ago meant I also had a USB microphone. I'm not going to count these in the cost as these are extras purely for workshops. Likewise, the USB wifi dongle is only needed when the system is out and about. I had a spare headset from a job lot I won on the auction site, but you can pick up a headset for about a tenner these days, so let's add that to the price and compare what a fully built single person baiting system would cost compared to one for workshops.

Total spend for a single person system - £79
Total spend for the worktop version - £95

Skype recording software is free, but I had a spare key for the pro version of the program I use on my main PC so I used that. The free version is perfectly fine though, and I would have used that if I didn't have the key. I also swapped the keyboard out for a different one as I've recently upgraded the one I use day to day. These are things that didn't really cost me anything and are completely optional, so we'll ignore these. At this point we can also record Skype calls, and Audacity is a great free piece of software for editing the calls after.

Total spend for a single person system - £79
Total spend for the worktop version - £95

So then, for less than £80 I managed to build a computer system that would work perfectly fine as a standalone baiting system, and adjusting for the fact the system has a decent USB mic and speaker, the system still cost me less than £100. The only thing I still need to get is a cart I can use to carry it around. I've seen them for less than a tenner, but will wait til I'm in the area to get it as it's a 90 minute drive away and I pass by the place every few weeks. That is unless I find one first in a recycling shop. When all is said and done, the entire system, complete with a way to easily transport it would have cost just over a hundred pounds. As I said at he beginning, you don't need a fancy system to bait. This I hope proves the point.
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Re: Building the cheapest baiting PC possible.

Unread postby Wayne » Thu Oct 31, 2024 5:25 pm

To update this, I'm going to be making some extra systems after winning three more tiny computers. To explain why I'm giving them the names I have, you first need to get two jokes. The original system was nicknamed Baity McBaitface, and there's a song by Half Man, Half Biscuit called "The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman". I'd recommend you check the song out, as well as Deano's respons, "A Baker's Tale". I've christened them "The bastard sons of Baity McBaitface" and I'm torn between their individual names. I'm either going with Larry, Curly and Moe, or Winona, Moya and Rygel. They cost a little bit more than Baity at just over £50 each, but are still very much going to be budget systems. They don't come with keyboards and mice this time around, but I have plenty here already I can use. Time to start looking for some more cheap monitors and headsets to complete them.
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Re: Building the cheapest baiting PC possible.

Unread postby Wayne » Mon Nov 04, 2024 9:23 pm

The new systems arrived today. One is already set up, but it drove me crazy!

First thing I did was upgrade the memory on it from 8Gig to 16Gig. I did this by removing the RAM stick from one of the others and putting it in the second slot, then putting a replacement stick from a different manufacturer into the second one. That way the RAM is the same model on both sticks in the first one. That caused my first problem, which was that the new stick wasn't fitted flush, so wasn't being recognised. It clipped in, but was sitting a touch proud of the connectors. A quick reseating fixed that issue, and in all fairness the systems have easy access to both the RAM and the hard drive. All you need to do is unscrew the four rubber feet and remove the base. I treated myself to a new USB powered screwdriver, so that was its first test. So far, so easy. Then the problems started.

The PC wouldn't recognise the sound card, or so I thought. More on that later. It was also not recognising another bit of hardware in it. Now, as it has Windows 10 on it I figured I'd upgrade to 11 and hope the issue got fixed in the upgrade. No such luck. It crashed a number of times and ended up only working in "Safe Mode". That meant the graphics were "generic" and a really bad resolution. The manufacturer's website is now dead, so I had to do a search for drivers. Eventually I found the AMD program that would search what hardware was in the system and install drivers for it. Another crash, but this time a reboot and another run at it got the system working as well as fix a few instances of a device not being recognised. Still no joy with the built in audio though. Plugging in a USB headset worked fine, but it would not see the built in sound card no matter what I did. That's when I made an important discovery.

If you run the PC without a headset/speaker then it claims that there's no audio device. Plug in a seat of headphones though and it instantly kicks in. Unplug them and it goes back to the "No Device" message. So it seems you need to have an audio output for the system to see the sound card. I've never experienced something like this before. It works though, and that's the important thing. Plug in an output and sound comes out and that's all you can expect from it. I won't say how long it took me to work that one out, but it was an embarrasing amount of time.

Now onto the software. First up, let's get rid of the default browser and install Chrome. Skype was next, along with a call recorder. Then came Audacity, the free audio editor I've been using for years. At this point I'd even found a USB cable to connect the monitor I mentioned in the first post to the new PC to use the USB ports on the side of it. And that's #1 built with 2 more to go.

It's fast too. The original Baity was slow, but these are REALLY fast. Like 6 seconds from boot to the login screen fast. Even before I upgraded the RAM it was fast. They're going to be great little baiting systems. And they're small on top of it. I could easily fit one in the front pouch of my laptop bag.

Now the first one is built, along with the lessons learned along the way, the next one should be much faster, though hopefully I won't have as many issues due to them not having had Windows wiped and reinstalled on them like the first one. Keep everything crossed. I'm not doing it today though. That was enough for one day.

Oh, and the price is still under £100, even with having to supply the mouse and keyboard myself this time around. Here's a cost rundown:

System - £53.33 when you split the cost of the 3 computers into individual ones.
Keyboard and mouse - £15 or so, but you can spend a lot more or a lot less depending on your preferences/if you have spares hanging around.
No need for a USB wifi dongle this time as it's built in.
Monitor - £15
Extra stick of RAM - about £10-15
So just under £100 for a complete baiting system.
Click HERE for webcam blackmail/sextortion help.
Do NOT email me for sextortion help. Use the link above. If you ignore this, your message WILL be deleted.
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