Probably been suggested before, rather than doing the smart thing and just deleting obvious phishing scams, get brave and fill out the requests with gibberish that will take at least some amount of time for the scammers to sift through.
If they send out a million spam mails and 1 percent respond this way, that's ten thousand emails that will need to be sifted through to find the occasional real sucker.
Similar to the previously suggest automated denial of service attack listed, but without all the work.
Might be a really bad idea but then again, might be kind of fun.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 30 2013 A variation of this anti-Phishing_20scam [doctorremulac3, Dec 30 2013] 419 Eater http://www.419eater.com/Various amusing ways to waste the time of scammers. [Wrongfellow, Dec 30 2013] Did something similar to this once - the phisher was not amused. The email account I used got punished.-- normzone, Dec 30 2013 [+] I've done it before as well, and luckily avoided a backlash like [normzone] received.-- swimswim, Dec 30 2013 Oh, that 419 Eater site...some people have too much time on their hands, and they use it to abuse other people with too much time on their hands, who are - oh, you see where this goes.-- normzone, Dec 30 2013 As my wife has carefully explained to my father at least twice, making any form of reply can give phishers exploitable data.-- Alterother, Dec 30 2013 Theres a This American Life about this, the guy made the scammers spend a ton of money to travel to meet him in Kenya, but never showed up (or something along those lines).-- leinypoo13, Dec 31 2013 These scammers are smart. They make millions out of suckers every year, and they have ways of punishing those who respond in any way. Best just to ignore them or at least forward the emails to the FBI or similar.-- xenzag, Dec 31 2013 //These scammers are smart.//
We're smarter.
//they have ways of punishing//
So do we.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 31 2013 It has been suggested that the bad spelling and incorrct grammar usage in 419 scams is intentional. Only those that overlook, or, do not notice the obvious errors and then reply, are the intended targets. Presumably they are less likely to suspect a ruse. Your scam is the exact same, in reverse. Our most gracious commendations on your veritable exactitude.-- 4whom, Jan 02 2014 If you read this message till its end, or send it to 10 of your friends you will burn in hell.
If you delete it without a trace you will have saved yourself and your friends a total of 5 minutes and twenty seconds. If everyone around the world does this, you will be helping millions of people saving billions of dollars and you will be accepted to heaven.-- pashute, Jan 05 2014 random, halfbakery