Technique

In his videos, Kitboga engages in scam baiting with several types of scammers. Besides technical support scammers, he also engages with refund scammers, IRS scammers, social security 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 poses as many different characters during his videos, including an elderly woman or man,^[11] a Russian man named Vicktor Viktoor,^[12] a valley girl named Nevaeh ("Heaven" spelled backward),^[13] or 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 with 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.^[13][14]

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 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 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."^[13]

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.^[15] 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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[16]

At the end of bait calls, Kitboga sometimes turns off his voice changer and reveals that he has been aware that the call was an attempted scam the entire time. Some of the scammers immediately hang up when Kitboga reveals the ruse to them. Others' reactions to this range from anger to regret, with some maintaining that they are legitimate tech support agents. Still others are unrepentantly dismissive of Kitboga's hoax, informing him that plenty of impending victims yet await on hold.^[5] In later installments Kitboga has largely moved away from revealing his true nature, for two main reasons: one being that the scammer reaction is often either to pretend to have known all along or hang up, and the other being that he finds it more entertaining to leave the scammer believing that they failed to steal from an actual potential victim.^[17]