Kitboga (streamer)

Kitboga is the internet alias of an American Twitch streamer and YouTuber whose content primarily focuses on scambaiting against scams conducted over the phone. As of December 2020, his channel has gained over 855,000 followers on Twitch and his YouTube channel has over 1.5 million subscribers.[1][2] In November 2020, he signed with UTA for worldwide coverage to expand his anti-scam message.[3]

Kitboga
Personal information
NationalityAmerican
WebsiteKitboga.com
Twitch information
Channel
Years active2017-present
GenreScambaiting
Followers855,871
Total views22,911,200
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2017–present
GenreScambaiting
Subscribers1.55 million
(February 4, 2021)
Total views208,129,014
(February 4, 2021)
Follower and view counts updated as of January 7, 2021.

Premise

In mid-2017, Kitboga found out that his grandmother had fallen victim to many scams designed to prey on the elderly, both online and in person.[4] He then discovered "Lenny," a set of vague pre-recorded messages that scam baiters play during calls with the aim of convincing the scammer that there is a real person on the phone without providing any useful information to the scammer. After seeing these videos uploaded to YouTube, he decided to replicate the calls himself. While he started out streaming for his friends on Twitch, his viewership soon started growing beyond his immediate circles, eventually leading to the growth in popularity he has experienced since starting his channel. Kitboga holds that by wasting scammers' time, he prevents them from scamming others, while also providing a source of entertainment and education to his viewers.[5]

Scambaiting
See also: Scam baiting

In his videos, Kitboga engages in scambaiting several types of scammers. Besides technical support scammers, he also engages with refund scammers, IRS scammers, and others. He mixes elements of popular culture into his dialogue and wordplay into some calls;[5] for example, in one March 2020 call against a scammer falsely claiming to sell a COVID-19 cure, Kitboga implied the scammer should be called "Saint Anne," eliding the two words to sound like "Satan."[6]

To misdirect scammers away from his real identity, as well as for viewer entertainment, Kitboga often acts as a number of characters during his videos, including a grandmother named either Edna, Vera, Matilda, or Bernice Anders (a play on the name Bernie Sanders),[7] a Russian man named Vicktor Viktoor,[8] a valley girl named Nevaeh ("Heaven" spelled backwards),[9] or sometimes even a competing technical support scammer named Daniel. He does this by imitating the accent or vocal intonation of the character he is trying to portray, often additionally using a voice changer to alter the pitch of his voice. The common factor uniting Kitboga's characters is that they are not computer-savvy, giving the scammer confidence that the scam is more likely to succeed.[9][10]

At the end of bait calls, Kitboga turns off his voice changer and reveals that he has been aware that the call was an attempted scam the whole time. He has received reactions from anger, to sorrow, to the scammer immediately hanging up the call. However more recently he has not revealed himself, which means that the scammers will keep calling him, wasting more of their time.[5]

History

In March 2020, with the growing prevalence of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kitboga started baiting scammers selling an essential oil which they dishonestly claimed was a cure for COVID-19, following a warning from the United States Federal Trade Commission to consumers to be alert for coronavirus-related scams.[6]

In November 2020, Kitboga was signed by UTA to represent him worldwide, with the goal of expanding the reach of Kitboga's anti-scam message.[3]

Technical aspects

The scams against which Kitboga engages in scambaiting often require the victim to install remote desktop software. As an example, in the case of technical support scams, the scammers request access to the victim's computer to "diagnose" a technical issue (where none really exists), for which they then request payment to "fix." Because of the risks involved in remotely connecting to an unknown computer, Kitboga uses a different computer than his own while scambaiting; the computer runs a virtual machine equipped with a virtual private network. This ensures not only that any malware or other software installed by the scammer does not affect his computer, but also hides his true IP address and location from the scammers. However, scammers can sometimes discern when a potential victim is using a virtual machine, so Kitboga and his team "have spent countless hours 'spoofing' [their] virtual machine to look and feel like a well-used, average computer."[9]

Types of phone scams other than the technical support scam also often involve the scammer giving some reason to connect to the victim's computer. In online refund scams, for example, the scammer requests to connect to the victim's computer to access their online banking website. When Kitboga interacts with these scammers, in addition to taking the aforementioned precautions, he also uses a fake online banking website he created specifically for use in this type of scambaiting.[11] This website contains intentional features and Easter eggs that make it more difficult for the scammer to conduct the scam, both so that the scammer wastes additional time and for the entertainment of Kitboga's audience.

When baiting IRS scammers and other types of scammers that request payments via gift card, Kitboga uses a piece of computer code to make the gift card redemption page accept any gift code that follows a specified format. Then, when the scammer asks him to read out the gift codes so they can redeem them to take payment from the victim, he types them into his own computer and claims them himself, pretending not to know any better.[12]

Other activities

Besides scambaiting, Kitboga has also been active in promoting computer science education. He regularly holds computer programming streams where he maintains some of the tools he uses in his scambaiting calls.[5] In addition, Kitboga partnered with the STEM organization FIRST in 2018 to stream the building of a real-life "meme-o-meter" like the one found in his scambaiting streams; during the stream, he interacted with children interested in STEM through his stream chat.[13]

Before starting his Twitch and YouTube channels, Kitboga worked in software engineering. Particularly when starting to build out his channel, he used his technical background and knowledge of virtual machines to protect himself while scambaiting. He has said that if more people become aware of the scams he tries to bait, decreasing their prevalence, he would consider returning to software engineering or changing the focus of his stream to coding or playing video games.[5]

See also
  • Jim Browning: online alias of an anonymous Irish grey-hat hacker and YouTube personality whose specialty is scambaiting

References
  1. "Kitboga". Twitch. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  2. "Kitboga". YouTube. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  3. Weiss, Geoff (November 19, 2020). "UTA Signs Prominent Scambaiting Twitch, YouTube Streamer 'Kitboga'". Tubefilter. Retrieved December 20, 2020.
  4. Lorenz, Taylor (February 6, 2018). "This Twitch Streamer Is Avenging His Grandmother by Prank Calling Indian Scam Artists". The Daily Beast. Retrieved February 9, 2020.
  5. Rigg, Jamie (July 30, 2018). "Making a living scamming the scammers". Engadget. Retrieved September 22, 2019.
  6. D'Anastasio, Cecilia (March 27, 2020). "A Twitch Streamer Is Exposing Coronavirus Scams Live". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved December 20, 2020.
  7. D'Anastasio, Cecilia (July 9, 2018). "This Twitch Streamer Gets Revenge On Tech Support Scammers". Kotaku. Retrieved September 22, 2019.
  8. Selk, Avi (February 8, 2019). "Internet scammers are terrible. This troll is their nightmare". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 22, 2019.
  9. Murdock, Jason (May 22, 2018). "Meet Kitboga, the YouTuber Exposing the World's Scariest Tech Support Scams". Newsweek. Retrieved September 22, 2019.
  10. Ward, Adam (April 4, 2019). "Kitboga: The Internet star giving scammers a taste of their own medicine". CTV News. Retrieved September 22, 2019.
  11. Switzer, Eric (July 24, 2019). "Streamer Creates Fake Bank To Troll Online Scammers". TheGamer. Retrieved December 20, 2020.
  12. Cooney, Bill (August 24, 2019). "Kitboga makes scammer lose it with fake gift card prank". Dexerto. Retrieved December 20, 2020.
  13. "Inspiring kids to use STEM for good—Q & A with social media star Kitboga". Diversity In STEAM Magazine. December 17, 2018. Retrieved December 20, 2020.
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