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Welcome to Artists Against 419
Say it with Fake Banks.
Home alone on Valentine's Day? Need a tasteful, but cheap, gift for a loved one? Say it with the Artists Against 419: The aa419 Flash Mob is back!
February 13th, 12:00:01 AM GMT (one second after midnight), the Artists Against 419 (aa419) invite you, your partner, and all your friends to our 48-hour love fest:
As a special treat, the Flash Mob will feature a web broadcast. You'll be able to hear a livestream of music, funny lad calls, and commentary by ace bank killers throughout the event. As usual, chat online with us!
Fake banks will feel the power of ordinary Web users once again.
Use the Mugu Marauder and Lad Vampire to drain those fake banks to death! Stay tuned for a new Java based tool to be revealed! Write mails to the hosters to make them stomp out fraudulent 419 sites!
Stay tuned for the details and results!
Read more about the past Flashmobs!
Spread the word!
The Artists revealed an updated version of the Lad Vampire on December 5. Take a look, and read more about it in our forums!
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!!!
Manifesto
Artists love the internet - with the exception of spam! There is only one thing that we hate more than spammers: 419 scammers abusing the internet... These criminals abuse our mailboxes by sending 419 emails, they abuse our guest books by leaving their MUGU entries and they abuse this media by building web sites for criminal fake companies. But some people started hitting back....
In October 2003 the Artist Against 419 started tackling fake banks in an artistic way: by hotlinking their images to drain their small bandwidth allowance over the limit. But the fake banks evolved and so did the Artists. On the 30th of November 2003 the Artists Against 419 hosted the |first international flashmob against 419 which would have many successors. We also started maintaining a list of the 419 related sites we found so that potential scam victims would see our website and be warned when they searched for their online banks, and we started cooperaing with webhosting companies to get the 419 sites shut down as soon as possible without causing harm to the webhosters.
At the moment, the Artists maintain one of the world's largest databases of 419 websites. We offer a public interface for our site visitors, as well as a database access through webservices which can be used by people for automated retrieval of fake bank entries. We continue to build better relations with webhosting companies and rid the web of fraudulent websites.
Fake bankers beware! The artists are coming.... Everybody is an artist!
Related pages
- FAQ and Support
- What is 419?
- Is this a legit site? 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
Bandwidth Attack Information
- What is the Flash Mob?
- Flash Mob History
- Why Bandwith Theft?
- Bandwidth Results
- AA419 Tools
- Bandwidth Scripts
Please see the User's Guide for usage and configuration help. This guide here is a good summary about formatting, tips and tricks, etc.
