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Welcome to Artists Against 419

The Internet is great, isn't it? It's a magical place, where you can buy anything you want, meet new people, find information... and lose all your money to scammers.

We've never liked that last part, so we started to fight back. Over time our art has evolved, and we now maintain the largest repository of websites used in 419 and Advance Fee Fraud on the internet.

We offer a complete public interface for our site visitors, as well as database access through webservices which can be used for automated retrieval of fake bank entries. Web browser toolbars use our database feed to warn users that a site they visit is a fake company run by scammers. But most importantly, we continue to build better relations with webhosting companies and rid the Internet of fraudulent web sites.

Related pages

• FAQ and Support
• What is 419?
• Is this a legit site? Use some Online search tools to help identify fraud
• Links to other sites
• Fanmail
• Fake banks and Web sites in the news
• Old Coaster's List of Bank Regulators around the World

Announcement: Fifteenth Flash Mob

We now have over 10,000 sites blacklisted in our database of fake sites... that's just plain amazing.

Frankly, we're really proud of ourselves. We celebrated this momentous achievement with an Artists Against 419 Flash Mob on the 18th and 19th of November. More info here.

We had a blast, and thanks to all the folks who participated. There were some excellent recordings of conversations with scammers, dozens of complaint letters sent, 48 hours of fun chat, even a few recipes exchanged! Thanks for stopping by; we'll let you know when the next gathering will be.

Announcement: Anti Phishing Working Group

We believe that open communication between all companies and groups involved in the fight against internet fraud is the only way to combat it.

To that end, the Artists Against 419 are pround to announce their membership of the Anti Phishing Working Group (APWG), and look forward to co-operating with its many members. Our main focus of work will remain fake websites used in Advance Fee fraud, but we aim to share our knowledge where possible.

For more information on the APWG, please click on their logo above.

Announcement: New home for 419legal.org

The home of the former joint venture between the Johannesburg Commercial Branch anti-419 team and certain members of the world scambaiting community, 419legal.org, has been moved to a new domain: http://419legal.ath.cx. Please note that for the reasons described on the front page of the new site, the project has been terminated by the admin and moderator team. The new domain is being made available to the public for documentation and research purposes only.

Announcement: request from the Metropolitan Police (UK)

Please forward all your incoming 419 and advanced fee fraud emails to the Metropolitan Police along with full email headers to fraud.alert@met.police.uk.

This request is obviously not limited to those living in the UK for the simple reason that UK based perpetrators of this crime indiscriminately distribute their scam letters to email addresses all over the world.

In the event that you fail to include the full headers, the information is as helpful as phoning the fire-brigade and telling them that there is a fire, but failing to tell them where it is. If you cannot find the full headers, please just bin your e-mail and do not forward it as it will merely irritate busy police officers and is a total waste of your and their time.

Please refer to the documentation of your email client on how to turn on full email headers before forwarding your emails. (Yahoo users should click on "Options", "General Preferences", and at the option "Forwarding Messages" set "Forward as an attachment".) Users of other email programmes may find this page useful, but be prepared to copy and paste if your programme will not include them automatically.

The Artists Against 419 greatly appreciate the efforts of the Metropolitan Police in taking action against the perpetrators of the Nigerian scam and offer full cooperation.

Spread the word!

A new bandwidth tool was released for beta testing on 13 February 2006: Muguito is a Java tool that runs equally under Windows, Linux, Mac, or any other OS that supports Java. Current version is 0.1.5a, released on April 26, 2006. It is stable, fast, precise -- and deadly to fake banks.

The Artists revealed an updated version of the Lad Vampire on December 5. Take a look, and read more about it in our forums!

Bandwidth Attack Information

• What is the Flash Mob?
• Flash Mob History
• Why Bandwidth Theft?
• AA419 Tools

Artists Database Used in New Firetrust Sitehound Software

That's right, the Artists are one of the Community Groups whose information is used by Firetrust's recently released toolbar. Of course we are very pleased that years of hard work in putting together our database are being put to some greater use! But most importantly, there's now a way for thousands of internet users to be immediately warned that they're being targeted by scammers. Nothing fights 419 fraud like public awareness!!!

Please see the User's Guide for usage and configuration help. This guide here is a good summary about formatting, tips and tricks, etc.